WASHINGTON – Sen. Olympia Snowe, the last holdout, gave her Republicans the vote they needed to pass a 2004 budget. But Snowe, a moderate who has never been shy about defying her more conservative colleagues, may win the day in holding Congress to a far smaller tax cut than they and President Bush wanted.

After intensive lobbying by GOP Senate leaders and the White House, Snowe agreed to vote for a $2.27 trillion budget for 2004 that endorsed up to $550 billion in tax cuts. But that vote came only after Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, assured her that the final tax cut emerging from House and Senate negotiations will be no more than $350 billion over 10 years, the figure she sought.

Snowe, first elected to the Senate in 1994, thrust herself into the spotlight this month by joining Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and several other Republicans in demanding that Bush’s proposed $726 billion tax cut over 10 years be cut in half, to $350 billion.

With Democrats nearly united against the larger tax cut, Snowe held powerful leverage over her party, which had to cut a deal endorsing the $550 billion wanted by the House while accepting that the final tax cut would likely be smaller.

This approach, Snowe said, “reflects that $350 billion may represent the largest tax cut a majority of the Senate will support. I believe our approach bridges differences between the many Democrats who support either a small tax cut or none at all, and the many Republicans who would vote for an even higher figure.”