WASHINGTON - Seeking to shore up his support among organized labor, Vice President Al Gore yesterday told a transportation trades convention that Texas Governor George W. Bush's plan to partially privatize Social Security would put the system into ''virtual bankrupty.''
''He would turn Social Security into a program of social insecurity, burdened not only by debt but also by doubt,'' Gore said at the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department Convention. ''He would take the `trust' out of the trust fund and turn it into a borrow-and-spend approach.''
After spending the week attacking Bush's record in Texas, Gore used the appearance before the transportation trades workers, who make up a quarter of the AFL-CIO's membership, to turn his focus on Bush's policies on such national issues as Social Security and the minimum wage.
He also took the opportunity to try to generate more enthusiasm among organized labor, some of which has withheld its support for Gore because of differences with him over free trade and permanently normalized trade status for China.
Gore urged the union members to ''fight off any cynics'' who say he and Bush are the same and it wouldn't make a difference which one is elected president. ''It does make a difference,'' he said.
The transportation workers gave Gore a standing ovation and prolonged applause before he began speaking, prompting Gore to quip, ''I feel a little spark of enthusiasm in this group.''
While the vice president restated his support for raising the minimum wage by $1 an hour, he said Bush proposes making the minimum wage increase ''optional state by state ... so states could just opt out of a minimum wage increase.'' He then asked, ''Well, what is that all about?''
Bush spokesman Ray Sullivan said Bush would support a $1 increase in the minimum wage as long as there is flexbility for states to consider the impact of the wage increase on their work force and communities.
Gore said he realized ''it's summertime and not everyone is following this election all that closely right now.'' But he suggested that this week ''will be looked back upon as a turning point for a number of reasons.''
One of those reasons, he said, was an article about Social Security written by Martin Feldstein, an adviser to Bush and an economics professor at Harvard.
Feldstein, who favors the governor's plan to revise Social Security by allowing people to invest a portion of their payroll taxes in the stock market, argued that ''no other policy can do as much'' as a proposal like Bush's to help low- and middle-income people save for retirement. But Gore and his campaign seized on a line in the column, which appeared in Monday's Washington Post, that said benefits would not need to be cut if the trust fund runs dry because the trust fund could borrow ''temporarily to bridge its funding gap.''
Gore said Feldstein had revealed ''the key fact'' about Bush's Social Security plan: ''That it would put it into virtual bankruptcy and then borrow so heavily that its future would be at dire risk.''
''In 65 years of its existence, the Social Security Trust Fund has never been allowed to run dry, has never gone into deficit, has never been forced to borrow from general revenues. This is a brand new departure,'' Gore said.
Sullivan later retorted, ''This was another stop on Al Gore's trample the truth tour - this time with a recycled attack.''
Sullivan said the Clinton-Gore administration had done nothing in nearly eight years to extend the life of Social Security. He said the Bush plan would preserve existing benefits for senior citizens and those nearing retirement.
Gore joked that he was ''thinking about putting out a list of top 10 reasons why'' he was looking forward to debating Bush. Social Security, he said, would be reason number one.
''I'm on the side of the people. He's on the side of the powerful,'' Gore said. ''I'm on the side of the men and women who work hard physical jobs all their lives and repair those buses and lay down train tracks and carry bags at airports for others, and they need something more than an IOU when they retire.''
