The End Is In Sight, Say Budget Negotiators But Gop Promises A Battle Over Clinton’s Domestic Priorities

White House and congressional bargainers on Tuesday moved near completing a budget-balancing deal they announced 12 days ago. Even so, some Republicans signaled that they will not accept President Clinton’s priorities without a fight.

Negotiators met privately in a basement office of the Capitol for six hours and emerged in a jovial mood, saying they had solved many of their differences over the agreement’s details.

They cautioned that differences remained, including some that the president and congressional leaders would have to resolve but said the end to the seemingly relentless negotiations seemed to be in sight.

“We are very hopeful we can conclude an agreement very shortly,” said White House budget chief Franklin Raines.

“I think the remaining issues are not insurmountable,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M. “I look forward to resolving them tomorrow with our leadership.”

Domenici and House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, said they believed their panels would begin voting Thursday on aspects of the plan. The deal is aimed at eliminating deficits by 2002, a first since 1969, while cutting taxes.

Raines said the two sides were working towards a 30-page document that would flesh out some of the agreement’s detail, such as the funds that the president’s chief domestic priorities would receive.

“You’ll know how that’s to be protected, and how much” they should get, he said.

Details of what the bargainers had agreed to were not immediately available.

Earlier, participants said that still unresolved were questions about how the tax cut would be distributed over the next five years; what revenues would be raised to offset the costs to the treasury of the tax reductions; whether more poor people would have federal help in paying their monthly Medicare premiums; and how much money Clinton’s favored domestic programs would receive.

But even before the two sides produced paper describing the fine print of their accord, House Majority Leader Dick Armey raised questions about the value of such detailed understandings. Despite the agreement with the White House, said Armey, R-Texas, the House will vote this year to kill the National Endowment for the Arts, a perennial target of conservatives.

White House negotiators have repeatedly told Republicans that Clinton considers the arts-funding agency one of his domestic priorities. But Armey told reporters that the House would vote to eliminate all NEA funds, even if the agency is described in budget documents as a presidential priority.