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

DATE: THURSDAY, March 9, 1995                   TAG: 9503090059
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CONSERVATIVE

U.S. SEN. Mark Hatfield of Oregon has survived an attempt to strip him of his Appropriations Committee chairmanship. But some Republicans' outrage over his apostasy on the balanced-budget amendment remains a curious symptom of the distemper of the times.

In casting the only GOP vote against the proposed amendment, the senator from Oregon presumably deprived the measure of the 67 votes needed to send it to the states for ratification. At the least, Hatfield's holdout made it unnecessary for any other senator to step forward to take the heat on a proposal whose popular appeal considerably outweighs its practical merit.

Party caucuses aren't in the habit of mid-session ousters of committee chairmen on the basis of a single Senate vote. Apart from changes in party control of the Senate, not since 1924 has a senator been unchaired - and then it was during committee organization for a new session and in retaliation against Wisconsin Sen. Robert LaFollette and a supporter, both nominal Republicans, for LaFollette's Progressive Party presidential campaign against the official GOP nominee, Calvin Coolidge.

On some issues, Hatfield can be regarded as a moderate or even liberal Republican. But his opposition to the balanced-budget amendment was grounded in the realistically conservative thinking that budgets are balanced by actual budget cuts, not by cynically cluttering the Constitution with newfangled, unenforceable language.

Progress has been made, but federal deficits are still too big, and are projected to rise again in the next decade. The national debt must be reduced relative to the size of the economy, so that fewer federal tax dollars need be devoted to debt service. Accomplishing this task will depend in part on Hatfield's performance as Senate Appropriations chairman; bombast about balanced-budget amendments to the Constitution makes for a distracting political spectacle, but has little to do with the job at hand.

by CNB