The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

[NETWORK DIFFICULTY] NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: Heavy fighting raged throughout the capital of Chechnya today. Russian tanks fired hundreds of shells and rockets on the center of the city. According to some reports, the Russian forces now control about 2/3 of Grozny and are closing in on the presidential palace. But Chechen rebels are still defending that building which has been hit repeatedly by tank fire. Russia sent fresh troops into the area today. At least 39 Russian soldiers are being held prisoners of war. The rebels have offered to swap them for Chechen prisoners. Late today, the Russian government announced a two-day unilateral cease-fire that will go into effect tomorrow. The order requires Chechen forces to disarm within that time. We'll have more on the story later in the program. Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: Jury selection began today in the trial of 12 Muslim men accused of conspiring to blow up several New York City landmarks, including the World Trade Center. A bomb exploded in the Twin Towers in February, 1993, killing six people. Officials claimed that other attacks were being planned against the United Nations, FBI offices, and a bridge and two tunnels. Four men with alleged ties to the defendants have already been convicted for the Trade Center bombing. Prosecutors charge the attacks were designed to punish the U.S. for its support of Israel. John Salvi pleaded innocent today to murder charges related to the shootings at two abortion clinics in Massachusetts last month. Salvi's accused of killing two and wounding five others in the attack. He was ordered held without bail. He's also charged with shooting at a Virginia abortion clinic.

MR. LEHRER: A week of heavy rains has flooded parts of Northern California. Worst hit were low-lying areas from San Francisco to Eureka, 225 miles to the North. Hundreds of people have been evacuated as the Petaluma, Napa, and Rushing Rivers neared or passed flood stage. Schools and roads were closed in many areas. Officials in Sonoma and Napa Counties have declared a state of emergency. Weather forecasters expect more rain through the week. Heavy fog was blamed for an accident that killed five people on Interstate 40, near Little Rock, Arkansas, today. Eight tractor-trailers and one other vehicle were involved. The impact caused an explosion and fire. Four of the trucks were carrying livestock, many of which were killed or injured in the accident.

MR. MAC NEIL: A two-day conference on air safety opened in Washington today. It brings together airline executives pilots, maintenance chiefs, and government officials. Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena called the meeting after the industry experienced four major accidents last year, killing two hundred eighty-seven people. It was the worst year for commercial aviation accidents since 1988. Pena had this to say in his opening remarks.

FEDERICO PENA, Secretary of Transportation: It is up to each of us in this room to take the lead and to demonstrate to ourselves and to the American people that we will do everything possible not only to maintain but to improve our already high safety standards and performance. And we will not settle for anything less than zero accidents.

MR. MAC NEIL: The head of the Airline Pilots Association said efforts to cut costs have eroded airline safety. He said that doesn't mean the system isn't safe but the margins of safety have eroded.

MR. LEHRER: Republicans and Democrats traded charges about a balanced budget amendment today. Democrats said Congress should specify what programs would be cut before the constitutional amendment was sent to the state legislatures for ratification. House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt spoke at a Capitol Hill news conference.

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT, Minority Leader: The balanced budget amendment, as drafted by the Republicans, is proof that they want to govern by gimmick. By passing an amendment Republicans can say they stand for fiscal integrity without actually doing anything about it. Let me be very clear about this. Democrats believe in a balanced budget. But the question isn't whether you do it. It's how you do it, and on whose backs it is done.

MR. LEHRER: House Speaker Newt Gingrich was asked about the Democratic response at a Washington news conference this afternoon.

REP. NEWT GINGRICH, Speaker of the House: We're going to have a lot of stuff on the table a long time before the states ratify this amendment, but we're not going to play some mickey mouse game from a failed establishment that had 40 years to get the job done, failed totally, and is now trying to be obstructive.

MR. LEHRER: A House vote on the amendment is now expected during the week of January 23rd. We'll have more on the story right after this News Summary. Sen. Bennett Johnston, Democrat of Louisiana, announced today he will not seek re-election next year. He has served in the Senate since 1973.

MR. MAC NEIL: The United States and Canada intervened in the foreign exchange markets today in another attempt to bolster the Mexican peso. The action came at the request of the Mexican government. The Mexican Federal Reserve also began drawing on a North American bailout package this morning. The peso has lost more than a third of its value over the past month. North Korea announced it will lift restrictions on trade and financial transactions with the United States later this month. The decision is part of an agreement reached last October to dismantle North Korea's nuclear program.

