Panel Backs Budget With Greater Cuts : Spending: House committee’s plan would slice $62.5 billion more than what Clinton wanted.

Divided sharply along party lines, the House Budget Committee pushed through a new spending blueprint Wednesday that would carry out President Clinton’s basic economic program but reduce outlays far more than he originally proposed.

The Democrat-controlled panel voted, 26 to 17, to adopt a $1.5-trillion budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1. It would add $62.5 billion more in spending cuts than Clinton wanted over the next five years. A House vote on the package is scheduled for next Wednesday.

Working on a fast track of its own, the Senate Budget Committee debated a similar Democratic spending blueprint but put off its decision until today.

Democrats on the House panel closed ranks in a series of party-line votes to beat back Republican amendments that were intended to torpedo parts of Clinton’s program.

The GOP complained that the spending guidelines are not specific enough to convince the public that the budget cuts are real.

“In large measure, it moves the President’s bold new agenda forward,” said Rep. Martin Olav Sabo (D-Minn.), chairman of the panel. “This budget resolution is much more than crunching numbers or hashing over process. It is primarily about getting our economic house in order and moving our nation forward.”

The resolution would freeze discretionary spending for defense, foreign and domestic programs at present levels for the fiscal years 1994 through 1998. Mandatory spending for such benefits as Social Security, Medicare and veterans programs would increase, however.

Republicans presented an alternative budget that they maintained would cut the deficit by $429 billion over the next five years without raising taxes but by making some politically daring reductions in retirement programs and Medicare.

For example, it would raise the federal retirement age from 55 to 62 and halt cost-of-living pension increases for military and civilian retirees younger than 62 on the theory that they have other jobs and do not need the annual raises.

The GOP plan would also require sharply higher payments by Medicare beneficiaries with incomes of more than $100,000 a year and would place all Medicaid recipients in managed-care programs to hold down their medical bills.

“We believe that by having less government and by not increasing taxes, we’ll have more stimulus,” Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) said.

But Rep. Bob Wise (D-W. Va.) retorted: “This is a no-growth budget. You want to cut and you don’t want to invest.”

The committee quickly killed the Republican plan by a vote of 27 to 15, with Rep. Rick A. Lazio (R-N.Y.) the only GOP lawmaker who voted with the Democrats.

Clinton’s original plan called for $473 billion in savings, but the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office re-estimated the savings at $406 billion, a number the congressional committees are required to use.

The House committee’s spending plan would cut spending for fiscal year 1994, which starts in October, by $3.5 billion more than Clinton asked, with most of the extra reductions coming in defense, science and space, natural resources, education and social services, transportation and income security.

In adopting the budget resolution, the committee also sent orders to other House committees on how much they had to reduce spending in areas under their jurisdiction. The guidelines would require the House Ways and Means Committee to raise taxes or other revenues by $298.8 billion to help lower the deficit and pay for some of Clinton’s new programs.

The spending blueprint, however, does not give specific directions to the committees on how to achieve their deficit-reduction goals. Rather, it will be up to the authorizing committees and the Appropriations Committee to decide how to meet their targets.

For example, one panel might decide to eliminate a costly program, such as the space station, whereas other panels could remain under their ceilings by making smaller cuts in a large number of programs.

The Senate Budget Committee was expected to continue work today on a modified version of the President’s economic plan that says it would cut $96 billion more than Clinton proposed.

The plan, announced Wednesday by committee Chairman Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.), would achieve some of the extra deficit reduction by cutting an additional $41 billion in discretionary domestic programs. It also would raise an extra $22 billion in taxes.

The remainder of the additional deficit reduction comes from a number of other sources.

On the other hand, in a clear effort to win the votes of farm state Democrats on the committee, Sasser proposed scaling back the Administration’s proposed cuts in farm programs by $2.3 billion over five years.

Republicans immediately blasted the plan as a fiction. They noted, for example, that it claims credit for $44 billion in cuts that were already mandated under current law. “I find that to be bogus. I find that to be fictional,” said Rep. Don Nickles (R-Okla.).