Clinton Battles for Budget Votes : Congress: As showdown looms in the House, the President phones lawmakers to seek support. White House aides concede that defeat would be devastating.

With the outcome still in doubt on the most important congressional test of his young Administration, President Clinton worked the phones late into the day Wednesday as aides and Democratic congressional leaders scrambled to secure the final votes needed to pass his budget.

White House officials conceded privately that failure to pass the budget bill in the House would deliver a devastating blow to an Administration already staggering from a series of self-inflicted wounds.

At the same time, House leaders appealed to wavering Democrats by arguing in a closed-door meeting that passage was crucial if the party is to prove to voters that it can govern.

“We realize the whole presidency is on the line now,” said Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.). “This presidency is going to be made or broken in the next couple of weeks, and I want to make certain it’s not broken in the House of Representatives.”

White House officials used somewhat less dramatic language in public but acknowledged privately that the vote is critical.

“We’re finally starting to climb out of the toilet, and we’ve got our fingers up to the rim,” one senior White House aide said.

Winning, on the other hand, could mark the beginning of another of Clinton’s much-vaunted comebacks--or so his aides hope.

The bill in question would enact Clinton’s budget plan, which is aimed at reducing the size of the federal deficit by $496 billion over the next five years. It would raise taxes by a net $250 billion during that period--one of the largest increases in U.S. history--and reduce spending for mandatory benefits and other direct-spending programs by a net $87 billion.

Most of the political controversy over the bill has come from Clinton’s proposed new energy tax, which would hit middle-class taxpayers. The tax would cost roughly $17 per month for an average family once it is fully in place, according to Treasury estimates.

Although some House Democrats have called for a delay in the vote, White House officials repeatedly ruled out any such talk, arguing that a delay would merely make Clinton look weaker and would not, in the end, rally any extra votes.

“We’d just get killed all weekend,” one Clinton adviser said.

“We are going to go tomorrow,” White House Communications Director George Stephanopoulos said late Wednesday. But Stephanopoulos conceded that the final votes still were not in place. “We’re getting closer,” he said, “but it’s tough.”

By the time he left his office for dinner Wednesday, Clinton had called some two dozen House members, aides said, adding that they expected him to call still more during the evening.

Negotiators from the White House and the House leadership sought to bolster support for the budget by developing new language to guarantee that spending on entitlement programs--benefit programs such as Medicare, food stamps and veterans’ benefits that are not subject to annual appropriations limits--would stay within limits.

“I think we have the makings of an agreement. . . . We’re just down to drafting language,” House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) told reporters at one point during the day.

But as negotiations dragged on, others cautioned that drafting the final details had proved unexpectedly sticky.

At one point Wednesday afternoon, those talks broke down entirely, leading to near panic at both the White House and among House leaders.

The talks resumed, however, after a personal call from Clinton to Rep. Charles W. Stenholm (D-Tex.), the leader of a group of conservative House Democrats who have demanded further limits on entitlement spending.

On the other side, Clinton met in the morning with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, some of whom have threatened to vote against the budget because it would cut benefit programs too deeply.

“Until it’s done, there’s a little bit of a problem everywhere,” Stephanopoulos said. “It’s all about balancing.”

Administration vote counters say that of the 256 Democrats in the House, some 20 are certain to vote against the budget. Another 30 to 40 were considered wavering--including many House freshmen, who have not yet had to cast such a difficult vote.

Because two House seats are vacant, a majority in the chamber is currently 217 votes.

In the search for votes, Clinton went so far as to call at least three moderate Republicans asking for support. The effort seemed in vain. Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, one of the Republicans called by Clinton, predicted House Republicans would be unanimous in opposing the budget, and most Democratic vote counters agreed.

In addition to reducing spending for mandatory benefits, the budget bill would freeze spending on other programs, thereby forcing a $102-billion reduction in outlays for defense, foreign aid and domestic spending.

The remainder of the deficit reduction would be accomplished by lower interest rates leading to lower payments on the national debt.

The bill would also increase the earned income tax credit, which provides cash rebates to working families with income under $29,000. The increase is part of Clinton’s pledge to ensure that any American who works full time will have an income above the poverty line.

The Congressional Budget Office and the Administration estimate that 75% of the tax increase in the bill would hit taxpayers with incomes over $100,000. Chiefly, the bill would accomplish that by raising the top-bracket rate to 36% for couples with incomes above $140,000 and up to 39.6% for those with taxable incomes above $250,000.

The energy tax, known as a BTU tax because it would be levied on the heat content--measured in British thermal units--of fuels, has become the center of the debate in both the House and Senate, said Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento), a member of the House leadership.

“The real effort (by Clinton’s opponents) here is pretty clear, that that’s to beat this BTU tax,” he said. “This is not about further spending cuts. It’s not about entitlements. It’s about the BTU tax.”

About 25 House Democrats met privately Wednesday with Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.), who has threatened to kill the BTU tax with his pivotal vote on the Senate Finance Committee. They fear casting a difficult and risky vote for the tax, only to have it die in the Senate.

Even if Clinton can prevail in the House, he still faces strong opposition in the Senate, particularly on the energy tax. In a television interview Tuesday evening, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell of Maine predicted that the bill would pass but said it would have to be amended to ensure the energy tax did not harm U.S. exporters--a demand from Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.), who wields a key vote on the Senate Finance Committee.

Breaux’s request is “a legitimate concern. We’ll take care of it. We hope that’s enough,” Mitchell said in an interview on CNN’s “Larry King Live” program.

Times staff writer Karen Tumulty contributed to this story.