MR. LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the balanced budget amendment, our regional editors and commentators, a Chechnya update, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. FOCUS - BALANCING ACT

MR. LEHRER: First tonight, the first item in the Republican Contract with America, a balanced budget amendment. We begin our coverage with the opening day of testimony and debate before the House Judiciary Committee. Here are excerpts.

REP. BOB FRANKS, [R] New Jersey: Every family must work to meet the challenge of balancing their household budget, or they will face serious and sometimes ruinous consequences. A small business won't stay in business long if its expenditures outpace its income. It's long past time for the federal government to live under the same standards of accountability as the rest of American society.

REP. PATRICIA SCHROEDER, [D] Colorado: There is nothing in the Constitution that precludes us from balancing the budget now that I know of. I understand it's a new day, but I think we have to ask the questions Americans want answered. How do we deal with Social Security? Is it going to be on budget? Or are we going to take it off budget and keep it off budget like we said it should be done last year, and run it the way it was supposed to be run? What happens in the area of national security? What happens in so many different areas, and what happens if we pass this, and we don't balance the budget?

WILLIAM BARR, Former Attorney General: It seems to me that if one suggests that we have to make those hard choices first and specify cuts that are to be made, it's really designed to mobilize the special interests to prevent the reform from taking place and to keep in place a system that has worked to their advantage. This is a debate over a basic principle, a basic structural principle, the basic rules that should govern the process, and, therefore, it seems to me that it's inappropriate to turn attention to the specifics that may have evolve in the future.

REP. JOSE SERRANO, [D] New York: Traditionally, people have always been afraid to balance budgets or balance on the back of the poor. And while my district is composed of people who are hard workers, there are some who need Medicaid, and there are some who may need a free lunch program, and there are some who may need educational funding. I'm giving you a great opportunity here. What would you tell them if you were me, how this balanced budget is going to help them without cuts, because you've said that there will be no cuts that will hurt anyone? How do we sell that?

REP. JOE BARTON, [R] Texas: If we don't pass a balanced budget amendment and we continue down this road, in my opinion, we're going to have a financial catastrophe in the near future, and there will be no federal government as we know it today to help anybody, because we can't finance these huge debt loads that we keep putting upon ourselves.

MR. LEHRER: Now, our own debate. It comes from Washington with Alice Rivlin, President Clinton's budget director, and John Kasich, the Ohio Republican and new chairman of the House Budget Committee, and it comes from Colorado, a state we've been using as a sounding board on the first 100 days of the new Congress. With us from Denver are Rep. Chuck Berry, the Republican speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives, and Sen. Michael Feeley, a Democrat and minority leader of the Colorado Senate. First, Ms. Rivlin, to you, is a basic principle of governing at issue here on this issue of the constitutional amendment on balancing the budget?

MS. RIVLIN: I don't think it's a basic principle of governing exactly, but it is a question of the role of the Constitution. We are not arguing about whether the deficit is too large. Everybody thinks it is. The Clinton administration has a strong record of bringing the deficit down in cooperation with the Congress. What we are arguing about is whether fiscal policy should be written into the Constitution. We don't believe it should. We believe that the hard choices that are necessary to balance the budget ought to be made by the Congress and the President, and we at least ought to know what those choices are. Those who are in favor of balancing the budget by writing it into the Constitution better tell us what will be cut, what would have to be done before we do that.

MR. LEHRER: But should this be -- should this be in the constitutional amendment, itself? In other words, the states and everybody know specifically what's going to be cut, is that your argument?

MS. RIVLIN: Yes. I think anyone who argues that we should write into the Constitution a balanced budget should say right up front before this amendment goes anywhere, certainly before it goes to the states for ratification, what would be cut, how it would get to that balanced budget.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Kasich, you don't think that should be done. Why is that, sir?

