REPUBLICANS DELAY WORK IN HOUSE ON BALANCED-BUDGET AMENDMENT.

Byline: David E. Rosenbaum The New York Times

Afraid that they do not have the votes for approval, House Republican leaders decided Monday to postpone at least until next month further action on a constitutional amendment to require a balanced federal budget.

The decision is the latest indication that adoption of the proposed amendment is in serious doubt. It would require approval by two-thirds of those voting in the House and Senate and then ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures.

The House Judiciary Committee, which was scheduled to vote on the measure today, announced Monday that the meeting had been canceled.

Sam Stratman, the committee's spokesman, said the leaders wanted to wait until the Senate voted, hoping that approval there would give the measure momentum in the House.

But approval in the Senate is by no means a certainty. Debate began on the Senate floor last week, but no vote is scheduled. Senate leaders from both parties agree that the outcome there hinges on the votes of four freshman Democrats who have not announced their positions.

The proposed amendment would require that the federal budget be balanced by 2002 or two years after ratification by the states, whichever came later. The requirement could be overridden only by three-fifths majorities in the House and Senate.

An almost identical measure was approved in the House in 1995 by a vote of 300-132, 12 votes more than the two-thirds needed. But the amendment was rejected by one vote in the Senate.

Almost all Republicans in Congress support the amendment, and most Democrats oppose it. President Clinton is strenuously opposed.

The proposed amendment has been a central part of Republican doctrine for years. Republicans argue that it would provide the discipline elected politicians need to reduce government spending.

Democratic opponents counter that it would clutter the Constitution unnecessarily, make recessions worse and threaten Social Security benefits.

The immediate problem faced by Republican leaders in the House was the possibility that the Judiciary Committee would adopt a Democratic substitute that would require a balanced budget but exclude Social Security from the calculations.

The substitute is a political tactic designed to kill the constitutional amendment, not a serious attempt to balance the budget.

Many lawmakers, especially those who represent large numbers of retirees, see votes that seem to threaten Social Security benefits as political poison pills.

Polls show that the public favors a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget by a large margin. But more than two-thirds say they would oppose such an amendment if it would lead to lower Social Security benefits.

Republicans have a majority on the Judiciary Committee of 20 to 15. This means that if three Republicans vote for the Democratic amendment, it would pass.

One, Bill McCollum of Florida, already has said he would vote for it. According to staff assistants who have been keeping track of how members intend to vote on the Social Security question, Republican leaders could not count Monday on the votes of several other Republicans on the panel, including Ventura County's Elton Gallegly, Charles Canady of Florida and Robert Goodlatte of Virginia.

As a practical matter, adoption of the Social Security measure would make it impossible to show a balanced budget by early in the next century. The latest Congressional Budget Office figures show that lawmakers would have to find an additional $465 billion in savings in the next five years to offset the surplus in Social Security accounts.