Washington ? Republicans steered a $2.1 trillion budget for next year through the House on Wednesday that mirrors President Bush’s plan of strengthening defense and domestic security while allowing deficits to return.

The Senate’s majority Democrats unfurled their own fiscal blueprint of the same amount and planned to shove it through that chambers’ budget panel today. It focuses on generating surpluses without using Social Security funds by 2008, while embracing Bush’s defense proposals for the next two years and outspending him for schools, health and road building.

House passage, by a mostly party-line 221-209 vote, marked approval of the GOP’s fiscal response to a world that has seen domestic terrorism, recession and federal deficits all surface since lawmakers last wrote a budget a year ago.

With red ink back for the first time since 1997, a stalemate on Congress’ budget is likely this year because the House and Senate are controlled by different parties. Even so, Wednesday’s debates let both parties parade their priorities and attack their rivals’ goals with messages they are sure to echo until this November’s elections for control of Congress.

“We have led on our side,” said Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., scolding House Democrats who offered no alternative budget. “We have a plan to protect Social Security. We have a plan to prosecute the war. We have a plan to provide tax relief for Americans.”

Democrats criticized Republicans for producing a budget that would use $831 billion in Social Security surpluses in the coming five years to pay for other programs. That, they said, was thanks to the money soaked up by the $1.35 trillion, 10-year tax cut Republicans won last year.

“We promised to put Social Security first,” House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., said of both parties’ pledges in recent years to use the pension program’s gigantic surpluses only for debt reduction. “This budget puts Social Security last.”

The House plan envisions deficits for the next three years but surpluses thereafter. To help limit the red ink, Republicans used optimistic budget assumptions by the White House.

The proposal by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., would force lawmakers to chart a five-year plan to produce surpluses that don’t rely on Social Security. They would not have to do so until next year, however, when a stronger economy might ease the problem.

Conrad said it was unwise to force budget cuts with a weak economy. Republicans said Conrad’s plan was an empty promise that tough choices eventually will be made on spending cuts and tax increases.

Congress’ budget is a nonbinding guide used to set overall spending and revenue targets. The measure is often ignored by many billions of dollars.

A failure by Congress to approve a compromise budget, which seems likely this year, would mean the House and Senate would share no common spending target when writing the 13 annual spending bills.