No Excuses

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SCORE ONE FOR THE BELEAGUERED HOUSE OF REPREsentatives, which demonstrated last week that there are limits to political cynicism, even in a presidential election year. In a surprising turnabout, the House narrowly rejected the balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution by a vote of 280 to 153, just nine votes shy of the required two-thirds majority. The vote was a rebuff to President Bush, who has staked his dwindling prestige on amending the Constitution to mandate by fiat a balanced budget -- the holy grail of government that has eluded Presidents and legislators for the past 23 years.

After a day of complicated roll-call votes designed to offer political cover to legislators from both parties, the House Democratic leadership muscled its members into providing 150 of the 153 votes opposed to tinkering with the Constitution. The showdown ballot was on an amendment by conservative Texas Democratic Congressman Charles Stenholm that would have required a three- fifths vote of Congress for the government to engage in deficit spending; implementation would have been shrewdly delayed until 1997, when Bush and many current legislators would not have to deal with the resulting budgetary and legal chaos. Small wonder that Democratic Congressman Mike Synar ridiculed the proposal as "the constitutional equivalent of hanging garlic in the window to ward off vampires."

The maneuvering was an introduction to the three-way politics likely to dominate the presidential race. Bush seized on the nostrum to divert attention from the $1 trillion in red ink added to the deficit during his presidency. Presumptive Democratic nominee Bill Clinton opposed it. But the pivotal factor may have been independent Ross Perot, who attacked the balanced-budget amendment as "an excuse not to do anything." (See related story on page 38.)