REP. KASICH: Well, Jim, first of all, I mean, we need to have the balanced budget amendment, because I think it's been proven that we have been unable to be able to hold off the special interest groups, and they have been able to call the tune. And that's unfortunate because we are clearly mortgaging the next generation. And that's a legacy that none of us who are in a position of authority to do something about that would be proud to have as our legacy. Jim, in terms of whether we need to have the specifics or not, let me tell you, those folks who argue for the specifics are going to be -- I don't mean Director Rivlin in this case -- but most people who argue we ought to have the specifics will be the ones that will turn around and argue that the specifics are not acceptable. Let me -- let me suggest to you that we are going to see the most massive downsizing of the federal government we have seen maybe in many of our lifetimes. And, Jim, part of the way in which we get to the balanced budget over seven years is we bring in a lot of creative and systemic changes. We're just not going to do it the traditional green eye shade way of a little nick here and a cut there. We're looking at elimination of programs. We're looking at privatizing programs. We're looking at devolving programs to the states. But, frankly, every year, if you are creative and innovative, and if you drive your people to do that, you can come up with a whole series of reforms that allow you to get there without having to cause this "pain," and to do it in ways that are smarter and better, and so we're going to have a lot of the specifics out. You know, my two budgets have been very specific in nature. We'll be specific with the Contract with America paying for it, we'll be specific in terms of our five year budget proposal, but I will tell you next year we'll be more creative than we'll be this year, and we don't want to say what we're going to be six or seven years down the road, because we're going to be looking at a much different, more creative picture.

MR. LEHRER: So you would agree, though, that -- with what the Congressman said in the testimony, that this has to do with a concept of governing, rather than with the specifics, is that correct?

REP. KASICH: Well, Jim, look, if we don't have a balanced budget amendment that empowers the Congress to tell the special interests with a soft heart, I understand your concerns but with a strong spine we have got to balance a budget, and we have got to say to the next generation we will fail here. I agree with the director that it would be ideal if we were able to do this, but we are clearly not able to do it. We have gotten an "F" in that, and that's why it is necessary to give us the tool. We need to have the tool to tell special interests, I'm sorry, we can't afford it.

MR. LEHRER: What about that argument, Ms. Rivlin, that this would immediately put everybody in the same league? You sit across the table from somebody, and they want you to do this, you say, hey, we can't do that, because we've got to balance the budget because of the constitutional amendment.

MS. RIVLIN: I think it's much too easy to talk about special interests and privatizing and devolving. Let's get down to cases here. Are we going to cut defense? Are we going to cut Social Security? Are we going to cut Medicare? Those are the big things in the budget. If you look at whatit would take to balance the budget, it would take, if you did it over seven years, which is quite a long time, it would take by the Congressional Budget Office's calculations cuts of about $1.2 trillion. Now, you can't get that just by nickel and diming. You've got to do that by having a very different federal government, and that would mean cuts in Social Security and Medicare and defense and other things, things that people want.

MR. LEHRER: Can it be done without cutting Social Security, Medicare, defense, and other things that people want, Congressman?

REP. KASICH: No. The only thing off the table is Social Security, but I would say that instead of the federal government spending $13.2 trillion over the next seven years, we would have to go on this huge diet and spend only $11.8 trillion. And, in fact, to get to the balanced budget over seven years, we would actually have, excluding Social Security, you would actually have a slight increase in federal spending. The problem is, is that we have a group of people who are in charge now in this government who believe that government makes better choices than individuals, and that has to be stopped. The simple fact of the matter is we hear about, for example, cuts in Medicare. Medicare is going up by over 12 percent a year. If Medicare goes up only 10 percent, then, you know, people run around and say these are incredible cuts. The simple fact of the matter is, is that the private sector has been able to use a number of creative and innovative efforts to slow the growth of health care costs, while still maintaining quality. We've got to study those examples. We've got to control the growth in these programs while still maintaining quality. Take, for example, the FAA. I have proposed that we privatize the operation of the air traffic control system. It saves $19 billion and will lend for a more efficient system. The problem is the administration went eyeball-to-eyeball with this kind of change, and they blinked. They opted for a government-run corporation. Henry Cisneros went to the White House and argued against the President's idea about eliminating HUD. The special interest groups dominate the day here, and what we want, we think the President's moved in our direction. What we really want is we want the President to join us. When we lay our proposal on the table, we take these special interest groups on, and we have real change. We want him to help us.

MR. LEHRER: But the President isn't about to join him, is he?

REP. KASICH: But he might?

MR. LEHRER: I'm sorry. I'm going to ask Alice Rivlin that. [laughter] I'm going to ask his budget director that.

