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In the early months of 1995, the balanced budget amendment and line-item veto were claimed to be the weapons needed to get federal spending on track. Much of this debate was highly abstract, with little effort made to see how they would operate in the context of real budget fights. Now that we are approaching the "train wreck" scenario, in which the government runs out of money because the appropriations legislation has been derailed, it might make sense to see how those budgetary devices would alter the terrain if they become law.

The new fiscal year for the federal government is almost a month old, and none of the 13 major appropriation bills has been enacted. Moreover, the darkest cloud on the horizon -- the raising of the debt ceiling -- must occur sometime between the end of October and mid-November, and both parties are hopelessly at odd over how this can happen.

Virtually every day there are major stories on the impending budget crisis. President Clinton threatens to veto bills that contain spending cuts that are too drastic, tax reductions that are too generous, and spending increases, notably in the defense area, that he thinks are unjustified. Speaker Gingrich, on the other hand, insists on major spending reductions and tax cuts, and he appears to have the votes, at least in the House, to maintain his hard line. Cries of "blackmail" are heard from both sides as they denounce the unreasonableness of the other's position.

Because the two factions are so far apart, the battle of the budget is especially fierce this year, and a fair and sensible resolution of the differences is difficult to envision. But at least the war is being fought on familiar turf, using conventional weapons that each side has under the Constitution. Now let's see what might happen if the balanced budget amendment and the line-item veto were in effect.

The most powerful feature of the balanced budget amendment is the restriction on raising the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling establishes the outer limit of the total federal borrowing at any time, in effect trumping any spending deficits in budget projection. Unlike the annual deficit, which is based on projected revenues and expenses (and thus subject to much wishful thinking), the debt ceiling is a hard number: when the limit is reached, no more money can be spent unless more money comes in, or the ceiling is raised.

The authors of the balanced budget amendment are fully aware of these realities, and so they cleverly, for their purposes, added a requirement that 60% of both Houses must approve any future increases in the debt ceiling. Thus, if the balanced budget amendment were law, 40% of either House could prevent a raise in the debt ceiling, or more likely, insist that it be tied to reductions in specific spending programs, lower taxes, increased deductions, or anything else, whether it was related to the budget or not. It is difficult enough to get a majority of both Houses to vote to raise the debt ceiling, but giving a minority of either House a veto over it would constitute a major shift in political power by greatly increasing the power of those who oppose spending of any kind.

The line-item veto creates a similar shift in power, but to the President, rather than to a minority of Congress. Unlike the balanced budget amendment, which was narrowly defeated in the Senate, both Houses have passed line-item vetoes, although there are substantial differences between the two bills. Nonetheless, the basics under both are the same: instead of having to sign an entire appropriation bill or veto it, the President can sign it and still veto the spending provisions he doesn't like. But Congress can prevail only if it gets two-thirds of both Houses to disapprove the President's vetoes.

If the line-item veto were the law today, President Clinton would almost certainly use it to knock out such defense items as the B-2 bomber, more Seawolf submarines, and further spending for Star Wars, as well as other selected items, particularly local pork barrel projects that almost certainly were included to garner votes. By contrast, if any of the Republican candidates for President were in office, is there any doubt about the fate of the President's National Service Program or the Legal Services Corporation which Mrs. Clinton once headed?

The question is not the merits of these programs, but whether the President should be able to stop them when more than a majority of both Houses of Congress wants to keep them. Moreover, with a line-item veto, the President will, in effect, have a nuclear weapon, giving him the final say in any budget battle and making it even more difficult to avoid a trainwreck in which the government comes to a halt over budget disputes.

For more than 200 years, Americans have lived by majority rule and mutual cooperation among the branches of government. The few exceptions to that principle in the Constitution are there to assure that we do not change our basic structures lightly, and none of those exceptions allows either a minority of Congress to control ordinary legislation or permits the President to dissect bills passed by Congress, keeping the parts he likes, and rejecting the rest. But if we are having difficulty passing a federal budget now, further empowering the minority under the balanced budget amendment, or giving sweeping new powers to the President under the line-item veto, would gravely complicate the problem and make it far less likely that a sensible budget resolution will become law.

Most Americans believe that our government needs to be less confrontational and more accommodating in order to solve the problems that we face today. Both the balanced budget amendment and the line-item veto would take power away from the majority and turn it over to a minority, making cooperation far more difficult to achieve. If Congress and the President would give some serious thought to the effects of these budgetary gimmicks in the real world, perhaps they would realize that the current system will do the job, if only our elected officials would carry out their responsibilities.

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