BALANCED BUDGET ISSUE SHOULD BECOME THE LAW

Congress is easing itself toward some semblance of fiscal responsibility ... but not without kicking and screaming. The U.S. House will vote next week on a constitutional amendment mandating a balanced federal budget. The U.S. Senate is also expected to take up the proposal at some point. While the American public desires some action in this regard, some lawmakers are balking and opposition is lining up. We hope the inertia of a fed-up populace will carry this measure to constitutional status.

Opponents can't claim with a straight face that this issue has come upon them as a recent fashion. When Bill Emerson, the Cape Girardeau congressman, was first elected in 1980, he sought the passage of such a measure. As federal budget deficits escalated during the 1980s, so did the movement to mandate a balanced government ledger. Having stewed all this time, and boiled over in the past year with citizen discontent on all matters of Congress and money, the issue is ready (indeed, long overdue) for passage.

As momentum grew, Rep. Emerson has not necessarily been out on a limb in persistently supporting this measure, unless common sense is equated these days with reckless conduct on Capitol Hill. Individuals and families across the nation must live within their incomes. The city of Cape Girardeau has a provision in its charter that mandates a fiscal year's proposed expenditures can't exceed estimated revenues. Missouri law requires that the state approve a balanced budget; every state except Vermont has similar statutory provisions. That the founding fathers neglected to include this in the U.S. Constitution may speak to their presumption that budget balancing was a governmental principle that didn't have to be spelled out. Welcome to the 1990s. If the Constitution is a living document, the amendment under review speaks to the times.

Still, don't assume the measure, with right on its side, will breeze to passage. While Emerson believes the House has bi-partisan support necessary for passage of the amendment, the Senate, led by George Mitchell and Robert Byrd (two for whom horse sense and national interest are sometimes foreign), could scuttle it. For the record, both U.S. senators from Missouri, John Danforth and Christopher S. Bond, are supporters of the amendment. But, big-gun opponents are speaking out. Arch~ibald Cox, chair emeritus of the liberal lobbying group Common Cause, said the amendment "is not a respon~sible approach to the nation's economic concerns." Really? And federal spending amounting to 25 percent of the gross domestic product (a level not reached since World War II) is responsible?

The nation is frustrated with Washington not being able to balance America's books. What people see in the balanced budget amendment is a doctrine that instills discipline where none has been self-generated. We urge lawmakers to see the same thing. The balanced budget measure should become the law of the land.