Craig Won’t Stop Seeking Amendment Senator Says It’s His Job To Keep Issue Alive

Even as the balanced budget amendment was losing by one vote Tuesday evening, Idaho Republican Larry Craig was vowing to continue the fight.

“My job is to keep the issue alive and to make the Senate take the tough vote,” Craig said.

Craig, who started working on the amendment in 1982 when he was in the House of Representatives, said he was saddened by the vote.

“When I started, everybody laughed at me. Today they really try to balance the budget,” he said. “We have moved the debate dramatically, and we have moved the direction of Congress.”

The next step, he said, comes in the House, where representatives are discussing another version of the measure. He said he would support a House version of the amendment.

He also said a slightly different version might be introduced in the Senate later this year. Craig and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, another strong backer of the amendment, will take a “realistic look” at minor changes that could pick up one or two votes.

Craig will not exempt Social Security, a sticking point for many Democrats who say the amendment could keep that program from being fully funded.

“The way you save Social Security is to balance the budget,” he said.

In the weeks leading up to the vote, different senators tried to tag a series of amendments onto the measure. Craig called the additions - all of which failed - “gaping loopholes.”

“This isn’t just a bill,” he said. “We’re amending the Constitution. It must be for all time.”

Among senators from the Washington and Idaho, voting followed party lines. Republicans Craig, Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho, and Slade Gorton of Washington voted for the measure. Democrat Patty Murray of Washington voted against it.

In a speech on the empty Senate floor before the vote, Kempthorne said it has been a generation since the budget was balanced.

“In the 1,697 votes that I’ve cast as a United States Senator, the vote today is the most critical,” Kempthorne said.

Gorton said the burden to balance the $5.3 trillion national debt now falls on President Clinton.

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