Although Republicans fell one vote shy of passing the balanced budget amendment Thursday, they vow to continue fighting for it daily - and maneuvered to allow another vote whenever they can convince any opponent to switch sides.
"We're going to continue to try to build pressure with outside groups. We're going to foment a doggone revolution. People are mad about this," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told the Deseret News.The amendment failed on a 65-35 vote Thursday - two votes short of the two-thirds majority needed. But it was actually only one vote short because Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole changed to vote against it at the last second in a parliamentary maneuver.
That allows him by rules to call for its reconsideration, or a second vote, without debate - giving opponents no chance for a filibuster on the second vote.
"We can call it up at any time: any time one senator says, `I've changed my mind'; any time one senator says, `Well, maybe with a little change in conference, I could be persuaded'; any time the election heat is turned up enough that they begin to understand how important this is to the American people," Dole said.
Hatch - chief co-sponsor of the amendment and manager of Senate GOP efforts for it - said Republicans would talk about the need for it on the Senate floor two more days on Friday and Monday, and would continue to ask a variety of outside groups to pressure senators to vote for it.
"There are literally thousands of outside groups that are going to get into this with us," Hatch said. "They are worried sick . . . If we don't pass it, that the country's going to go down the drain."
Dole said that even without the amendment, Republicans will also later push a budget plan that would balance the budget by 2002 - and predicted many Democrats would be found "hiding under the couch" during difficult votes on it.
Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas - who is running against Dole for the Republican nomination for president - said he made an agreement with House GOP leaders to also push a simple statute to require a balanced budget. It would need only a simple majority to pass, which Republicans could easily muster - but it might be vetoed.
However, Hatch and others saw that as politicking by Gramm, and he said Congress already tried such an approach in the old Gramm-Rudman law that didn't work. (Of note, the Senate had to wait several minutes for Gramm to cast the final vote on the amendment, because he was holding a press conference on it).
Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, also said presidential politics figured in the vote in other ways. "Some Democrats didn't want Sen. Dole to look too good, lest he improve his stature and become even more difficult for President Clinton to handle."
The vote Thursday came after several days of high-wire politics and charges from both sides that the other was trying to fool the public about what the amendment would do to Social Security.
Dole had twice delayed the final vote to try to find the final vote needed - which the amendment's chief opponent, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.V., called sleazy and tawdry.
Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle said the amendment could have passed by seven votes - including his - if the GOP would have permitted changing it to specifically protect Social Security trust funds from being used for operational expenses.
"All we asked was that we not rob the bank to pay the debt - that we not take Social Security funds away to do something we know we must do," Daschle said.
Dole said Social Security was a phony issue used by a handful of Democrats seeking any reason to oppose it because it would finally force Congress to cut spending.
The six Democrats who switched from supporting the amendment last year to opposing it this year all do not face re-election for at least three years. They are Jeff Bingaman, N.M.; Daschle; Byron Dorgan, N.D.; Dianne Feinstein, Calif.; Wendell Ford, Ky.; and Ernest Hollings, S.C.