White House Offers Deeper Medicare Cut

The Clinton administration offered Tuesday to make additional cuts of $18 billion in projected Medicare spending over the next five years to help reach agreement on eliminating the federal deficit, people involved in the budget negotiations said Tuesday.

In saying that it was willing to compromise on Medicare, the issue that has most divided the administration and congressional Republicans through two years of budget wars, the White House was clearly seeking to appear flexible as the two sides began their first serious negotiations since their impasse in late 1995.

The administration had proposed cutting the growth of government health care spending for the elderly by $100 billion over five years, while the most recent Republican offer was $158 billion over six years.