Clinton Takes Aim at Ailing Budget Amendment

President Clinton sought Saturday to derail an already flagging congressional effort to pass a balanced-budget amendment, warning that the proposed change to the Constitution “would prevent us from responding to foreign challenges abroad or economic trouble at home.”

With the Senate set to vote on the measure as early as this week, backers appear to be two votes short of passage and both sides are concentrating their lobbying efforts on Robert Torricelli of New Jersey and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, a pair of freshman Democrats who remain officially undecided.

“Balancing the budget only requires Congress’ vote and my signature,” Clinton said in his weekly radio address. “It does not require [us] to rewrite our Constitution. We must balance the budget, but a balanced-budget amendment could cause more harm than good.”

Just two days after another undecided freshman declared he would oppose the amendment because of its possible effect on Social Security, Clinton hammered on that theme, warning that “judges could be forced to halt Social Security checks or to raise taxes” to meet the demands of a balanced-budget amendment.

Offering the official GOP response to Clinton’s address, Rep. Bob Franks (R-N.J.) dismissed the president’s warnings as “the worst form of demagoguery.”

Franks called adoption of the amendment “the only way to make sure Social Security stays solvent and can continue to send out the monthly checks seniors count on.” A permanently balanced federal budget, he said, would benefit all Americans by lowering interest rates on home mortgages and other loans.

“The choice is now clear. Either we tie the hands of Washington and stop them from spending our money, or Washington will tie the hands of our children and continue spending them into debt,” Franks said.

The exchange of rhetoric came as the Senate braces for the second showdown on the amendment in recent years. In 1995, the measure was approved by the House but failed in the Senate by just two votes, prompting backers to vow a rematch after the 1996 elections.

The forces favoring the amendment entered the fray this year confident that victory, at least in the Senate, was within their grasp. Landrieu and Torricelli both spoke in favor of a balanced federal budget during tough campaigns. But both lawmakers now say they are undecided.

Ironically, changes in the House wrought by the last elections have made the prospects for the balanced-budget measure quite uncertain in the lower chamber. As a result, the House leaders are waiting to see the outcome of the Senate vote before proceeding.

Clinton has sought to undercut the drive for a balanced-budget amendment by demonstrating that the goal can be reached without adopting such a binding stricture.

He maintains that his proposed five-year spending blueprint, part of his 1998 budget plan, would lead to a balanced budget by 2002. The Clinton plan projects the current deficit of $126 billion becoming a surplus of $17 billion in five years, largely by limiting the growth of Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly and disabled.

But many of the cuts envisioned by Clinton would take effect in 2001, after he has left office. Pointing to this, Republicans argue that few presidents will have the strength, without a constitutional requirement, to make the tough decisions to hold spending even with revenues.

Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) charged that Clinton’s budget would not reduce the deficit for the first three years. Indeed, Nickles said on CNN’s “Evans & Novak,” the deficit would be higher three years from now than it is today.