WASHINGTON (AP) - A Senate vote on a deficit-reduction bill looks to be so tight that Vice President Dick Cheney was rushing home from a diplomatic mission to be the tiebreaker for saving one of the Bush administration's top priorities.

The showdown vote loomed on the bill, which would cut some federal benefits and trim budget deficits by $40 billion through the end of the decade.

Cheney was in Pakistan today to check on U.S. aid to victims of an October earthquake that killed as estimated 75,000 people. He also met with President Pervez Musharraf.

The budget vote is expected to be a close one - last month the bill squeaked through the Senate in a 52-47 tally. Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson was one of two Democrats to vote for the bill then, and is considered a swing vote this week.

Now that the bill is returning from House-Senate negotiations with stiffer cuts to the Medicaid health care program for the poor and disabled than the milder Senate-passed version, Nelson is weighing a “nay” vote. He scheduled an announcement for today.

“They're flying Cheney back,” said Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah.

Cheney spokesman Steve Schmidt told reporters traveling with Cheney in Pakistan that the vice president was “returning to Washington to be on hand in the Senate to fulfill his constitutional duties as president of the Senate and cast tie-breaking votes, if necessary.”

Presiding over the Senate is among Cheney's constitutional duties, although vice presidents historically have not routinely attended such sessions. Cheney's change in plans meant that he would have to forego visits to both Saudi Arabia and Egypt on this trip.

Senate Republicans were also waging a Christmas week battle with Democrats and GOP moderates over allowing oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

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Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, attached the drilling plan to a wartime Pentagon spending bill that also included $29 billion in new aid for Gulf Coast hurricane victims and as well as new money for border security and winter heating subsidies in an attempt to crack a threatened filibuster. Both the defense and budget bills were passed by the House on Monday before it adjourned for the year.

The partisan fighting over the budget seemed to outweigh the measure's likely impact. The $40 billion in deficit savings blends $10 billion in new revenues from anticipated auctions of television airwaves to wireless companies with fairly small cuts to benefit programs like Medicare, Medicaid and student loan subsidies.

“I see very little sacrifice,” Urban Institute President Robert Reischauer said. “The amount that really affects people is very small, and the amount that affects middle-class voting people is even smaller.”

The budget vote could occur as early as today, but Wednesday or Thursday was considered more likely.

The Senate treaded water all day Monday after the House passed a flurry of legislation in the pre-dawn hours. An increasing crankiness over being in session just days before Christmas set in and senators worried about being able to catch flights home.

Opinions varied on whether Stevens, the powerful patron of the Arctic refuge drilling plan, would prevail in overcoming a filibuster threatened by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and others.

Overall, the deficit reduction bill claimed savings of $39.7 billion over five years. That's just 2.5 percent of the $1.6 trillion in total red ink that congressional officials estimate will pile up during the same period. The slender results nonetheless pleased GOP conservatives.

The savings included $4.8 billion from Medicaid, the health care program for the poor.

One provision would make it harder for beneficiaries to transfer assets to their children in order to qualify for government-paid nursing home care, which has raised the ire of the AARP, the powerful lobby for seniors.

Drug companies won a last-minute break against cuts to their Medicaid payments at the expense of beneficiaries, who face higher co-payments that advocates for the poor say will drive people out of the program. Regional health insurance companies, another powerful lobby, stopped a Senate bid to cut a subsidy fund designed to entice them into the Medicare market.

Moderate Republicans in the Senate also were angry over a last-minute deal to extend the 1996 welfare reform law. They complained it didn't provide enough child care help as more parents will have to meet work requirements to obtain benefits.

Among the Medicare changes was a one-year freeze in home health care payments. A second provision accelerates a previously scheduled increase for better-off beneficiaries in the cost of premiums for Part B, which covers physician services.

Proposed cuts in food stamps and crop subsidies were dropped from the package.

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On the Net: Senate: http://senate.gov