BUDGET . . . GOP SHARPENS ITS AX

Republicans and some moderate Democrats say that President Clinton's forthcoming $1.6 trillion budget proposal, which slashes federal spending by $144 billion over five years, doesn't go far enough to reach the goal of a balanced budget by the year 2002. In his budget message scheduled for Monday, Clinton is expected to admit that the deficit will probably stay in the range of $190 billion through 2005. Democrats today called again on Republicans to detail where they'd cut spending to meet the zero-deficit goal by 2002; the Congressional Budget Office estimates that would take at least $1 trillion in spending cuts. "Clinton has identified about 65 percent of what the GOP is trying to do," saysTIME Washington correspondent Suneel Ratan. "They can just use his cuts to go a major part of the way to balance their budget."