In the current school year, the state has awarded publicly financed vouchers, worth as much as $2,250, to 4,456 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, mostly from families living at or below the poverty low.

Republicans propose expanding charter schools and diverting funds from failing schools to finance vouchers.

He criticized Mr. Bush's plan to use Federal aid for poorly performing schools to finance vouchers for private schools, saying it would hurt the public schools and do little to help low-income parents send their children to private school.

But Anthony P. Coles, a senior adviser to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, said that even the modest edge shown by private schools was ammunition for parents who believe that the government should finance vouchers allowing any student to go to a private or religious school.

Ms. Myles was President Bush's special guest at the State of the Union address in January, when he asked Congress for $600 million over three years to finance vouchers for addiction programs, including religious ones.

By raising taxes on high-income motorists, the government could finance vouchers that would enable low-income motorists to scrap their older vehicles in favor of cleaner used cars of more recent vintage.

In a welcome decision, the court upheld a public program in Cleveland that financed vouchers that could be used in religious or secular, public or private schools.

Fewer than 15,000 children use publicly financed vouchers to attend private schools, most of them in Cleveland, Milwaukee and Florida.

The campaign finance bill that Mr. Clinton said would be a top priority was rendered toothless by jittery members of the House: it contains no mechanism to finance vouchers for advertising that would go to candidates who limit their spending.

Also, in exchange for the Legal Aid Society's agreement to drop any claim its clients might have against H.U.D. for failing to end the practices after its 1983 review, the Federal Government will finance vouchers for 200 other families to use to obtain private apartments.