BUDGET FOES WON'T BUDGE\GOP at odds over spending strategy.

Byline: Adam Clymer The New York Times

United in disdain for President Clinton's latest budget proposals and convinced that no deal is in sight, congressional Republicans acknowledged Thursday that they had not agreed on how to keep the government open and avoid defaulting on its bonds.

The current stopgap spending authority will expire Jan. 26, and Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, the majority leader, pleaded ignorance of House plans at a news conference. "I don't know precisely what they have in mind," Dole said.

Rep. Robert L. Livingston, R-La., who heads the House Appropriations Committee, said he was having his staff prepare a bill that would provide money only for programs that Republicans favor. But he might not put it forward, Livingston said, because the Senate might reject it or the president might veto it.

"The situation is rather dynamic and fluid right now," he said. "It's changing every minute.

At the White House, Clinton insisted that an overall budget deal was "clearly within our grasp right now."

But Rep. John Kasich, R-Ohio, chairman of the Budget Committee, said, "It appears as though we have some irreconcilable differences."

The Republicans seemed content to forget further negotiations and make the budget their chief election issue in the fall.

Republican leaders, who have had at least three desultory discussions by telephone conference call since their last session with Clinton on Jan. 9, plan a series of face-to-face meetings beginning Monday to develop a spending strategy. They also plan to consider how to deal with raising the ceiling on the national debt, whose statutory limit of $4.9 trillion was reached Nov. 15.

Since then, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin has met government financial obligations by juggling pension accounts, angering Republicans who thought they had a foolproof weapon to force capitulation from a president who would not risk default.

Just as Republican leaders have pledged not to shut the government down again, some of them, like House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and Kasich, have promised action to raise the debt limit. Dole clearly favors such action, too, as does a big majority of senators.

But House Republicans disagree sharply about how to get that done, considering the revulsion most of them feel for voting to allow a bigger debt.

"I don't think we can pass a clean-debt limit," Rep. Robert S. Walker of Pennsylvania, a longtime Gingrich ally, said Thursday. But Walker said that a bill raising the limit, while prohibiting Rubin from any more creative trust-fund borrowing, could pass.

Another Republican, Rep. Steve Gunderson of Wisconsin, said that while such restrictions might prompt Clinton to reject the bill, "we can say, 'Don't blame us. Clinton vetoed it.' "

That is almost certainly the sentiment among a majority of House Republicans, although it also has some sharp critics.

Rep. Marge Roukema, R-N.J., who was organizing opposition to the second government shutdown just before Gingrich abandoned that course, said:

"I don't believe it works politically, and it certainly doesn't work as a responsible financial tactic. A fiscally responsible Republican Party should never be associated with that kind of a tactic. It's not a question of blame, it's a question of responsibility."

Dole said he had discussed the debt issue Wednesday with Gingrich and other Republican leaders, "but we reached no final resolution."

He said House leaders had not yet decided what conditions to attach to an increase in the debt ceiling. "They are going to have to attach something to it," he said.

Dole was reported by Senate aides to be considering asking the Senate to pass a bill increasing the debt limit without conditions, and a straight one- or two-month stopgap spending bill for all government programs for which regular appropriations have not been passed, rather than picking and choosing among them.

He might do so as early as Tuesday to blunt anticipated complaints in Clinton's State of the Union message that will be delivered that night.

Dole's press secretary, Clarkson Hine, declined to discuss those reports.

Clinton remained the most publicly enthusiastic about prospects for resuming negotiations on the budget, and his attitude prompted Republicans, as it has before, to speculate that he wants an agreement but is held back by his Democratic allies.

Rep. David L. Hobson of Ohio said, "A number of people feel the president's in a box - that he really wants to make a deal. Our guys want to make a deal but they can't get him removed from his handlers."

Referring to Vice President Al Gore and Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, the minority leader, Hobson added: "Nobody believes Gore wants to make a deal or Gephardt wants to make a deal. They want capitulation."