BALANCE THE BUDGET AND LIMIT TAXES AND CURB SPENDING

Don't panic, but in the mail today might be a bill -- a whopping one -- for every person in your household. It would be for the national debt. The amount? About $20,000 apiece, give or take a few dollars.

And the total, like a runaway credit card, is growing by hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

Efforts in Washington to stem the tide fall into two general camps. The first is the proposal in Congress to adopt a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. Key votes on the particulars of how to do that and what exceptions might be allowed are consuming much of the Senate's time this week. The other effort comes from the White House, where President Clinton is lobbying hard to prevent such an amendment. He says it would hamstring government in a financial pinch.

Clinton says he can balance the budget without a constitutional mandate. Despite his good intentions, the fact remains that most of his plan to bring federal spending in line with revenue doesn't take effect until he is out of office in four years. Americans taxpayers could be forgiven if they are a little leery of promises that don't even kick in until the national debt has grown by billions of dollars.

And there are loopholes in all the balanced-budget plans that are being debated. Even the Republican plan, the sternest of all, provides an escape valve in times of armed conflict. Does this mean Haitian invasions? Panamanian raids? With U.S. troops deployed to Bosnia, would this year's budget have to be balanced?

Democratic versions go even further. They want loopholes for economic downturns. One Democrat who is likely to cast the deciding vote in the Senate also wants a loophole for massive spending projects for highways and mass transit.

How far off balance can a balanced budget be before it is no longer a balanced budget but a balancing act?

Supporters of a balanced-budget amendment are correct when they assert that it will take a constitutional mandate to get the job done. For this reason alone, efforts to get the amendment through Congress -- and then adopted by two-thirds of the state legislatures -- deserve support.

But a balanced-budget amendment by itself may not be enough. With exceptions for war, recessions and highways, it is easy to see how such an amendment could be sidestepped. More than that, a balanced budget amendment does nothing to limit spending other than keeping it within the confines of revenue. Consider these items:

-- Inflation alone is likely to produce revenue increases well into the future. A balanced-budget amendment would allow every cent of that increase to be spent.

-- And what about the current debt? A balanced-budget amendment would prevent, in most cases, adding to the debt. But such an amendment doesn't pay off the debt.

-- And what about taxes? Even with a balanced-budget amendment, taxes could be increased to cover spending in excess of inflationary growth. Many politicians say they would avoid tax increases like the plague, but a balanced-budget amendment could force them -- or provide an excuse -- to raise taxes just to balance the budget.

Yes, pass the balanced-budget amendment. But that is just part of the job. Also pass a spending limit. And a tax limit. Without such guarantees, a balanced-budget amendment is little more than window dressing for politicians who want to have their cake (being able to tell constituents they voted to balance the budget) and eat it (ever-increasing spending for pet project) too.