Gephardt Sees Budget Law Passing

House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt predicted Monday that Congress will “in all likelihood” pass a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget.

The Missouri Democrat, who stopped short of endorsing the amendment himself, laid out a series of stringent, cost-cutting proposals that he said should accompany it.

“Sometime around the first of June, both houses of Congress will begin debating, and in all likelihood pass by the required two-thirds vote, a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget,” Gephardt said in remarks prepared for delivery at Harvard University. “Yes, I said pass.”

Among changes Gephardt said he would propose were substantial military cuts and stringent cost-control legislation for all health care costs, particularly Medicare and Medicaid--now two of the fastest growing components of the national debt.

Last month, House Speaker Thomas S. Foley told a hometown audience in Washington state that he expected the amendment to pass, but he later backed away from that comment.

But Foley did say that if Congress passed the amendment, it would win approval from the necessary 38 state legislatures within a year.

Gephardt said the amendment grew out of public criticism about deficit spending, which is sending the national debt soaring toward $4 trillion.