Clinton Views Rebuilding Effort in Hurricane’s Wake : Labor Day: President praises South Florida residents for their efforts. He debates ‘disgruntled voter’ over need for new taxes.

President Clinton journeyed to South Florida on Monday to offer moral support to the victims of last year’s Hurricane Andrew, but he could not escape questions about his budget plans and his support for the North American Free Trade Agreement.

After touring scenes of the disaster’s devastation and spending more than an hour listening to stories about efforts to rebuild homes and communities, Clinton was accosted by a resident who demanded to know whether he believed that new taxes and new spending would bring prosperity.

The President, clearly irritated by the question, challenged the man to name a country that had achieved economic growth through big tax cuts. “Name one,” Clinton said several times, pointing at the man with his finger. “Not Germany. Not Japan. Name one country that borrowed and spent itself into prosperity.”

The resident, who identified himself as “a disgruntled American voter” but would not give his name, did not come up with an answer.

Clinton started to walk away but turned and questioned the man again: Who was responsible for the huge budget deficits and spending programs of the past 12 years? “Answer: the last two (Republican) presidents,” Clinton said.

As Clinton walked away again, the man wished him good luck.

At a second event Monday, Clinton gave a more traditional Labor Day message to a sparse crowd assembled by local labor leaders at the site of a storm-damaged apartment complex that will be rebuilt as a joint project of the federal government and the AFL-CIO.

Amid a grim scene of fallen trees and boarded-up windows at the Caribbean West Apartments in the Cutler Ridge neighborhood of South Dade County, Clinton proclaimed that he intended to “re-establish the partnership of business, labor and government.”

The reception from the crowd of about 200 was lukewarm under a blistering sun. Many wore buttons reading, “Say No to NAFTA.”

One worker distributed the lyrics to an original musical composition that included the lines: “Shout from the rafta, say no to NAFTA, for it will send all U.S. workers down the drain. Why do we hafta, still get the shafta? To pull this off I guess they think we have no brain.”

Despite its hostility to the trade pact, organized labor generally supports Clinton and has given his Administration high marks for its stand on worker rights, family leave and health care reform.

Clinton did not mention the trade pact in his remarks and referred only in passing to his health care plan, preferring to speak in general about his efforts to “make government work on the real problems of real people.”

He said that the Administration was working on a program to be known as the National Partnership for Community Investment, a $600-million program to assist in the construction of low- and moderate-income housing and to provide apprenticeship training in the building trades.

Most of the funds would come from the AFL-CIO and pension fund investments of the quasi-public Federal National Mortgage Assn. and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. programs.

At the earlier event in Homestead, Clinton, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros heard from a dozen community leaders and residents about the successes and problems they’ve encountered in their efforts to recover from the Aug. 24, 1992, hurricane. As the First Lady entered the Community Seniors Center, she was greeted by a gallant 22-year-old, Michael Ambrose, who kissed her hand.

Clinton seemed particularly struck by statistics about family stress still suffered as a result of the storm, which caused an estimated $20 billion to $30 billion in damage. He was told that the area had seen a marked increase in domestic violence, divorce, suicide attempts and substance abuse since the killer storm.

He also said he was “thinking about all the folks in the Midwest who are about to go through where you have been” as they attempt to put their lives back together after this year’s floods.

“I want those people to see you on television tonight. I want them to read about you in the newspapers tomorrow,” Clinton said. “And I want them to believe that you really can bring an area back if you work together and stay together and rebuild a sense of community and give people a chance to take responsibility for themselves.”