Sacrifice Ahead, Clinton Tells U.S. : Economy: President, in televised town hall meeting, dashes any hope he will deliver on tax relief for middle class. Questions range from Bosnia to military gay ban.

Seven days before he unveils the economic plan that is to embody his blueprint for national renewal, President Clinton Wednesday told an audience in economically distressed Detroit that what lies ahead for the middle class is sacrifice, not tax cuts.

Clinton, in a one-hour town meeting that was broadcast nationally on cable television, effectively extinguished whatever hope remained that he would deliver on his campaign promise of tax relief for middle America. But he declared that a program of shared sacrifice could ultimately bring greater hope and opportunity to all Americans.

“I wish I could promise you that I won’t ask you to pay any more. . . . But I cannot tell you that I won’t ask you to make any contribution to the changes we have to make,” Clinton declared. “I believe I got elected on a commitment to change America--to create jobs, to try to raise incomes, to face the health care crisis. I’m doing my best to do it in a way that is fairest to middle-class America.”

Using a format that he pioneered in last year’s presidential campaign, Clinton fielded questions on subjects ranging from Bosnia and Haiti to his fitful search for an attorney general and his controversial pledge to lift the ban on gays in the military.

But often he shifted the focus back to the single point he wanted to hammer home: the need for average Americans to support his still-incomplete economic program, even if that means more sacrifice instead of the tax relief and other immediate benefits he talked about as a candidate.

And, with his relaxed command of the issues and his ability to discuss complex problems in terms of ordinary citizens’ lives, Clinton demonstrated that the mantle of the presidency has only added to his mastery of the town meeting format.

The challenge that remains, however, underlined by his often-rocky first two weeks in office, is whether he can match his performance in Wednesday’s campaign-like setting with comparable mastery of the policy-making and legislative arenas of Washington.

Clinton’s appearance was carried live by C-SPAN and Cable News Network as well as by 21 stations that bumped regular prime-time programming on the bet that viewers would be more interested in public policy. He responded to questions from a 60-member studio audience here and, via satellite link, from similar audiences in TV studios in Seattle, Miami and Atlanta.

Clinton opened the show by explaining that he wanted to return to the town hall format because “I can see now after only three weeks how easy it is for a President to get out of touch” with the public.

One of the 13 audience members who put questions to the President was Marlene Bastien of Miami. She recalled that during the campaign Clinton had promised to reverse then President George Bush’s policy of returning illegal Haitian immigrants to their homeland without a hearing. Instead, she charged, “you’re only carrying out that same policy and you’re creating a naval blockade,” a reference to U.S. ships patrolling the waters off Haiti to prevent an exodus from the island.

Clinton replied that he was trying to halt the Haitians to avoid the loss of life certain to occur if refugees sailed for the United States in poorly made vessels. And, he said, he was doing more than Bush had ever done to try to bring democracy to the Caribbean nation. “I could not in good conscience let hundreds of people die on the high seas,” he said.

Kelly Cameron, a Miami attorney, wanted to know why Clinton had spent so much time in his first week concentrating on the issue of gays in the military rather than immediately grappling with fiscal and economic issues. “I tried to put off the gays in the military issue for six months,” Clinton replied. “I was frankly appalled that we spent so much time in the first week” on it.

Clinton blamed that distraction on Senate Republicans. But now, he added: “We’re on the economy and that’s where we’re going to stay.”

Susan Escher, who was Michigan coordinator for the Ross Perot presidential campaign, pressed Clinton on whether he would support a balanced-budget amendment. Clinton declared that the budget amendment proposals he has seen were no more than “a gimmick” that would put real decisions off for five years. Also, he said, balancing the budget immediately would drive unemployment up because it would require “such terrible sacrifices.”

Instead, Clinton said, he wants to cut spending across a number of areas of the federal government while raising more revenues. He did not specify what kind of tax increase he would favor but he said that middle-class Americans would need to make a “contribution” to the program.

On the subject of warfare in former Yugoslavia, Clinton outlined the plan Secretary of State Warren Christopher had announced earlier in the day.

The President said that the United States must be more aggressive in seeking a negotiated settlement and must consider committing U.S. ground forces to enforce such a pact. Otherwise, he said, the Serbian “ethnic cleansing” will be validated and the strife can spread to other regions “and we’ll get pulled into” a major conflict, as has happened in Europe twice in this century.

Asked about the problems of the aerospace industry, Clinton renewed his promise to appoint a commission to look at rebuilding the U.S. aviation business. “I assure you as soon as I have this budget and this investment plan . . . sent up to the Congress, we’re going to start working on defense conversion and aerospace,” he said.

Another question came from a Seattle woman whose child was in an intensive care unit because of an outbreak of meat poisoning from the E. coli bacteria. The family had been left with no health insurance when the woman’s husband lost his job two days before the child became ill. “Is there any hope in the near future of seeing universal health care so no one else has to go through what we’ve gone through?” the woman asked.

Clinton pointed out that he had named his wife to head a task force charged with developing a program that would contain medical costs while permitting universal access to health care. “Within a hundred days of my becoming President, we’re going to have a bill to Congress to do just what you said,” he said.

The flight to Detroit was Clinton’s first public trip out of the capital and his first on Air Force One, the presidential jet.

The final plans for the event were laid over the last eight days. The staff of the station worked through the weekend to pick a politically balanced audience of 60 from among thousands in southeast Michigan who called to ask to appear.

ECONOMIC STIMULUS: Gore, in California, says Clinton economic plan is needed. A3