Senate Republicans found unlikely allies Thursday in their quest for a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution: a pair of former Democratic presidential candidates.
Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Joseph Biden of Delaware-both formerly opponents of the measure, both facing re-election battles next year-announced their support for the controversial amendment.
While no one was claiming victory Thursday, the startling reversals by Harkin and Biden would seem to bring Republicans within a single vote of the 67 required for passage. A vote on the bill, which passed the House last month, is scheduled for Tuesday.
“The probability is we have the 67 votes,” said Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), a longtime advocate of the amendment. “But humanity is unpredictable.”
The defection by two of the Senate’s most identifiable liberals from historic Democratic opposition to the amendment reflects the power of the balanced-budget issue and its undeniable appeal to an angry electorate.
A wave of Republican-sponsored radio and TV ads has swept across Iowa and Delaware, among other states, and every national public-opinion survey indicates that a constitutional mandate to balance the federal budget is backed by at least 7 of every 10 voters.
“There is a sense of the momentum in this debate being on our side,” said Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), who is leading the pro-amendment forces, “and these announcements add to that.”
Certainly the switch by Harkin and Biden, both of whom have assailed the amendment on constitutional and budgetary grounds in the past, meet Simon’s observation of unpredictability.
“I have concluded there is nothing left to try except the . . . amendment,” said Biden, who sought his party’s presidential nomination in 1988 and who voted against the amendment in 1986 and again last year.
Harkin, who won his home-state presidential caucuses in 1992, voted against the measure in 1994, though he backed it in 1986.
In a statement, Harkin blamed Republicans for the debt crisis and called the amendment “the best available alternative” for dealing with the deficit.
Neither senator made any reference to election-year politics or to the spate of GOP ads targeting them. But some Republicans were reveling in the defections.
“It’s interesting that a couple of guys who ran for president as Democrats are holding the key to this thing,” said Chuck Greener, communications director of the Republican National Committee.
The RNC has been airing TV advertisements in Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada and Kentucky-all states where Democratic senators were wavering or under public pressure to back the amendment.
In Biden’s home state, the RNC has been running a radio spot entitled “Pick Up the Phone,” which encourages listeners to tell their senator “to fight for our children by standing up to Bill Clinton and the special interests.”
The arithmetic of the balanced-budget amendment fight was simplified by Thursday’s announcements.
Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas is expected to deliver the votes of all but one of his Republican colleagues. (Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon, a longtime foe of the amendment, has not moved on the issue, and the GOP leadership has been reluctant to pressure him.)
With 52 Republican votes in hand, supporters needed just 15 votes from among the 47 Senate Democrats. The recruitment of Democratic backers has been led by Simon, who was joined by his Illinois colleague, Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun.
In the three weeks since the Senate began debate, the pro-amendment argument has advanced despite tepid opposition from the Clinton administration and the indefatigable efforts of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.).
Foes have pointed out that a constitutional amendment could aggravate a recession by forcing spending cuts to balance the budget during hard times; that it could force federal courts to make spending decisions that the Constitution says are the responsibility of Congress; and that politicians intent on escaping voter wrath might use regulatory mechanisms, unfunded mandates or other less visible and less accountable options to achieve the goal of a balanced budget.
But these arguments have been drowned out by the simpler-sounding logic that the government should be forced to live within its means and that there is no other way of forcing the tough decisions needed to reduce the deficit.
Only four Senate Democrats-Sam Nunn of Georgia, Wendell Ford of Kentucky and Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad of North Dakota-remain uncommitted.
Nunn and Ford have voted for the amendment in the past, and Republican Craig believes Dorgan and Conrad are leaning his way.
Both Dorgan and Conrad said Thursday they had not made up their minds, adding that decisions by other Democrats and attack ads by the GOP left them unmoved.
“People are running all kinds of ads on all sorts of things in my state,” said Dorgan.
