Benefits agenda outlined. (President Clinton's benefits agenda)

WASHINGTON - President Clinton continues to pursue a modest benefits agenda.

In his State of the Union address last week and in background papers, the administration laid out benefits proposals it would like to see Congress pass this year.

Several of those proposals, including lowering the eligibility age for Medicare in certain situations and expanding child care tax credits, were outlined last month by the administration.

Other proposals are recycled versions of earlier initiatives: Requiring health care plan administrators to furnish the names of their employees - chiefly older workers - eligible for Medicare, and expanding the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.'s missing participant program to cover defined contribution plans are among the proposals that have been previously introduced.

But the administration did offer a variety of new benefit proposals. Those include:

* Requiring employers with 401(k) plans to accelerate vesting of matching contributions. Under the administration proposal, matching contributions in which cliff schedules are used would have to be first and fully …