Clinton Cautions Senate on Budget Amendment : Legislation: Targeting undecided Democrats, President says measure would deepen recessions, hamstring Congress.

Turning up the political heat on wavering Democrats, President Clinton took to the airwaves Saturday to assert that the balanced-budget constitutional amendment sought by congressional Republicans would deepen future recessions and abdicate power to non-elected judges and the Federal Reserve Board.

Four days before a scheduled showdown in the Senate, Clinton used his weekly radio address to escalate the White House’s campaign to persuade five undecided Democrats to oppose the proposed amendment. There are now 64 publicly committed supporters; 67 votes are needed to reach the required two-thirds majority.

“The amendment doesn’t really balance the budget,” said Clinton, who boasted that his Administration, by contrast, has taken steps to cut the federal deficit by more than $600 billion over five years. “It simply requires Congress to come up with a drastic combination of cuts and tax hikes and to cram them in by a date certain, no matter what the other economic impacts might be.”

Under the intensely debated amendment drafted by the GOP leadership of Congress, deficit spending would be prohibited starting no later than the year 2002, unless a three-fifths majority of each house of Congress votes to authorize it.

Meanwhile, Republicans stepped up their efforts to win the allegiance of Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), whose vote could determine the fate of the balanced-budget amendment in the upper chamber.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich, principal architect of the GOP’s “contract with America” legislative agenda, said Saturday that he would attempt to placate concerns expressed by Nunn, a fellow Georgian who holds one of the uncommitted votes on the measure.

Nunn has said the GOP’s balanced-budget amendment is “defective” because it would give non-elected federal judges sway over tax and spending decisions that should be solely legislative and executive prerogatives.

In a speech to the Georgia Republican Party, Gingrich said the House would draft and approve companion legislation to bar enforcement of the constitutional amendment by federal courts. The amendment itself passed the House last month by a vote of 300 to 132.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), the amendment’s chief sponsor in the Senate, said in an interview that he had received a similar pledge from Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.). Hatch said he is actively working with Nunn’s staff to ensure “that he’s satisfied.”

Hatch said that Nunn’s position will prove to be pivotal: “He’s the 67th vote.”

But it remained uncertain whether the Republican legislative overture would fulfill Nunn’s demand to limit the judiciary’s role. The conservative Democrat has insisted that such a guarantee be written into the Constitution as part of the amendment itself, but Hatch and Gingrich are offering only to include it in a separate statute.

A spokeswoman for Nunn, who was traveling with former President Jimmy Carter in Haiti on Saturday, declined to comment on the GOP proposal. But Cathy O’Brien, Nunn’s press secretary, noted that the lawmaker “made it very clear that he’s going to insist that this be a part of the balanced-budget amendment.”

Allan Lipsett, a Gingrich spokesman, said the Speaker had not yet consulted with Nunn but is under the impression that a legislative measure would satisfy the senator.

Referring to Nunn’s concerns about the role of the courts, Hatch said he is confident that “we can legislatively meet every commitment that he wants to meet.”

Hatch noted that he opposes modifying the amendment itself because doing so would require the measure to go back to the House for consideration of the Senate change, “and we don’t know what kind of mischief would be played. . . . If we want a balanced budget, this is the way to get it.”

In his radio address, Clinton said he remains “committed to cutting the deficit further and to moving toward a balanced budget. The question is what’s the best way to do it.”

During tough economic times, the President said, the GOP balanced-budget amendment would force reductions in job training and national defense spending, and require tax increases that could exacerbate a recession. He said similar fiscal policies contributed to the Depression.

Clinton said both conservative and liberal constitutional scholars have warned that legal disputes over the amendment could leave budget decisions in the hands of the courts. In addition, he said, a decision by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates--thereby increasing interest payments on the federal debt--could force Congress to trim social programs to achieve offsetting savings.

Clinton chided the Republicans for failing during their first 50 days in control of Congress to explain precisely how they would balance the budget by the year 2002. At the same time, he said that some of the GOP’s initial budget-cutting priorities, falling heavily on children and the elderly, are not “the right choices for America.”

In the Republican response to the President’s radio address, Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Ida.) urged Clinton to refrain from lobbying undecided lawmakers: “Mr. President, call off your dogs. Let the senators vote their conscience.”

Craig called the balanced-budget amendment “the last best hope for curbing Washington’s appetite for deficit spending and ending the hidden and dangerous practice of piling billions upon billions of dollars of debt on future generations.”

Passage of the amendment would mean that “the average American household will likely take home an extra $1,000 a year,” Craig said. In addition, he said, its beneficial effects would stimulate the creation of an additional 2 1/2 million jobs by the year 2002 and cause living standards to rise.

The amendment is backed by 52 Republicans and 12 Democrats in the 100-member Senate. One undecided senator, Minority Whip Wendell H. Ford of Kentucky, has said he shares Nunn’s reservations about expanded judicial authority. Other Democrats listed as on the fence are John B. Breaux of Louisiana, and Kent Conrad and Byron L. Dorgan, both of North Dakota.

If passed by Congress, the constitutional amendment must then be ratified by two-thirds of the state legislatures. Opponents have said they believe that they have a better chance to defeat the measure in state legislatures than they do in Congress.