House Approves $1.5-Trillion Budget Plan : Legislation: Package would raise taxes and both increase and cut spending. Quick Senate action is sought. Clinton’s stimulus proposal remains stymied.

Advancing President Clinton’s economic program, the House Wednesday approved a compromise $1.5-trillion budget resolution that calls for higher taxes, spending cuts in many federal programs and higher outlays for what the White House has termed “investment” in public and human resources.

The legislation, adopted on a 240-184 roll call, was sent to the Senate for final congressional approval before Congress leaves this weekend on its Easter recess.

In a related development, both the House and Senate are expected today to raise the federal debt limit by $225 billion to $4.370 trillion through the current fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. Without quick action to increase the debt limit, the government would be unable to pay its bills.

Clinton, clearly pleased by the action on the budget, later told reporters: “We are moving with remarkable speed.”

Despite the President’s urgings to Congress to enact his $16.3-billion emergency stimulus package, however, it remained bogged down in the Senate amid increasing doubts that it can be salvaged before the weeklong Easter break.

While it does not have the force of law, the budget resolution would establish a framework for future legislation that envisions tax increases of $272 billion over the next five years to reduce the deficit by $496 billion by 1998.

“We have the opportunity today to move the President’s vision forward,” Rep. Martin Olav Sabo (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, said before the vote.

If the resolution’s spending caps and revenue-raising targets are followed, however, the deficit would be trimmed by $50 billion more than the President requested in his deficit-cutting proposal on Feb. 17.

Republicans angrily declared that the blueprint would amount to the largest tax increase in history, raise spending to record levels and increase the deficit by $1 trillion over the next five years.

“It’s not our package, folks,” said Rep. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio), ranking Republican on the budget panel.

The resolution does not require the President’s signature. It lays out spending caps for Senate and House committees and suggests ways to accomplish savings. But the recommendations are not binding and committees may find other ways to meet the spending limits.

Later, Congress will pass a giant “reconciliation” bill to lock the tax increases and spending cuts into a law that will require Clinton’s signature.

Meantime, Senate Republicans gave no sign that they are ready to agree to vote on the Clinton package and Democrats have acknowledged that they cannot find the 60 votes needed to shut off debate and force a showdown on the issue. The partisan lineup is now 57-43 in the Democrats’ favor.

On one roll-call vote, for example, nine Democrats defied the President to vote with all 43 Republicans in favor of a proposal by Sen. Herbert Kohl (D-Wis.) to offset more than half the stimulus package with spending cuts in other programs.

Although Kohl’s plan obtained a 52-48 majority, his proposal fell eight votes short, since Senate rules required that it be approved by at least 60 senators to overcome a point of order made by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.).

Senate Democrats more easily beat back other attempts to slice funds from Clinton’s plan. A proposal by Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) to delete $195 million from the spending total was killed by a vote of 56 to 44.

Another move by Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) to take out $28 million earmarked for the District of Columbia was rejected by a 57-43 vote along party lines.

In addition, a proposal by Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) to grant states more flexibility in obtaining money from the highway trust fund was defeated, 70 to 30, after Byrd objected that it would interfere with Clinton’s plans for transportation spending.

The agreement to reconcile separate House and Senate budget resolutions dropped $22 billion of additional tax increases in the Senate plan and scaled back sharply a House-approved proposal to reduce federal retirement benefits for persons under 62 years old.

In addition, the compromise would adopt the House’s five-year freeze on domestic, defense and foreign spending, saving about $5.8 billion more than the Senate version.