Fate of Budget Law May Depend on Sen. Feinstein : Politics: Republican majority may need the Democrat’s vote to pass balanced-budget amendment. She insists Social Security be exempted from cuts.

As Republicans scour the Senate for the votes needed to push through their balanced-budget amendment, Sen. Dianne Feinstein is emerging as a central player in the quest for the 67th vote.

Feinstein, a moderate California Democrat who supported a balanced-budget amendment last year, has vowed this time to vote against it unless Republicans agree to exempt Social Security funds from the massive cost cutting that would be required to bring the deficit to zero.

“People pay their (Social Security) taxes because they believe they will get it back, plus some, in their days of retirement,” the senator said in an interview Monday. “The more I thought about this, it came to me that somebody ought to take a stand.”

Feinstein has co-sponsored a measure, scheduled for a floor vote today, to shield Social Security funds from a proposed constitutional amendment that would require Congress to cut as much as $1.2 trillion by 2002.

If Republicans embrace her plan, Feinstein said, she can deliver more than the votes they need to pass the balanced-budget amendment, a cornerstone of the new majority’s fast-moving agenda. The House handily passed its version Jan. 26, the highest priority of the “contract with America.”

“I want to support the balanced-budget amendment this year largely because I believe (it) can be the kind of castor oil that is necessary to bring both the House and Senate to reality,” Feinstein said at a recent news conference. “If my vote is important, this legislation to exempt Social Security funds from the balanced-budget equation is going to have to succeed.”

Feinstein’s brokering strategy could be a preview of the role that the senator will play now that the balance of power has shifted in the 104th Congress.

“Centrist Democrats have seen their power increase in some ways with the Republican majority because every vote is critical, especially when two-thirds of the senators are needed to agree,” a Senate aide said. “The five or six true centrist Democrats in the Senate yield increased influence and this is one case where, when Feinstein or one of the others speak out, that voice has added clout.”

Various Senate polls taken in recent days indicate that Republicans are as little as one vote away from securing the two-thirds majority needed to pass an amendment identical to the one that sailed through the House--with no Social Security provisions.

So far, Republicans led by Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) have been reluctant to write such entitlement protections into the constitutional amendment, opting instead for implementing legislation that would essentially promise that Congress will not touch the money.

“Sen. Hatch wants a clean amendment because anything written into it would be a big loophole,” an aide to Hatch said. “He feels Social Security can be protected by the implementing legislation.”

Calling such legislation a “fig leaf,” Feinstein resolved to call the majority’s bluff. If the measure she has co-sponsored with Harry Reid (D-Nevada) fails today, Feinstein and other Democrats plan to offer a substitute constitutional amendment to the GOP as early as this week that would exempt Social Security and extend the balancing deadline three years to 2005.

“I see nothing magic about the year 2002,” she said, noting that the extension would give Congress the leeway to balance the budget without touching the entitlement money. “If we are going to do this, it is important to do it right, not to do it for a 30-second sound bite.”

The Republican response so far appears to be wait andsee as the leadership maneuvers to come up with 67 votes without yielding to Feinstein. But if the GOP fails, her position may command new attention.

“They are going to see what happens,” a Republican committee staff member said. “Every vote is important. Sen. Hatch hopes she will decide to vote for the balanced-budget amendment as she did last year.”