Republican negotiators met tonight to decide whether to push their immigration plans over the White House's objections.
Republican negotiators have been pushing for a 15 percent capital gains rate.
Republican negotiators kept repeating that what they wanted to achieve was fairness and suggested they would be willing to hold out for days to get that.
Republican negotiators from the Senate and House sent the balanced budget bill to the House Rules Committee today.
President Clinton offered Republican negotiators tonight a proposal for a Federal budget that would be balanced in seven years, bowing to their demands for specifics.
Republican negotiators continue to insist that they cannot sell any deal to their party that does not include reductions in capital gains taxes, for example.
Republican negotiators from the two chambers have been working for weeks to reconcile those differences.
Republican negotiators are reportedly backing a plan to lower the maximum capital gains tax from 33 to 15 percent.
Several Republican negotiators said they shared the drug industry's concerns but believed that its position was shortsighted and politically unsustainable.
Republican negotiators, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said today that the Democrats wanted to restore spending for welfare and programs for prisoners.
At the same time, Republican negotiators face blistering criticism from some conservatives, who say the bill would grant a virtual amnesty to people who had broken the law.
In October, White House and Republican negotiators agreed to provide nearly $114 billion in discretionary spending for those programs.
With pressure building from the airlines, the Republican negotiators ultimately agreed to much of what Mr. Daschle and Mr. Gephardt proposed, but not without extracting two important concessions.
To win, Republican negotiators agreed to the kind of package of worker assistance, including a new health care entitlement, they had resisted in the past.
The Republican negotiators in the Senate were strongly opposed to paying for drug legislation with new taxes, and one Congressional staff member said: "Right now there is no solution."
With each side speaking encouragingly of progress, White House and Republican negotiators today made a significant push toward an agreement on tax cuts and a balanced budget.
Conservatives outside the conference committee were furious on Thursday that Republican negotiators had agreed to Democratic demands to keep many current ownership restrictions on television and radio broadcasters.
But a confidential draft of the report by a House-Senate conference committee, containing the full text of the compromise bill, shows that Republican negotiators from the two chambers intend to eliminate that guarantee.
Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon, another Republican negotiator, added: "It is so marginal as to be embarrassing.
Nor, if economic growth were the true purpose, would the Republican negotiators have proposed a capital gains cut for assets like real estate, which are already subsidized by the tax code and warrant no further advantage.