The battle between President Bush and congressional Democrats over Iraq has dominated the September headlines, but the fall’s biggest legislative fight may be the one coming over funding the government.

And this week’s showdown over the children’s health program is the opening skirmish.

In a sense, as the noted philosopher Yogi Berra used to say, it’s deja vu all over again.

In 1995, a new Republican majority sought to force spending cuts on President Bill Clinton. The effort went down in flames, paving the way for his re-election.

Today, resurgent Democrats are seeking to force increased domestic spending on Bush, who, in turn, has vowed to veto most of the bills that fund the government.

Like Clinton, it’s a fight Bush seems eager to have. The outcome may depend on three factors:

¢ Can the Democrats muster the two-thirds’ majority needed to win a series of showdowns?

¢ If not, will they back off after defining the differences?

¢ And if they reach an impasse, will Bush take the risk Clinton did – shut down the government and blame the opposition party, in this case the Democrats?

The threat is real enough that Dallas Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a top GOP advocate of a tough line on spending, introduced legislation to prevent a shutdown, regardless of how long an impasse lasts.

Any president has an inherent advantage in such a fight with Congress. He commands public opinion and, in a showdown, usually can get the votes to sustain a veto.

Democrats hope to benefit from the fact the fight will focus on popular domestic programs. That’s certainly true of the bill to renew and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The bipartisan measure would add $35 billion over five years to a program that provides health insurance for children from lower-income households, enough to add 3.4 million children to the 6 million already covered.

Tuesday night’s 265-159 House vote was 18 short of the two-thirds’ needed to override Bush’s promised veto. Backers have the votes in the Senate, which previously passed a similar bill by a 68-31 ratio that included such leading conservatives as Republicans Orrin Hatch of Utah and Charles Grassley of Iowa.

The program expires Sunday, but Congress is expected to extend it temporarily when it passes legislation this week to maintain government spending, pending action on the regular funding bills.

Meanwhile, both sides are girding for a major battle on the 12 appropriations bills for the new fiscal year, which starts Monday.

None have yet been enacted, a fact Bush has decried in blasting the Democrats who now run Congress. But in fact, the GOP-controlled Congress failed to do much better last year.

This week’s passage of the temporary funding bill – called a Continuing Resolution – will delay the main showdown until later this fall.

The basic issue is that Congress wants to spend more than Bush does.

He has threatened to veto nine of the 12 funding bills and warned Congress not to adopt the usual end-of-session practice of lumping them into one package to force him to go along or risk shutting down the government.

Despite increasingly heated rhetoric, the gap between the sides is modest, at least in federal fiscal terms. Congress wants Bush to accept $22 billion more than he requested, or about 6 percent of the proposed domestic spending of about $340 billion.

And Democrats cleverly allocated the extra funds for such popular programs as health care for Iraq veterans, homeland security first responders, state and local law enforcement, college scholarships, job training and repairing falling bridges.

A big question is whether Bush will follow through on his veto threats.

If he does, even some Republicans worry he won’t have the public on his side, given the way the Iraq war has eroded his popularity. But that doesn’t mean he won’t have the votes, since Republicans are more likely to stand by him on the appropriations bills than they did this week in the SCHIP showdown.

At a time when presidential leverage over lawmakers has diminished, this fight is one way for Bush to show he still has clout – and to bolster Republicans who feel his acquiescence in soaring spending has undercut the party’s reputation for fiscal responsibility.

On the other hand, 45 House Republicans showed Tuesday that they don’t believe trimming a popular domestic program is a productive way for the GOP to offset the damage from Iraq.