House Republicans began in earnest their promised assault on the federal budget Thursday, approving $17.1 billion in cuts of current domestic spending and recommending that another $100 billion be slashed over the next five years.

The House voted, 227 to 200, largely along party lines, to approve reductions in the budget already approved for this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. The action drew an immediate veto threat from the White House, with President Clinton complaining that it “cut too much people and not enough pork.”

At the same time Thursday, the House Budget Committee voted to recommend a list of $100 billion in future reductions through steps as diverse as replacing all paper dollar bills with coins, drastically reducing public funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, cutting National Institutes of Health research funding and phasing out the Legal Services Corporation, which provides legal assistance to the poor.

And the committee also suggested saving another $91 billion by slowing growth in certain government programs.


“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Budget Committee Chairman John R. Kasich (R-Ohio), who pledged that Republicans will come up with even more cuts in May. Together, the targeted reductions begin a long march toward the Republican goal of balancing the federal budget by the year 2002, Kasich said.

The Republican euphoria was marred Thursday, however, as GOP lawmakers tangled among themselves and with Democrats over whether the $17.1 billion in savings from the current budget would go to reduce the deficit or pay for a future tax cut.

All parties agreed that the first $5.5 billion of savings was to pay for federal assistance that helped 40 states recover from recent natural disasters--about $5 billion of it for last year’s Northridge earthquake.

But as the floor vote neared, confusion reigned over how the other $11.6 billion in savings would be used. The House had approved overwhelmingly an amendment Wednesday that Democrats and some Republicans thought ensured that the money would help reduce the federal budget deficit.


An hour before the floor vote, however, Kasich announced in his committee that most of the money would be used to help pay for Republican-sponsored tax cuts over the next five years. As the floor vote approached, Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) shouted on the floor that Republicans had “lied in order to pass a bill.”

*

The uncertainty cost the support of at least a dozen fiscally conservative Democrats, who had been expected to vote for the bill. Only six Democrats voted for the measure.

Afterward, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert L. Livingston (R-La.) said that the confusion was a misunderstanding that will be straightened out. He said that most Republicans assumed that only a portion of the savings would be used to cut the deficit, while Democrats said it was their understanding that it was all to be set aside for reducing the deficit.


“Nobody was out to hustle anyone and nobody was trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes,” he said.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where its prospects are uncertain. It would reduce funding for an array of federal programs, including assisted housing, home heating aid, youth summer jobs and Clinton’s national service initiative. The initiative, known as AmeriCorps, would lose $416 million over the next two years, all but ending a program that received $370 million last year.

Also hit hard was the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which would lose about $141 million over the next two years--or half of what it is receiving from the government this year.

The national endowments for the arts and for the humanities were each cut $5 million, although Democrats defeated an amendment Thursday that would have taken another $10 million from the $168-million arts endowment.


*

White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta said that, while the President supports the disaster aid for California, he would not hesitate to kill the bill when it reaches his desk. “There’s no question that if that bill in its present form . . . came here that the President, in fact, would veto it,” Panetta said.

Kasich, in his daylong Budget Committee session, won approval for cuts that would eliminate or deeply reduce funding for 140 programs or agencies. He said that Republicans will come up with further cuts in May to “get us down to zero.”

“It’s not only possible . . . it’s very doable,” he said.


The committee also suggested that the government could save $91 billion--for use in bringing down the federal deficit--by lowering the ceilings that limit the amount of automatic growth in some federal spending programs over the next five years. Kasich said that approach will be used in the months ahead as House Republican leaders try to lower taxes and at the same time reduce the deficit.

Adopted on a 24-11 vote, almost entirely along party lines, the $100 billion in recommended cuts would go to help pay for Republican-proposed tax cuts totaling $190 billion over five years.

“We took the first bite out of the beast today,” said Rep. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a member of the committee.

Most of the savings would come from $64.6 billion in reforms of the welfare system, $10.5 billion from Medicare proposed in Clinton’s budget and $11 billion from reforms of the Civil Service retirement system.


Other cuts range from the expected to the arcane. Among the committee’s recommendations are the repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires certain wage levels in all federally funded construction projects, saving $2.64 billion over five years, and replacement of the dollar bill with a new, more durable dollar coin, saving $100 million over five years.

The panel also proposed cuts totaling more than $3 billion for the Department of Energy--a step toward eventually terminating the agency, Kasich said. Also on the GOP list for termination are the Federal Maritime Commission, saving $91 million, and the U.S. Parole Commission, eliminating $36 million in spending.

*

The committee suggested $143 million in cuts for the Transportation Department, $73 million for the Agriculture Department and $144 million in the executive office of the President--a cut that the GOP-controlled Budget Committee said would make good on Clinton’s pledge to reduce his staff by 15%.


The committee also recommended steps toward eliminating the Department of Commerce, saving $4.4 billion, a halt to constructing and buying federal buildings, saving $1.3 billion, and a reduction of $1.2 billion in mass transit operating subsidies.

In other action Thursday, the House overwhelmingly passed compromise legislation approved by a joint House-Senate conference committee that would restrict unfunded mandates, which force the states to pay for programs set up by the federal government.