Budget Scorecard

The budget agreement between the White House and Congress is designed to achieve a balanced budget by 2002 and provide $135 billion in tax cuts over five years.

THE WINNERS

College students: A combination of grants, deductions and credits to make college more affordable, including: Increasing the maxi mum Pell grant to $3,000. A tuition deduction of up to $10,000 per year. A “hope scholarship”tax credit of up to $1,500 per student for the first year of college, and an additional $1,500 for a second year if the student earns a B average. Impact: $35 billion.

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Families: A $500-per-child, phased-in income tax credit.

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Inheritance: An estate tax cut; details not yet available.

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Investors: A reduction in the tax on capital gains; no details available.

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Individual Retirement Accounts. Expanded IRAs; details not yet available.

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Uninsured children: Expanded health care coverage for an estimated 5 million children of the working poor. Impact: $16 billion-17 billion.

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Legal immigrants: Benefits for certain legal immigrants whose welfare benefits were cut off last summer would be partly restored.

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Work programs: Establish a welfare-to-work tax credit to help long-term welfare recipients get jobs.

THE LOSERS

Medicare recipients: New limits on program spending. Slight increases in monthly premiums for many recipients, including a change in the home health care program. Medicare recipients who earn $15,000 or more would pay about $1 more per month for home health care. Impact: $115 billion.

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Airline travelers: Extension of airline ticket tax. $30 billion.

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Domestic spending: Programs ranging from environmental protection to transportation to veterans would receive somewhat more than proposed by Republicans, although less than President Clinton requested.

Social Security recipients: The cost-of-living index used to calculate annual inflation adjustments for Social Security and other programs is expected to be adjusted downward, reducing future increases in benefit payments.