The Senate was expected to follow suit on Thursday, pitting the Republican-led Congress against President Bill Clinton, who said sweeping tax cuts would shortchange critical programmes such as Medicare and risk plunging the nation back into budget deficits that harm the entire economy.

The House passed the plan 220-208, voting along almost straight party lines. The Senate started debate on Wednesday and was to vote on Thursday. John Kasich, chairman of the House Budget Committee, said tax cuts started small and grew over the years with increasing projected surpluses would ensure that extra funds were returned to taxpayers instead of being used to expand government.

"If the government can have less and the people can have more, that to me is the model we want to go with into the next century," said theOhio Republican, who is eyeing a run for the presidency in 2000.

But Clinton responded with a critical statement, chastising Congress for passing up "a historic opportunity to meet our nation's most serious long-term challenges."

"The budget passed by House Republicans falls short of what the American people need for meeting the challenges of the 21st century," Clinton said. "It fails to lock away the surplus to strengthen Social Security and Medicare, and it fails to meet many of America's other critical needs for the future."

The president vowed to continue working with Congress to advance his goals of paring the National debt and strengthening Social Security and Medicare.

Republicans said their plan would safeguard surpluses in Social Security - which for years have been used to help support other programmes - for retirement benefits and would boost defence and education while fitting within spending limits imposed to balance the budget.

House and Senate negotiators met on Tuesday to work outsmall differences in their budgets to ready them for final votes.

Democrats said the budget - which is not binding but is a blueprint for tax and spending priorities - would be tossed aside when Congress later this year could not write spending bills to run the government under the plan's tight limits. "I think we may be headed for a train wreck down the track. Discretionary spending is unrealistic in this budget," said Representative John Spratt of South Carolina, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

Discretionary spending is the third of the budget - capped under the plan at $536 billion next year - that Congress and the White House control annually to run most government programmes. The rest consists of benefits and retirement entitlements such as Social Security and veterans benefits.

Republican chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations committees that write the discretionary spending bills also have said they were uncertain they could craft legislation under the budget thatCongress and Clinton would approve.

"The Republicans are desperate to claim that they're for tax cuts. They just don't have a clue how to pay for them," Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, said as the Senate started its debate.

Democrats said the plan to devote almost all projected surpluses outside Social Security to tax cuts over the next 10 years would drain resources needed to overhaul Social Security and Medicare for baby boomers, cut needed programmes and leave the government vulnerable to economic downturns that could bring back deficits.

But Pete Domenici, Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said Democrats simply wanted to spend more money. "There are those of us who say we ought to break this budget. Well, we're going o let the president do that," the New Mexico Republican said.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that Clinton's fiscal 2000 budget would break spending limits by $33 billion, but the White House said the budget wasbalanced under its accounting methods.