Why the Amendment Lost : Balanced-budget supporters couldn’t quell Social Security fears

In the first major Democratic victory in many months, the balanced-budget amendment has gone down to defeat in the Senate. The measure, the centerpiece of the GOP “contract with America,” lost Thursday by one vote. Had the Republicans been willing to exempt Social Security from the calculations involved, the most publicized holdouts, Sens. Kent Conrad and Byron L. Dorgan (both D-N.D.), would have voted for it. So would have both of California’s senators.

Why did the Republicans choose defeat? They have insisted all along that they have no intention of looting the Social Security trust fund to balance the budget. They are willing to pass legislation to that effect. But at the moment of truth, they refused to put the preservation of Social Security on a par with the balancing of the budget. Why? Perhaps because the prospect of balancing the budget by 2002 without some kind of raid on Social Security is dim.

The current national debt consists of $3.6 trillion that the government has borrowed from the public and $1.2 trillion that it has borrowed from the Social Security trust and other government trust funds. The balanced-budget amendment requires a three-fifths vote of both houses of Congress to increase borrowing from the public. No such restraint is placed on government borrowing from the Social Security trust or the other trust funds. With external borrowing made so difficult, the pressure toward this kind of internal borrowing could become enormous.

But would any lawmaker dare to play a dirty trick like that on the retired people of the United States? Don’t answer too fast. What if the only alternative was raising taxes?

By refusing to talk beforehand about what would have to be cut to balance the budget, the Republicans have invited fears like these about the safety of the Social Security fund. These fears finally stiffened the resolve of Conrad and Dorgan. Ultimately, the constitutional arguments against the amendment are more serious than this Social Security worry. Still, if Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) plans to bring the amendment before the Senate again, he should think seriously in the interim about coming clean with the American people.