COMPROMISE KEY TO SPENDING BILL : SOCIAL PROGRAMS SPARED HUGE CUTBACKS IN $160 BILLION PLAN.

Byline: David Hess and Heather Dewar Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Like any compromise, the belated deal struck on the 1996 budget by the White House and congressional Republicans had winners and losers.

But to hear leaders on both sides exult about it Thursday, you'd think that everybody won.

That's the essence of compromise, said freshman Rep. David Weldon, R-Fla., one of the House's most conservative members. ``You could never get a deal unless both parties could come away from the table and declare victory.''

The House approved the $160 billion package by a resounding 399-25 vote and the Senate did likewise later Thursday on a 88-11 vote, sending it to President Clinton for his signature. The bill funds the federal government through the rest of fiscal 1996, which ends Sept. 30.

In the end, Republican negotiators caved in to the president on a range of issues from education and the environment to community policing and summer jobs for youth. The president also prevailed in his efforts to shield Medicare and Medicaid from sharp cutbacks.

``Much of the education funding was restored, summer jobs money was restored, we got significantly more funding for low-income heating assistance, and they backed off of their indefensible attacks on the (Environmental Protection Agency) and environmental enforcement,'' said Rep. Martin Olav Sabo of Minnesota, the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee.

But Republicans boasted that they managed to cut $23 billion in spending from the level in last year's budget, to go along with another $20 billion they stripped from previously approved 1995 spending. That makes for a grand total in savings of $43 billion since the GOP took control after the '94 elections.

``That's about $700 in savings for every working family in America,'' said House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. ``No, we didn't get everything we liked, but it's a remarkable step in the right direction toward balancing the budget.''

Republicans also cited anti-abortion initiatives that remained in the bill, including one that sharply cuts funding for family planning services overseas.

Perhaps more important, the Republicans managed to alter the whole thrust of the longstanding argument over national spending priorities. They have forced Clinton to accede to the goal of balancing the budget in seven years. And they prompted him, in his State of the Union message last winter, to acknowledge that ``the era of big government is over.''

Gingrich said the 1997 and subsequent rounds of budget-cutting will have to focus on welfare and health-care spending. That will be accomplished in part, he said, by shifting the responsibility for welfare and Medicaid programs to state governments and by cutting back on Medicare spending.

Some of the last issues to be resolved in the 1996 budget bill involved environmental issues.

The compromise leaves some controversial Republican-backed environmental provisions in the bill, but it allows the president to waive them, meaning that they will never become law. One participant in the negotiations called the compromise ``a fig leaf'' that allows Western conservative legislators to tell their constituents they won the battle, but leaves the White House winning the war.

The Republicans abandoned their hard-line stance on the budget after polls showed little public support for the earlier government shutdowns and growing public approval of Clinton.

``We realized we had to get this stuff behind us,'' said California Rep. George Radanovich, president of the GOP's rowdy freshman class. ``We now know we need to change the subject, to formulate a positive message about `changing America for the better' rather than the negative message we've had about cutting programs. We lost the battle of public opinion, now it's time to regroup. We need to do a better job of explaining why we're here.''

Some of the older hands in Congress say it was a learning experience for their fiery and impatient young colleagues.

``It was an object lesson,'' said Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who has served 21 years in the House. ``When you don't have the votes to override a veto and the president stands fast, you've got to compromise. Up to now, that's been a concept that was hard to come by around here.''