Mr. Bush's budget also offers up what the White House is deliberately framing as an election-year battle: the president's call to make his trillion-dollar tax cuts permanent.

Mr. Clinton, members of Congress and drug companies are preparing for an election-year battle over prescription drugs.

House Democrats said they worried about being drawn into an election-year battle over details of the Medicare plan that Mr. Clinton intends to announce next week.

Within hours of Mr. Bush's announcement, the nomination appeared to be headed for an election-year battle on Capitol Hill.

But even before the vote, the law had become an election-year battle between Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, a Social Democrat, and his conservative challenger, the Bavarian premier, Edmund Stoiber.

In political terms, both parties are positioning themselves for an election-year battle in 2002.

An election-year battle over how to distribute $8.4 billion in aid to local school districts erupted here today, threatening the budget deal hammered out by state leaders over the weekend.

President Clinton plans to propose increasing the minimum wage by $1 an hour over the next two years, Democrats say, an initiative that sets up the possibility of an election-year battle with Republicans.

An election-year battle over prescription drugs began in earnest today as House Republicans and Senate Democrats rolled out competing proposals to provide Medicare drug benefits to the elderly.

Mr. Pataki's proposal helps set the stage for what is almost certain to be a fierce election-year battle over how to spend a budget surplus that is estimated to be as much as $2 billion.