GINGRICH SAYS DEAL ON BUDGET TAXES NEAR; WHITE HOUSE SENDS CONFLICTING SIGNALS.

Byline: Daily News Wire Services

House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Sunday night that congressional Republicans and the administration had settled all but ``maybe three tiny issues'' in their negotiations over tax cuts and a balanced budget and that he intended to introduce legislation by Monday night.

A White House spokesman traveling with President Clinton in Los Angeles disputed that assessment, saying that there were still ``significant issues'' to be resolved. But later Sunday night, Clinton said a deal could be completed as early as today.

Some senior Republican aides who have been involved in the negotiations were much more cautious than Gingrich, saying that a deal was indeed very close but that there were some tough issues to be worked out and that the speaker might have been trying to apply pressure on Clinton.

``I think we have an agreement, but it's never done until it's done,'' Gingrich told reporters on Sunday evening before sitting down with Sen. Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader, and other Republican leaders at a meeting in his office.

He said that only three small issues - one on taxes and the other two on spending - stood between a final deal, but he declined to give details.

Joe Lockhart, a White House spokesman who is traveling with Clinton on his trip in the West, said in Los Angeles that Gingrich was premature in his observations.

``There are still significant issues to be worked out and until they're worked out, we don't have a deal,'' Lockhart said.

Gingrich seemed undaunted by the administration's response.

As he left the meeting about 9:15 p.m., he said again that ``no significant issues'' remained to be negotiated.

``We're doing fine,'' he said ``and basically we'll file the bill by tomorrow.''

Another Republican aide involved in the discussions said that party leaders had spent the day advising certain rank-and-file members, especially some of the hard-line conservatives, on the progress of the talks and had received favorable responses. And the aide said that Gingrich wanted to push legislation through the House of Representatives as quickly as possible before his conference or Democrats who might oppose the deal start picking it apart.

The conflicting signals on just where the negotiations stood came at the end of a day where there were much more concrete signs of progress in the talks.

The negotiators have kept an unusually tight lid on their discussions. But senior Republican aides who have been involved in the talks revealed a few of the details.

They said the two sides had compromised on what had been the major sticking point, a proposed $500 per child tax credit and who should receive it.

The White House reportedly agreed that the tax credit would cover teen-agers as well as younger children and that families making more than $60,000 would receive the full credit. The Republicans, in turn, yielded to an administration demand that low-income families with little or no income tax burden be allowed to receive the per-child tax credit based on the family's payroll tax.

Clinton wanted the $500 tax credit to apply to working families that made as little as $18,000 a year and who paid no income tax but owe payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare. He said that the tax credit should be phased our for families making $60,000 to $75,000 a year through 2000. After that, the administration had proposed that the phase-out would range apply to families making $80,000 to $100,000.

Republicans had argued against giving the tax credit to working families that paid little or nor income taxes, saying that is would be a form of welfare. In their original proposal, the tax credit would be phased out at $75,000 in family income.

Aides said on Sunday evening that they were still working out the details of the compromise plan.

Republicans and the White also agreed to reduce the capital gains tax from 28 percent to 20 percent, the aides said. But the Republicans backed down from their demand that investors not be taxed on investment profits that result from inflation, so-called indexing.

And it seemed certain that the tax bill will contain an increase on cigarette taxes, likely an additional 20 cents on the current 25 cent per pack federal levy, and that most, if not all of it, would go toward health care for uninsured children.

Even before Gingrich's rosy comments on Sunday night, Republicans had given clear signals of movement.

Sen. Pete Domenici had conceded earlier in the day on the CBS News program ``Face the Nation,'' that ``It seems to me that we're going to have some cigarette tax.''

Lott also hinted at the cigarette tax increase during his appearance on the NBC News program ``Meet the Press.''

But neither Domenici nor Lott would say whether the billions in revenue from such a tax increase would be used solely to provide health coverage for uninsured children from low-income families as the Administration had insisted.

And Rep. Dick Armey, the House majority leader and Gingrich's second-in-command, had confirmed that negotiators were nearing an agreement on the child tax credit.

``We're trying to fit the president's detail into our principles and it's a very difficult fit to be made,'' Armey said on the ABC News program ``This Week,'' ``but we can get there.''