WASHINGTON – Republicans muscled a compromise $2.4 trillion budget for 2005 through the House on Wednesday, but struggled in their quest for enough votes to push it through the closely divided Senate later this week.

The House approved the measure by a near party-line 216-213, with GOP leaders hoping moderate Republican senators angry over the plan’s weak tax-cut limits would feel pressured to support it. But there was no sign the moderates would comply, and a Senate defeat loomed as a real possibility.

Democratic Reps. Tom Allen and Michael Michaud of Maine voted against the budget.

A failure of the GOP-run Congress to complete a budget would be a significant election-year embarrassment for the party and make it harder for them to cut taxes and raise the government’s borrowing limit later this year.

“This is the best I could come up with,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles, R-Okla., said of his bargaining with House budget writers. “I tried. People are going to have to decide whether they want this or nothing.”

The measure, a guide for future tax and spending bills, is less ambitious than budgets President Bush proposed and earlier House and Senate versions. To minimize disputes, Republicans limited its proposed tax and spending proposals to one year instead of the usual five or 10, leaving it without long-range plans for tasks such as tackling deficits, creating jobs or strengthening the military.

The budget would pave the way for tax cuts far more modest than what Bush proposed. Next year’s deficit would be $367 billion – just below last year’s $375 billion record, and $4 billion more than what forecasters expect without the budget’s proposed policies. The budget also would bestow big boosts on defense and anti-terrorism programs, with only slightly more for other domestic programs.

House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, said the budget “is what’s doable at this time of extreme circumstances in our nation’s history.”

“We need to deal with the deficit now,” countered Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., “and this budget resolution doesn’t do it.”

Even as Senate GOP leaders hunted for votes from Republicans and Democrats alike, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, became the latest moderate to say she planned to vote no.

“The budget that is expected to be brought before the U.S. Senate this week does not meet my concerns” about rising deficits, she said.

She and three other moderate GOP senators – plus moderate Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb. – were among those targeted by Republican leaders, with the GOP needing two more votes for passage. All five have said they will vote no.