MS. RIVLIN: Yes. On some of these proposals, the President will very likely join. There are certainly creative ways of reducing the size of government that we could agree on, but what we're arguing about at the moment is not that. We are arguing about whether we should write this straight jacket into the Constitution for the next 200 years before we look at what is involved in actually doing it.

MR. LEHRER: All right. I want to now bring Colorado into that very argument. Mike Feeley, does this have, the argument that you've been listening to here, does it have relevance to you in Colorado?

MR. FEELEY: Oh, yes. There's no question about it. You know, I think that if we write a gimmick like this into the Constitution, that people in Washington aren't going to necessarily develop the political will that it takes to do what they already have the power to do. But more importantly, from our perspective in the state, we're very concerned about balancing the federal budget; they'll be balancing it on the back of the states.

MR. LEHRER: In what way? How would they do that?

MR. FEELEY: We are already subjected to substantial federal mandates, many of them unfunded. We've got environmental regulations, air quality issues. We've got a number of issues where the federal government has said, well, this is a terrific idea, we'd like to pass it, we'd like the political credit for getting that done, but we don't have the money to pay for it, and we don't want to find the money to pay for it. So they pass that along to the states. I think that they have demonstrated, the federal government has demonstrated over a period of time that they don't have the will to make those tough decisions. I don't think that by putting this in the Constitution it's going to change anything. I think there will be even a greater inclination to move the costs on to the states who are already strapped.

MR. LEHRER: Now, Chuck Berry, you're in the same legislature, and you look at this issue, and you see it differently. Why?

MR. BERRY: Well, I think a constitutional amendment will require the federal government to balance the budget, and if they don't, people can go to court and enforce the Constitution. There are some --

MR. LEHRER: So that they don't need the will. In other words, Mike Feeley says they don't have the will. You're saying they wouldn't need it with a constitutional amendment, is that right?

MR. BERRY: I agree that the Congress hasn't had the will in the last 40 years to balance the budget, and it's very difficult to do it in the future, given the power of the special interest groups that want to spend more and more of our federal tax dollar. That's why it needs to be in the Constitution, so we can have externally imposed discipline on the Congress, but they really have no choice but to balance the budget.

MR. LEHRER: What about Mike Feeley's fear that they'll do it on your back, in other words, they will balance the federal budget but they'll just shift the burdens to you all in the states?

MR. BERRY: Well, I'm hopeful that this new Congress, in addition to passing a balanced budget amendment, will work on the mandates legislation and basically say that there won't be any more unfunded federal mandates passed on to the states where they say this is a good program, states, you go pay for it. I agree with Mike in that area, but I'm hopeful that the new Congress will address that issue while they're addressing the balanced budget amendment.

MR. LEHRER: Mike Feeley, you have a balanced budget amendment already imposed in the state of Colorado on the state government. Why don't you think -- first of all, how do you think that works for you all, and if you think it works, why, why not try it at the federal level?

MR. FEELEY: Well, I think that the situation between the federal government and state government is substantially different. We're much smaller. We, however, have had to discipline ourselves to ensure that we don't pass along mandates to local governments, to our counties and our cities, and we have a tradition of, of not doing that, even though we get caught at it every now and then, and I think that the federal government just does not have that discipline or that tradition. We're fighting with years and years of bloated federal budgets that have not been properly handled. The tools are there right now to balance the budget.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Kasich, what do you say to the Mike Feeleys of this world that say what you all will do up here in Washington is just balance it on their -- just shift it over?

REP. KASICH: You know, we're going to have a statute that's going to do the unfunded mandates, and then we're going to come back with a constitutional amendment. And we've got George Voinovich and the Republican governors who raised the most cain about unfunded mandates leading the effort to try to block a continuation of that. In fact, not only are we not going to mandate any more, we've got to look at repealing a lot of stuff that we already mandated on them, onerous laws like the Clean Air Act which went too far and was not based on good science, but you know what, the legislator that just spoke made my point. In 1979, I carried the balanced budget amendment in the state legislature. They said at the time, well, Congress will do it on its own, and that was in 1979, and, of course, we've rung up probably a trillion dollars in debt in the meantime. What the legislator said is right. That balanced budget amendment in the states forces the legislators to prioritize. Without it at the federal level, Jim, this is not political, this is not Republicans against Democrats, this is about the future of this country. And, you know, there's concern about putting it in the Constitution. Let me tell you my concern. If we don't give the Congress the tools and the backbone to stand up against special interest groups, we'll be back here in another five years deeper in debt, and we are going to mortgage the future of our children. Of course, we shouldn't mandate anything on local government. We'll stop that practice, but, my goodness, if we can get that balanced budget amendment, we can sit there with the special interest groups, and those special interest groups and people from home and tell 'em we can't afford it.

