GOP PLATFORM HIGHLIGHTS Highlights from a draft of the Republican platform released Thursday. Some language will likely be changed before the platform is ratified. Platforms are statements of party principle and not binding on presidential candidates. Republicans support: A constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget. An abortion ban. Broad tax cuts, achieved in part by reducing the number of income tax brackets and cutting rates. Requiring a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate to raise taxes. Doubling of the number of charter schools, allowing parents whose children are in "persistently failing" schools to take their share of federal education dollars to a public or private school of their choice, more standardized testing of students, with federal aid tied to performance. "No-frills prisons" and a constitutional amendment on the rights of crime victims. Turning abandoned Housing and Urban Development properties over to local communities for "urban homesteading." Using federal rental assistance to help qualifying recipients buy a first home. Allowing the deductibility of health insurance premiums for the self-employed and small business. Major spending increase on women's health programs and medical research. Launching another round of multilateral negotiations to open markets abroad, and advancing a "Free Trade Area of the Americas." Considering homosexuality incompatible with military service. Replacing "family planning" programs for teens with abstinence education. The constitutional right to bear arms, coupled with stronger enforcement of existing gun laws. Keeping the Social Security surplus "off-limits, off budget, and out of the question." Giving workers the option of putting a portion of their payroll taxes into private investment accounts instead of Social Security. Turning Medicare, "a creaking dinosaur" in the age of modern medical technology, into "a common enterprise of government, health professionals and hospitals alike," and playing up the role of the private market in making coverage available to the elderly. Permitting oil exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Tax breaks for residential use of solar power. Withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with six months notice if Russia does not agree to amend the treaty to permit development of a "robust" missile defense system.

The draft of the platform drops the party's call for making English the official language and proposes a stronger federal role in education and the environment than GOP policy has favored.

"Government does have a role to play, but as a partner, not a rival, to the armies of compassion," states the draft. A document of the party, not the presidential candidate, it is infused nonetheless with the optimistic bearing of George W. Bush.

On the other hand, the draft leaves unchanged the party's uncompromising stand against abortion rights. It also maintains the position that homosexuality is incompatible with military service.

Platform committee members received the draft late Thursday and begin working on it Friday, making changes that are expected to be mostly cosmetic. The full Republican National Convention, opening Monday, will ratify the document next week.

While the 1996 GOP platform was packed with biting, sometimes dour attacks on President Clinton, the new tome mentions Clinton and Democratic candidate Al Gore once or twice in passing.

"We want to be uplifting," Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, chairman of the platform committee, said Thursday on CNN. "We want to be visionary and progressive."

Gone, too, is the zeal to close half a dozen federal departments the draft does not propose shutting any and a portrayal of the federal government as not just intrusive, but practically villainous.

Even so, the draft sits upon the conservative foundation that less government is best.

"In recent years, America seemed to move away from some of the qualities that make her great, but we are now relearning some important lessons," it says.

"We're coming to understand that a good and civil society cannot be packaged into government programs but must originate in our homes, in our neighborhoods, and in the private institutions that bring us together."

The draft gives no ground to abortion-rights advocates, asserting as before that "the unborn child has a right to life which cannot be infringed," and proposing to ban abortion through a constitutional amendment and legislation.

That topic is a likely flashpoint for debate in two days of platform meetings. Bush believes abortion should remain legal in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the woman exceptions not specified in the platform but he chose not to challenge the party's social conservatives on the issue.

Thompson said he thinks Bush "is going to feel very comfortable with the platform. I don't think anybody can embrace it in total."

The draft does not propose dramatic departures in a GOP environmental policy that favors cooperation with private interests and an emphasis on state regulation over mandates from Washington.

But it scales back criticism of the Endangered Species Act, celebrates advances in wetlands restoration and air and water quality, and asserts, "There should be a strong federal role in environmental protection."

In a section billed in advance by platform leaders as an example of the "compassionate conservatism" promoted by Bush, the document supports large increases in spending on behalf of women's health, in particular, and medical research in general.

Such research is "one of the few areas in which government investment yields tangible results," the draft says.

But overall, "we will promote a health care system that supports, not supplants, the private sector."

On immigration, the draft drops language from the 1996 platform that sought to forbid giving social services to illegal immigrants and said even legal immigrants should not depend on taxpayers for help.

Instead of favoring making English the official language, the new platform would consider English "our common language." It encourages "respect for other languages and cultures throughout our society."

The document presents as the "central values of our party and our country" a reduced role for government, more personal liberty, "economic freedom," reliance on the market and decentralized decision-making.