New Deficit-Reduction Plan Draws Fire : Budget: White House says $90 billion in spending cuts would play havoc with defense, health care reform. Showdown in the House looms.

Clinton Administration officials and House leaders Friday mounted a full-court press to squelch a $90-billion bipartisan deficit-reduction proposal, warning that it could kill the President’s health care reform effort and decimate defense readiness.

But the chief sponsors of the plan--Reps. Timothy J. Penny (D-Minn.) and John R. Kasich (R-Ohio)--said the Administration was overreacting and attempting to defend an indefensible status quo.

A showdown appears likely Monday on the House floor. House leaders have delayed the vote once because it appeared there were enough votes to pass the proposal, which would impose its spending cuts over five years, beginning with the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

The plan, which will be offered as an amendment to a more modest spending-cut bill backed by President Clinton, would impose sharp cuts in dozens of federal programs. In the Senate, Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) has said he will not consider any additional cuts until next year.

Of most concern to the Administration are more than $30 billion in proposed Medicare cuts--savings the President had hoped would help fund health care reform next year--and $21 billion in discretionary spending reductions, many of which would come from the defense budget.

Leon E. Panetta, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, conceded that the intense pressure on lawmakers to reduce the federal budget deficit has made the proposal politically attractive.

“I recognize that there are some members here who are looking for political cover with regard to being able to vote for any cut package that comes down the pike,” he said. “But frankly, these are real bullets.”

He went so far as to call the proposed Medicare cuts immoral.

Panetta and Defense Secretary Les Aspin called a special news briefing at the White House to denounce the plan.

Aspin warned that the cuts inevitably would mean further closing of military facilities and that proposed cutbacks in military pay raises and benefits would undermine morale.

Aspin said that although some of the suggestions are worth consideration, “we ought to do it in a rational and predictable way, . . . rationally and sanely and carefully,” rather than wrapping them together into a package that has never been considered by House and Senate committees.

Their comments came a day after similar attacks by Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala and Bruce C. Vladeck, administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration.

In a four-page letter Friday to House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.), Clinton argued that the amendment is “flawed and must be rejected.”

Kasich characterized the Administration arguments as “pathetic and misleading,” adding: “The President argues that cutting less than one penny from every dollar of federal spending over the next five years will end civilization as we know it.”

Penny crumpled a copy of the President’s letter and threw it to the floor as he said: “It amazes me that people can get so worked up over so little. . . . They’ve gone ballistic on this issue.”

As the debate raged, lobbyists for the interest groups that would be affected by the proposed cuts swarmed Capitol Hill.

Much of the support for the amendment has come from Congress’ 114-member freshman class, many of whom ran on promises of making significant inroads against the budget deficit.

“This is a commitment I made to myself and my constituents,” said first-term Rep. Lynn Schenk (D-San Diego), a supporter of the amendment.

The group of Republicans and moderate-to-conservative Democrats supporting the Penny-Kasich amendment is, by and large, the same bipartisan coalition that carried Clinton to a come-from-behind victory earlier this week on the North American Free Trade Agreement.