Balanced-Budget Amendment Falls by 1 Vote in Senate

The top legislative priority of congressional Republicans--a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget--fell a single vote short of passage in the Senate on Tuesday.

The anticipated 66-34 tally was anticlimactic, with all 55 Republicans and 11 Democrats voting for the amendment. The amendment required a two-thirds majority, or 67 votes, for passage.

The proposal would have required the federal government to balance its books every year starting in 2002, or at a subsequent time when it had been ratified by 38 of 50 states. The measure would not have eliminated government budget deficits, but its provision requiring a two-thirds majority vote by Congress to authorize red-ink spending would effectively have made the enlargement of federal debt more difficult politically.

Clinton administration officials opposed the amendment, arguing that it would dangerously tie the government’s hands in times of fiscal crisis and might even imperil popular federal programs such as Social Security.

“Now that the amendment vote has taken place, I call on Congress to join me in passing a plan to balance the budget by 2002 while protecting our values, strengthening education and providing targeted tax relief to working families,” the White House said in a statement released after the vote.

But Republicans would have none of it.

Stung by the defeat, GOP leaders spent the hours leading up to the vote rallying around what remained of their tattered legislative agenda. Bounding from a series of news conferences, photo opportunities and individual interviews with reporters, Republican senators displayed a well-scripted and telegenic show of resolve to increase their attacks on White House budget proposals.

Waving a copy of the president’s current budget proposal and pointing to a towering stack of past federal budgets, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) argued in closing debate that the nation’s leaders are incapable of balancing the budget without being forced to do so by the Constitution.

Hatch, who led the floor fight for the GOP, said the federal budget has been out of balance for 28 years in a row and for 58 of the last 66 years. “The bridge to the 21st century is likely to be washed out with a flood of debt,” he said, taking liberties with Clinton’s favorite metaphor.

Republican leaders in the House coordinated their reaction to the vote with GOP Senate leaders and promised to force lawmakers there to go on record on the issue.

“The House will take this up for a vote sometime this year,” said Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas).

At a joint GOP leadership meeting, Lott and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) turned what was billed as a photo opportunity into a platform for attacking the White House’s budget proposal.

Both lawmakers seized on the Congressional Budget Office report released Monday that determined the White House budget would produce a $69-billion deficit in 2002. Administration officials disagreed with the CBO’s assessment, citing its negative economic outlook and promising its budget would balance by 2002.

Nevertheless, Lott and other GOP leaders said the CBO’s accounting underscored the need to pass a balanced-budget amendment.

“What we’ve seen from the president is one more example why we need a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget,” Lott said. “What he has proposed does not balance next year, it’s not balanced in the year 2002. In fact, it’s a deficit of $69 billion.”

Gingrich said the president should resubmit his budget in light of the CBO report.

“That’s the only fair thing for him to do,” Gingrich said. “I hope the president will agree to sit down with us and present a budget that is actually, honestly, in balance as a step toward our getting the job done this year.”

The loss in the Senate was especially bitter for GOP leaders, who had expected to fulfill a 21-year goal of passing a balanced-budget amendment this term. The measure was a key ingredient in the 1994 “contract with America,” which helped Republicans gain control of Congress. Democrats barely beat back the effort in 1995 when the measure passed the House but failed in the Senate--also by one vote.

Vowing to reverse that setback, GOP strategists made the balanced budget their top issue for the current term. After last November’s elections, which gave the GOP two additional Senate members and a 55-seat majority, amendment supporters were confident of their ability to pass it with the help of Democrats who had supported it in the past.

But Senate Democratic leaders stymied the GOP effort by arguing the proposal would damage Social Security and convincing two key freshman Democrats to renounce their campaign promises of support for the amendment.