
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 18, 1990                   TAG: 9007180256
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

HOUSE BARELY DEFEATS BALANCED-BUDGET AMENDMENT

The House on Tuesday narrowly defeated a constitutional amendment to balance the budget after opponents said it was a gimmick to hide the failure of Congress and the president to cut the huge federal deficits.

The House voted 279-150 in favor of the amendment, but it was seven votes short of the two-thirds required to propose a constitutional change.

President Bush, meanwhile, declared that the worsening federal deficit meant "the time for game-playing is over" and set a budget meeting with congressional leaders at the White House today.

Backers of the amendment said they had expected defeat. Rep. Charles Stenholm, D-Texas, said either way Congress needed to make tough choices to end a decade of huge increases in the national debt, which now tops $3.1 trillion.

The amendment would have, beginning in 1995, prohibited government spending from exceeding revenues, or any increase in government borrowing, unless the requirements were waived by a three-fifths vote of each chamber of Congress.

The House defeated, 244-184, a proposal by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, to extend the super-majority threshold to any proposal containing a tax increase. Barton said without his amendment, a balanced-budget requirement would create a bias toward raising taxes.

Bush, in a letter Monday, urged support of the amendment along with changes in the budget process to give the president more power, including the line-item veto.

The House last voted on a balanced-budget amendment in 1982, when it fell short by more than 40 votes. Support for the amendment has grown since then, largely because of growing frustration over the deficits and the failure of statutes such as the Gramm-Rudman law to solve them.

But opponents Tuesday said the amendment was a sham, that its requirements could easily be dodged, and that delaying the effective date to 1995 was only passing the buck.

Rep. Jack Brooks, D-Texas, said the amendment would only give the courts an excuse to begin dictating the nation's fiscal policy. "Judicial tyranny waiting to happen," he said.

President Bush, like Ronald Reagan before him, has not proposed a balanced budget and has touted the amendment so long as it doesn't take effect too quickly.

The White House said it supported the House version, although it objected to language making it harder to raise fees for government services or to increase government borrowing.

Representatives from Virginia overwhelmingly favored the amendment. Those voting for the amendment were Rep. Herbert Bateman, R-Newport News; Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, R-Richmond; Rep. Jim Olin, D-Roanoke; Rep. Stanford Parris, R-Fairfax County; Rep. L.F. Payne, D-Nelson County; Rep. Owen Pickett, D-Virginia Beach; Rep. Norman Sisisky, D-Petersburg; Rep. French Slaughter, R-Culpeper; and Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Fairfax County.

The only Virginia representative who voted against the amendment was Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon.

by CNB