Newt Gingrich hammered President Clinton’s proposed 1998 budget Saturday as an “old, liberal budget” that will leave a substantial deficit by 2002.

“It’s clear his staff made a mistake, because they sent up a balanced budget with a $62 billion deficit in the year 2002,” the House speaker told supporters at county GOP conventions in suburban Atlanta. “So we’re giving him a chance to correct the mistake.”

Using figures from the Office of Management and Budget, Clinton says his budget will be in balance by 2002 with a surplus of $17 billion. The Congressional Budget Office, the financial analysts of the Congress, used more pessimistic economic assumptions and said the president’s plan would leave the budget more than $60 billion in deficit in 2002.

House Republicans pushed through a resolution Wednesday demanding Clinton redraft his plan and submit one that would reach balance.

“I know the president wants a balanced budget,” Gingrich said, because in his State of the Union address “he said 12 times - we went back and counted it - ‘In my balanced budget plan.”’

Gingrich noted that voters elected a Republican Congress and a Democratic White House and said they now expect results.

“We have an obligation to make it work. I did not say let’s sell out,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich, recently criticized for lack of assertiveness in his House leadership and the chamber’s slow start in the new Congress, also laid out the GOP’s agenda to the primarily Republican audiences. In particular, he targeted drugs and Mexico.

“I urged the president not to certify or decertify any country,” the Georgia Republican said. “This is a dumb process, and it doesn’t work.”

His comments come on the heel of a House vote that urges the president to give Mexico 90 days to reform its drug-fighting policies before an automatic decertification. The bill, which would retain Clinton’s right to waive any sanctions against Mexico, brought an angry response from Mexican officials.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and Gingrich plan to propose legislation targeting those who smuggle illegal narcotics across the U.S. border. Gingrich said the legislation will require the death penalty for professional cross-border smugglers and life in prison for first-time offenders.

“We’re going to send a simple message: Don’t even do it once. It will cost you your life,” he said.