First Lady Called Forceful Voice for Tax Cut Strategy : Policy: Sources say her role in debate was decisive. It shows she hasn’t lost clout in the Clinton White House.

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, brushing aside objections from top Administration economic advisers, was a decisive voice in putting middle-class tax relief at the top of the White House agenda for the coming year, senior Administration sources said Thursday.

Mrs. Clinton’s role in the tax cut debate shows that she remains deeply involved in substantive policy-making, despite earlier suggestions that she would maintain a lower profile after the collapse of the health care plan and the Republican sweep of the November elections.

Mrs. Clinton attended critical planning sessions in the weeks leading up to the President’s Dec. 15 address, in which he unveiled his new “middle-class bill of rights.” The plan calls for a $60-billion tax cut targeted at middle-income voters.

Senior officials, none of whom would permit their names to be used, said that Mrs. Clinton has been pushing hard for middle-class tax relief at least since it became clear late last summer that the Administration’s health care proposal was going to fail. The First Lady argued that Clinton must redeem his campaign promise to cut taxes for the middle class.

Another source noted that Mrs. Clinton not only was an important player in devising the package of tax cuts but she helped draft the President’s 11-minute speech presenting it to the nation.

Mrs. Clinton’s influence in the tax cut debate is consistent with what sources said is her role as a central participant once again in White House strategy sessions on health care, even though responsibility for devising a new, less ambitious health care proposal has been shifted from her task force to the National Economic Council and the Domestic Policy Council.

Her broadened policy and political role also reflects in part the President’s frustration and anger with his outside political advisers. These aides, he is said to believe, let him down this fall and helped fuel the GOP electoral landslide.

Sources said that the President’s outside political consultants--including James Carville, Paul Begala and Mandy Grunwald--were excluded from debates over the tax plan. Paradoxically, the President’s decision to live up to his campaign promise to provide middle-class tax relief represents a vindication of sorts for those same consultants. They had strongly opposed Clinton’s 1993 decision to abandon his tax-cut pledge and focus on deficit reduction.

But with the standing of his outside political aides diminished, more weight is being accorded to those in the inner sanctum--Mrs. Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta and senior adviser George Stephanopoulos.

Mrs. Clinton’s behind-the-scenes involvement in policy is at odds with the public image that she has been trying to project in recent weeks. Since the Nov. 8 Republican landslide, the First Lady’s public appearances have been limited to more or less ceremonial duties of the sort traditionally assigned to the President’s wife--sightseeing in Indonesia during the Asian economic summit, lunching with Latin American first ladies at the Miami Summit of the Americas, feeding the homeless in Washington at Thanksgiving, and holiday entertaining at the White House.

But an aide to Mrs. Clinton cautioned against drawing conclusions from her activities of the last several weeks. The aide said that the First Lady’s role in the second half of the Clinton term has yet to be established and will not be determined until the President lays out his priorities in detail in his State of the Union address next month.

In simple terms, the tax cut debate within the White House came down to an argument between the President’s economic advisers, who believed that the President should keep his focus on deficit reduction, and his political aides, who argued that Clinton must re-establish his credentials as spokesman for the “forgotten middle class.”

Most members of Clinton’s economic team were supportive of a smaller proposal, crafted by Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich, to provide a tax deduction for the costs of post-secondary education and training. They believed that plan was consistent with Clinton’s earlier initiatives to increase federal support for “public investments” such as job training, the sources said.

Yet with Mrs. Clinton and Vice President Al Gore decisively in the tax-cutting camp, along with Stephanopoulos and the President’s other key political advisers, the final result was inevitable.

“She definitely favored the political arguments, much more than the economic arguments,” one senior official said. “Everybody who was in the campaign, including the First Lady and the Vice President, felt a longtime commitment to doing a tax cut,” added one economic adviser.

And the momentum behind the political argument in favor of a tax cut quickly steam-rolled over the economic team.

For Mrs. Clinton, the battle over the tax plan may prove to be just a prelude to her effort to reassert herself more publicly on policy issues.

“I’m going to get out more,” she noted in a recent speech.