Democrats Could Derail Balanced Budget Measure Packwood Says Amendment Has 50-50 Chance Of Passage

Key Senate Republicans said Friday that support for a constitutional amendment to balance the budget is eroding among Democrats and conceded that it probably has no better than a 50-50 chance of passage.

Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., chairman of the Finance Committee, said Friday, “Unfortunately, I don’t think we are going to succeed. I think the Democrats are going to succeed in killing it in the Senate.”

Only a week after the House overwhelmingly approved the amendment, the Republicans’ leading campaign promise, the measure has encountered formidable resistance from Senate Democrats and outside groups that have linked it to the politically volatile issue of Social Security.

Democrats also have put Republicans on the defensive by repeatedly challenging them to spell out in detail the more than $1.3 trillion of spending cuts that would be required to balance the budget by the amendment’s target year, 2002.

“I’m really concerned,” said Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla. “A couple of weeks ago, I’d have said the Democrats were just playing games. Now I’m worried.”

By the end of the week, at least three uncommitted Democrats had announced they would oppose the amendment unless it were altered to guarantee against cuts in Social Security to achieve a balanced budget. Republican and Democratic proponents say they are two to three votes short of the 67 needed to pass the constitutional amendment.

GOP leaders had always assumed that the vote would be close in the Senate, but seemed taken aback by the intensity of Democratic resistance. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., also has indicated concern. “We need your help on the balanced budget amendment, which I think is in serious difficulty,” Gingrich said in a speech Wednesday night.

Senate Democrats, wary that the constitutional amendment would bind Congress in times of economic difficulty and force Draconian cuts in Social Security and other domestic programs, have waged a vigorous campaign against the measure.

On one track, Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, a strict constitutional constructionist, and about a half dozen other mostly liberal Democrats including Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, Paul Sarbanes of Maryland and Carl Levin of Michigan are leading the floor fight and have threatened to filibuster. Byrd told reporters Friday that while “I don’t intend to engage in any dilatory tactics … I think I have a responsibility to know what’s in that package and how it will affect the elderly, the young, national defense.”

On a separate track, Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle of South Dakota and other Democrats are pressing Republicans to adopt what they describe as a “Right to Know” act that would force the GOP leadership to detail its plan for eliminating the deficit before the constitutional amendment is approved and sent to the states for ratification.

Although Daschle and his lieutenants have stopped short of threatening to vote against the amendment unless they have their way, their daily campaign has been effective in riling the Republicans and raising doubts about the wisdom of the amendment.

“Americans have the right to know whether we are about to take another riverboat gamble with their nation’s economy” as they did under President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, Daschle said Friday.

Meanwhile, more than 200 labor, senior citizens, veterans, welfare rights and other groups are mounting a grass-roots campaign to apply pressure to the 16 or so Democrats and Republicans who remain undeclared.