Congress Hears Both Views on Forcing Balanced Budget

The White House took its campaign against a balanced-budget amendment to Congress on Tuesday, as four Cabinet officers told lawmakers that the requirement would undermine national security and devastate programs like Medicare and Social Security.

With the issue expected to come to a head later this month in the Senate, supporters and opponents of a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget by the year 2001 presented their arguments at rival hearings on Capitol Hill.

“No one can study the past 25 years of successive deficits without recognizing that there has been governmental abuse that must be halted,” Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), chief Senate sponsor of the balanced-budget amendment, said at the outset of hearings that his Judiciary subcommittee is holding this week.

One floor below, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), the amendment’s chief Senate opponent, argued that budget deficits cannot simply be “wished away . . . through incantations.” Byrd made the remarks as the Appropriations Committee he chairs opened its own weeklong set of hearings.

Each hearing was a one-sided affair, with Byrd and Simon taking testimony only from witnesses who supported their respective positions. And, while well-scripted, the hearings offered insights into the arguments that will be aired later on the Senate floor.

To win approval, the amendment would have to be passed by two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate and then ratified by three-quarters of the states. House passage is considered certain, but the Senate vote is expected to be close.

Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, testifying before Byrd’s committee, warned that a constitutional requirement to balance the budget would crush popular entitlement programs like Social Security and derail Clinton’s efforts to reform health care.

“Let me assure those who believe that both health reform and a balanced-budget amendment are possible that they are dreaming,” Shalala said. “A vote for the amendment is a vote to gouge Medicare and Medicaid . . . (and) a vote to destroy the promise of guaranteed private insurance for everyone.”

Simon’s panel heard former senator and presidential candidate Paul E. Tsongas issue an equally apocalyptic warning: “The leadership of our country in both parties lacks the political will to balance the federal budget.” And unless a way is found to force that will upon them, he said, “our children’s future will be bankrupted” by mountains of federal debt.

David Stanley, president of the conservative National Taxpayers Union, said the danger posed by the current system “is the economic collapse of our nation and the destruction of our people’s jobs, standard of living and retirement income caused by the rising, crushing burden of debt.”

At Byrd’s hearing, three other Cabinet officials joined Shalala in denouncing the amendment. Budget Director Leon E. Panetta, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and Defense Secretary William J. Perry warned of the massive budget cuts and steep tax increases that would be required by Simon’s amendment.

“A balanced-budget amendment . . . represents perhaps the ultimate budget gimmick: A constitutional provision that has no effect at all on reducing the deficit,” argued Panetta, who said it would “degrade the Constitution and . . . shake the public trust in government.”