GOP Blocks Bid to Detail Spending Cuts : Politics: Senate Republicans score tactical victory in balanced-budget debate. But they are warned it may backfire during amendment vote.

Senate Republicans neutralized a weapon in the fight against a balanced-budget constitutional amendment Wednesday, fending off a Democratic bid to make them spell out how they would eliminate the federal budget deficit in seven years.

The GOP succeeded on a vote of 56 to 44 in tabling the Democratic “right to know” measure. But Democrats warned afterward that the Republicans’ tactical victory could ultimately undermine the balanced-budget amendment when it comes to a vote.

“With each negative vote, they make it more difficult (for Democrats to support the measure) and make passage less likely,” said Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), the Senate minority leader and a supporter of the “right to know” measure.

Democrats immediately regrouped and began other efforts to slow or stop the balanced-budget amendment. They began pressing for language that would exempt Social Security from the amendment, but that move also is expected to be defeated when it comes to a vote today or Friday.

Wednesday’s vote came after Daschle, joined by six Democratic lawmakers, made passionate appeals to Republicans to reveal how they plan to cut about $1.5 trillion in spending between now and the year 2002 and to tell states how much federal revenue they would lose in the cutting.

Senate Republican leaders had dismissed Democrats’ demands as an attempt to scare Americans out of supporting a measure that will force deep cuts in a range of popular government programs. In opinion polls, Americans overwhelmingly have supported both the balanced-budget amendment and a requirement that Congress lay out how the nation would achieve that goal in the time allotted.

Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig likened the Democrats’ demand to requiring a person embarked on a diet to lose 100 pounds to lay out “every bite of food” he would swallow over the next two years. “It is simply a false starter and they know it,” Craig said. “ . . . You don’t put that kind of language into the Constitution.”

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) had dismissed the requirement as ridiculous.

On Wednesday, three Democrats--Sens. Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, Howell Heflin of Alabama and Paul Simon of Illinois voted with Republicans to table the so-called “right to know” measure authored by Daschle.

Daschle and other supporters of the proposal had formed the core of a group of Democrats who are considered crucial to the fate of the balanced-budget measure. The vote is expected to be close. To win the necessary two-thirds majority, Republicans must coax at least 15 Senate Democrats to vote for the measure.

But Daschle and several others who have voted in favor of balanced-budget amendments in the past have hinted that they might withdraw support if Republicans do not agree to a detailed accounting of proposed cuts.

Sen. J. James Exon (D-Neb.), another backer, warned that Republican defeat of the proposal Wednesday “may give cover to some people who have been searching for a reason to vote against the balanced-budget amendment.”

The attempt to exempt Social Security from the effects of the amendment has been championed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).