Balanced Budget? Severe Impact Foreseen : Amendment: House study forecasts record spending reductions, tax increases, or both, to achieve goal in five years.

The much-ballyhooed proposal for a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution would require a combination of government spending cuts and tax increases far exceeding anything ever attempted in U.S. history, a study scheduled for release today by the House Budget Committee shows.

Even if Congress and the White House agreed to scrap the space station, the superconducting super collider and the Seawolf submarine project, shut down veterans hospitals and slash or eliminate funding for small business loans, rural housing, mass transit, airports, community development, the arts and maternal health care, they still would be less than halfway to the savings needed in the first year alone, according to committee estimates.

To achieve a balanced budget within five years--the goal of the chief proponents--the government would have to reduce spending below current levels by $38 billion the first year, $70 billion the second, $113 billion the third, $173 billion the fourth and $237 billion the fifth year, the study found.

The impact of the cutbacks on government projects, state governments and social service recipients would be staggering, according to some budget experts, and the challenge to Congress to devise a politically acceptable package of spending cuts and tax increases would be daunting.

This year, for instance, members of the House and Senate appropriations committees say they are struggling to find $17 billion in savings in domestic, military and foreign aid programs to comply with the spending caps dictated by the 1990 budget agreement, which until now has been the most ambitious effort to reverse the trend toward larger deficits.

If the Constitution were amended to require a balanced budget, Congress would be obliged to come up with more than twice that amount this year, a time when it is considering new spending on urban areas in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots.

The House and Senate are expected to vote on the proposed balanced-budget amendment next month, with many predicting passage and eventual ratification by three-fourths of the states.

While government would practically have to shut down to eliminate the deficit all at once--just as the average homeowner would be hard pressed to pay off his mortgage all at once--the House panel’s study shows three ways to get to a zero deficit incrementally over a five-year period.

The three approaches would result in spending cuts or tax increases that would total $560 billion over five years. The government also would save $71 billion in interest payments over that period, as the deficit begins to shrink and the government has to borrow less. The committee’s scenarios:

--Option 1 balances the budget solely through spending cuts and reductions in entitlements.

--Option 2 blends two-thirds spending cuts with one-third tax increases to meet the goal.

--Option 3 uses a 50-50 combination of spending cuts and tax increases.

Less drastic cuts would be necessary if Congress approved a national sales tax of 4.5% to 6.5%, or adopted a series of other tax measures, including increased tax rates for individuals and corporations, a limit on the tax benefits of itemized deductions, a cap on mortgage interest deductions and a 15- to 20-cent-per-gallon increase in the gasoline tax, the committee’s study said.