Lawmakers Will Fight Balanced Budget Measure

WASHINGTON — Only hours before President Bush’s nationally televised plea for a balanced budget amendment, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) joined other key Capitol Hill Democrats in vowing to do all they can to scuttle it.

Mitchell said earlier Thursday that Bush’s support for the constitutional amendment is “another example of him saying one thing and doing another.”

“By submitting budgets with record deficits and then somehow suggesting it’s all someone else’s fault, that’s a familiar pattern in this Administration,” said Mitchell, who joined House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) in calling for defeat of the proposal.

But despite their opposition, the proposal remains alive.

Mitchell said that the Senate vote would be “very close,” with three or four undecided members controlling the outcome. The measure requires approval by two-thirds of the membership of each chamber.

In the House, proponents claim that they have more than 300 votes, with only 290 required if every member votes. “I think support is weakening,” Foley said after a one-hour, closed-door caucus of Democrats, who appear to be split on the proposal.

“We still have the 290 votes and the battle is on,” replied Rep. Charles W. Stenholm (D-Tex.), chief author of the amendment. And key Democrats acknowledged that opponents of the amendment are short of the 146 votes needed to block passage.

The House is expected to begin debate on the amendment Wednesday with the Senate following suit later this month. If approved, the amendment would have to be ratified by three-fourths of the nation’s state legislatures.

The chief sponsor in the Senate, Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), has acknowledged that Byrd’s opposition has led to erosion of support for the measure. Byrd’s chairmanship gives him extraordinary clout over important spending in congressional districts and thus leverage over votes.

Byrd described the measure as “like somebody’s granny--cute and feisty but with no teeth. We cannot ‘gum’ the deficit out of existence.”

Byrd also challenged Bush to tell the nation how he plans to make such an amendment work to reduce the deficit.