Clinton Distances Himself From Senate Tax Bargaining : Budget: In past battles he got involved in nuances of legislation and any changes appeared to be defeats. Now Bentsen and Panetta tackle fine points.

The Clinton Administration and key senators got down to hard bargaining Tuesday over details of the Administration’s budget as the President made clear that he would accept substantial revisions of his proposed energy tax.

“I’m interested in the principles of the program,” Clinton said during a White House photo session. The details, he said, will be up to the Senate.

That statement reflects a tough lesson from past battles, in which Clinton got so involved in the nuances of legislation that any change appeared to be a personal defeat. Now, he has distanced himself from the talks, leaving the fine points to Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen and Leon E. Panetta, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

The negotiations are expected to last at least a week as the Administration’s two representatives and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) and Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) search for the elusive formula that will win an 11-vote majority of the finance panel and, ultimately, a majority in the full Senate--votes that will have to come from the Senate’s 57 Democrats, given the solid opposition of Republicans.

Aides said that Moynihan is deliberately holding off trying to forge an agreement between the committee’s 11 Democrats until the last minute to limit the time that Senate Republicans will have to attack an eventual compromise.

“The sooner we reach an agreement, the longer it will be out there and the more opportunity Republicans will have to pick it to death before the full Senate takes it up,” one committee aide said. “You’ll see a lot of discussions and a lot of trial balloons going up in the next few days, but the real shape of this bill is probably not going to emerge until late next week.”

The final package likely will scale back the new energy tax to about $40 billion, rather than the $71 billion in the budget passed by the House late last month.

The package is also likely to make a cosmetic change with major political advantages. It would devise a new formula for the energy tax that will allow senators to declare they have “killed” the “BTU tax” that Clinton originally proposed in February. All forms of energy, from coal to gasoline, would still be taxed, but the tax would be levied on some basis other than British thermal units, which measure heat content.

The BTU tax has become the subject of a furious lobbying campaign that has made it highly controversial in oil-producing states, including Louisiana and Oklahoma, both of which have senators on the Finance Committee. Those senators and others would like to be able to tell constituents that they have eliminated the unpopular tax even if, in its place, they put a different energy tax that raises similar amounts of money.

The Administration has flatly ruled out replacing the BTU tax with simply a gasoline tax. But otherwise, “exactly how it’s structured and what it’s called . . . is something that is up to the Senate. We’re open to a number of options at this point,” White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers said.

To make up for revenue lost through trimming the energy tax and other changes they would like to make, the senators need to find about $40 billion in either new spending cuts or alternative taxes.

One proposal floated earlier this week by Moynihan--cutting another $35 billion out of Medicare payments--has run into stiff opposition from advocates for the elderly and supporters of health care reform. Health reformers have been hoping to use Medicare savings to pay for expanding health coverage to those Americans who now lack insurance.

“To do another $35 billion (in Medicare cuts) just for deficit reduction is not a sustainable proposition,” Sen. John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) said. “That would not have my vote in the Finance Committee.”

“Another $35 billion is just not doable,” said Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.).

A Finance Committee aide confirmed Tuesday that Moynihan floated the controversial Medicare cuts precisely to remind senators that an energy tax is not the worst option they could be asked to pass. Other ideas under discussion include trimming back Clinton’s plans to expand the earned income tax credit, which helps low-income working families.

White House officials said that they believe they can make some trims in the tax credit without losing the support of liberals in the House.