GOP Freshmen Holding the Line : Congress: California’s four newcomers are unyielding on the goal of a balanced budget in seven years.

Thanks to the ugly stare-down between the White House and Congress over balancing the federal budget, Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-San Diego) will have to miss his son’s weekend football game.

“How do you tell a 9-year-old that his dad won’t be there?” Bilbray wondered Friday.

But as a freshman Republican in the House, he--along with 72 others--gets much of the credit for bringing about the confrontation that kept him in Washington and forced the cancellation of two community forums in his district.

By refusing to budge an inch on their insistence to bring the federal government’s books into balance in seven years, Bilbray and other first-term Republicans have constructed the most non-negotiable element of the impasse, which shows no signs of quick resolution.

And California’s four freshman class Republicans are not apologizing.

“If we don’t balance the budget, the nation will simply cave in,” said Rep. Sonny Bono, (R-Palm Springs), 60, the former mayor of Palm Springs. “[We] are going to support this until the last breath.”

The Republican freshmen have been remarkably unified on the seven-year term, and their refusal to compromise has helped push the government toward its second workweek of partial shutdown.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) knows he dare not bargain over the seven-year figure, and freshmen are exhilarated by what they have wrought.

“The resolve for a balanced budget would not be there without the freshman class,” said Rep. George P. Radanovich (R-Mariposa), 40, winery owner and former Mariposa County supervisor. “This is a tight group and nobody is bolting on this one.”

“The Republican freshmen are going to keep the system honest,” Bilbray said. “If there is going to be a compromise, I find it hard to believe the freshmen will go for it. If this was going to be easy, this would have been done a long time ago.”

Rep. Andrea Seastrand (R-Shell Beach), 54, a former state legislator from the San Luis Obispo area, was equally adamant.

“I came here to do the right thing. We know it’s tough but we’re going to hang in there,” Seastrand said. “The line is drawn in the sand. If not now, when?”

While the freshmen are pleased by the prospect of winning on the balanced budget issue, the savagery of the political battle and highly personal spat between Clinton and Gingrich (R-Ga.) is unsettling to them.

“Nobody--no American--would wish to be in this position. But what is unacceptable to us is continuing in Washington and raising the debt ceiling without an absolute, secure budget that will balance . . . by 2002. I can’t in good conscience, as a representative of the American people, vote to raise the debt ceiling without it,” Radanovich said.

The mean-spirited quality of the budget debate, Bono said, was probably unavoidable.

“I did not expect it to be an easy confront. This was an issue that at the point of debate could always stay very organized and civilized,” he said. “But what happens any time something finally comes to the point of confront . . . the rhetoric gets a lot rougher, feelings get bent out of shape and it gets to be a stormy sea.”

Gingrich ignited a political firestorm this week when he admitted that he felt snubbed by Clinton on the trip home from the state funeral of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Because of the perceived slight, Gingrich said, the Republicans sent Clinton a tougher short-term spending resolution, virtually guaranteeing the federal government shutdown.

The Californians regretted the controversy and felt bad for the Speaker.

“Naturally, you want your representative to hold his composure as best he can, and there’s a case where he lost it,” Bono said. “It’s simply a blowout, it’s an emotional time and he blew up on it. You want the guy to be superhuman and he’s not. . . . We all crack here and there. I wish he hadn’t said it, but he’s human and I don’t condemn him for saying it.”

Bilbray, 44, a former Imperial Beach mayor and San Diego County supervisor, pointed the finger at the media.

“It was a very slow news day and a comment made [early in the day] that was not substantial became the big story. If the President had announced that he would not accept any seven-year balanced-budget plan in the morning, that would have been the big story. You have a huge vacuum and you have to fill it with something.”

Radanovich also gave Gingrich the benefit of the doubt.

“I admire the Speaker incredibly because it’s been a long time between the last time that happened and now. It was unfortunate . . . and it did take the focus off the balanced budget for a day or two.”

Despite Gingrich’s tantrum, the freshmen are confident that the seven-year balanced budget demand will be standing at the end of the fight.

“We endured this much heat on it,” Bono said, “and we’ll go to the mat.”