CONGRESS : Doubts About Passage Cloud Lofty Intent of Budget Amendment : Debate is about to begin on what some see as the best hope for forcing the government to balance its books. But battle lines have already been drawn.

WASHINGTON —  Barely three weeks into a new Congress hellbent on revolution, the House is poised to take up an issue that many lawmakers consider of unrivaled importance to America’s well-being.

“The very future of our country depends on this,” says Sen. Hank Brown (R-Colo.) It is, adds Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), “one of the most important votes we’ll cast in this Congress.”

Such sentiments notwithstanding, don’t expect much lofty rhetoric in the debate on whether America should amend its Constitution to bar the President and Congress from spending more than Uncle Sam takes in.

Instead, if the preliminary skirmishing is any indication, proponents of a balanced-budget amendment will portray their foes as spineless, irresponsible politicians so addicted to deficit spending that nothing less than the Constitution can stop them--and save the Republic.

Opponents, on the other hand, are likely to characterize amendment advocates as feel-good charlatans who refuse to come clean with voters about the pain their snake oil will inflict.

Welcome to what Hatch calls “one of the great constitutional exercises of this century.”

The balanced-budget amendment was the No. 1 item in the GOP’s “contract with America,” and for good reason.

The concept enjoys strong public support and broad agreement among experts that the seemingly unconquerable budget deficits year after year stifle the economy, hurting domestic production and global competitiveness.

Yet with the House scheduled to open debate on the amendment today, there is considerable doubt over whether Congress can muster the necessary two-thirds majority to approve the measure and send it to the states for approval.

Whether 38 state legislatures will ratify the amendment--which would require a balanced budget by 2002--is even more of an open question amid serious concern that the states would be left to pay the bills once picked up by Washington.

The rationale behind the debate is a belief by many that members of Congress are driven, above all else, by a craven desire to stay in office. They will preach fiscal responsibility--only to turn around and send home massive spending projects that win voter approbation. In other words, politicians lack the guts to make the hard decisions to balance the budget.

That argument has recent history on its side.

There hasn’t been a balanced federal budget for more than a quarter-century. The deficit, now at $175 billion, is expected to exceed $283 billion by the year 2000. The interest on the national debt is now $226 billion--the budget’s third-largest item after Social Security and defense spending.

“We are borrowing from our future and that of our children and grandchildren,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) fumes. “We are living high on the hog and are forcing future generations to pay for our excessive spending.”

“We can’t keep on like this,” adds Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), a senator since 1956. The proposed amendment is “the only hope.” he says. “How else are you going to stop the spending?”

Another true believer, William A. Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, calls the deficit “a fundamentally moral problem” and a form of “fiscal child abuse.”

Opponents say the amendment is unnecessary. “The last time I looked, Congress and the President had all the constitutional power necessary” to balance the budget, says Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.)

“The Constitution should not be trivialized with an amendment that addresses a problem that arose from a bout of temporary fiscal insanity in the 1980s,” adds Rep. Pete Stark (D-Hayward), ranking member on the congressional Joint Economic Committee.

The most implacable foe of the amendment, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), warns: “We’re about to perpetrate on the American people a monstrous hoax . . . We’re saying we need a constitutional amendment to give us spine.”

Many opponents are demanding that amendment advocates spell out the spending cuts they would make to balance the budget. “It’s our obligation to let the American people know how we’re going to make this work,” says Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.).

But detailing the pain, amendment backers concede, would consign the measure to a swift death. “When you have book, page and hymn number, nobody will vote for it,” Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) acknowledges.

“There is no popular way of balancing the budget. We first have to adopt the principle and lock ourselves in,” says Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.).

The biggest fight in the House will be whether to incorporate into the amendment a so-called tax limitation provision, which would require a three-fifths vote in Congress, instead of a simple majority, to raise taxes.

Without such a “super majority” requirement, proponents fear, Congress would seek to balance the budget by raising taxes instead of cutting spending. A weakened amendment “could become a tax collection machine instead of a real constraint on federal spending,” says Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.).

But opponents say the tax limitation clause would make it inordinately difficult to adopt tax hikes, particularly in times of economic need.

It appears that the tax limitation provision lacks the necessary 290 votes in the House and 67 votes in the Senate for passage. But Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) has vowed to force the issue to a vote, promising to deliver at least 220 of the 230 GOP votes.

“It’s good for the country to see who wants to limit tax increases and who wants to raise taxes,” he said last week in challenging at least 70 Democrats to join him in voting for the tax-limitation provision.

Assuming the clause is defeated, however, the question then is whether House Republicans would vote for the weaker version of the amendment, which would require only a constitutional majority (51 votes in the Senate and 218 in the House) to enact tax hikes.

In the Senate, GOP leaders say flat-out that the tax limitation provision would not pass--and that even the weaker measure may squeak by with no more than a one- or two-vote margin.

Among amendment supporters who are urging its defeat if it lacks the tax-limitation clause is Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. He told the Joint Economic Committee last week that he would rather see no amendment at all than one without tax limitation, which he said simply “will not be effective.”

Another hotly contested issue will be whether the Social Security trust fund should be excluded from the budget to bar policy-makers from using its current surplus of $619 billion to help balance the budget.

Questions also linger over just how a balanced-budget amendment would be enforced.

Disputes over definitions of budget terminology such as “outlay” and “receipt” would land in the courts, Leahy predicts. “The effect would be to toss important issues of spending priorities and funding levels to thousands of lawyers, hundreds of lawsuits and dozens of federal courts,” he says.

As with all coming battles in the Republican-dominated Congress, look for a more deliberate pace in the Senate, whose rules enable the minority to essentially control the progress of legislation.

That reality is hardly lost on GOP leaders.

Noting that Byrd, the undisputed king of parliamentary maneuvers, is unalterably opposed to the balanced-budget amendment, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the majority whip, noted sardonically, referring to a possible filibuster:

“I suspect he’ll have lots to say about the balanced-budget amendment. And some of it will be interesting.”

Byrd himself served such notice: “We in Congress have not adequately educated our people about what this amendment really means.”

Pro and Con on Balanced-Budget Amendment

Sen. Hank Brown (R-Colo.) “The very future of our country depends on this.”

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) “We are living high on the hog and are forcing future generations to pay for our excessive spending.”

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) “The last time I looked, Congress and the President had all the constitutional power necessary” to balance the budget.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) “We’re about to perpetrate on the American people a monstrous hoax . . . . We’re saying we need a constitutional amendment to give us spine.”