Mayors Argue Over Balancing Federal Budget : Conference: Urban leaders fail to adopt a resolution against the defeated amendment. A call to support it also gets knocked down.

The nation’s mayors, who are asking the federal government for billions of dollars in aid to their cities, entangled themselves Sunday in divisive debate over a balanced-budget constitutional amendment.

Although the House has defeated a balanced-budget amendment for this year, the mayors launched headlong into the issue on a resolution that would have directed the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ lobbying efforts to oppose an amendment.

That move failed on a 20-16 vote of a key committee. But when supporters of a balanced-budget amendment tried to push their own resolution, the deeply divided group broke up in parliamentary disarray, leaving the issue undecided.

Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist, a Democrat, said: “It’s real dumb for us to go on record against a balanced-budget amendment.”

The dispute came as the mayors held their annual summer conference, where they routinely pass scores of resolutions.

Most manage to escape anyone’s notice. And none has any effect beyond establishing the policy of the nation’s urban leaders and focusing the group’s considerable lobbying interests.

The resolutions are subject to final ratification by the full gathering of 175 mayors Wednesday. Among the other resolutions expected to be approved is one reaffirming the group’s call for $35 billion in new federal assistance and opposing any new foreign aid unless it is matched dollar for dollar with new aid to cities.

Those opposing a balanced-budget amendment argued that forcing a balanced budget would prompt Congress to slash domestic programs already suffering from budget pressures.