MR. LEHRER: Alice Rivlin, let me raise to you the point that Chuck Berry raised in Colorado, that without a federal amendment, without a constitutional amendment, the folks in Washington, and he includes you as well as the people in Congress, do not -- will not have the will to do it, to balance the budget.

MS. RIVLIN: I believe we have shown otherwise. The Clinton administration, together with the last Congress, made enormous progress on getting the budget deficit down. We have taken it down from $290 billion in 1992 to under $200 billion this year. Now, that's still too much, but we didn't need a constitutional amendment top do that. We just needed to vote the specifics, and that's what we need to do again. And this Congress has more conservatives in it, more people that want to cut programs, so I don't see why we need a constitutional amendment. We just need to do it.

MR. LEHRER: Chuck Berry, what about that point? In fact, that point's been made by others, that, hey, wait a minute, we now have a Republican Congress, people are committed to cutting waste and, and all kinds of things out of the federal budget, why do you need a constitutional amendment? And also, you heard what Alice Rivlin said, the Clinton administration is on board too, so what's the problem?

MR. BERRY: Apparently, in the last Congress, the Clinton administration working with the Democratic Congress imposed the largest tax increase in American history. That's one of the ways that they thought that they could reduce the budget. Most Americans don't want that. They want to start by cutting spending, and absolutely, as Congressman Kasich says, there's going to be a long list of cuts on the table. But in the meantime, we've been working on this for 40 years. I think we owe it to our children and our grandchildren to put this kind of limitation in the Constitution. You know, Thomas Jefferson, late in his life, wrote a letter and said if there was one change he could make in the Constitution of the United States it would be to put a debt limit in there to not allow the Congress to pass on a debt from one generation to another. We've done that in several generations here in America in this century, and I think it's time to stop. And it would be a real legacy, I believe, for the long term to stop this kind of action, put in our federal Constitution the same kind of limitations that we have in the states, and the whole system, I believe, will work better in the long run.

MR. LEHRER: Mike Feeley, what do you think? Will it not only -- do you think -- first of all, you obviously don't think it will work better? What do you think would be the impact in your state of Colorado if there is, in fact, a constitutional amendment?

MR. FEELEY: Well, I think that the special interests that are there right now and are fighting for programs are still going to be there, even if this passes. I think there's all types of questions that would be opened up in the event we do pass it. How long does it take? I am disappointed that the leadership in Congress right now won't answer the simple questions, what programs are going to be cut, is Medicaid going to be cut, is defense going to be cut? I don't see why we can't have that discussion so the people before they enact this into the Constitution, before they carve it in stone, can't start discussing and thinking about some of the issues that will be necessary in order to achieve a balanced budget.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Kasich, tell Mike Feeley why you can't have that discussion now.

REP. KASICH: Well, no, we -- I would commend him to the two budgets that the Republicans wrote over the last two years, the cutting spending first budget and the budget last year, and we will have a budget that will come out in April, so before, it will get us on the glide path to zero, so he'll have an opportunity to take a look at it, but what I would say to the gentleman is that next year we'll even be more creative than we were this year in an effort to try to dramatically innovate federal government programs. Jim, one other comment about special interests. You know, they're not just people that wear black hats. They're the Farm Bureau and the people who own the small markets across the country and the transit officials, all of them come here and say, I'm right, I've got to be carved out, and what the balanced budget amendment says is to all of them, look, we've got to set priorities, and of course, you're still going to be here, of course, you're still going to have demands, but we can't mortgage the future, and you know what, they come to understand that. They come to shake their heads and say, yeah, I guess you've got a problem, similar to what happened during the early years of Gramm-Rudman.

MR. LEHRER: So what do you do? What do you use, Alice Rivlin, if you don't have the tools of the balanced budget amendment, how do you deal with the people that John Kasich just went through?

MS. RIVLIN: Oh, I think we have all the tools we need, and John Kasich and his colleagues have just got to join us in a little courage and say, we need to cut these programs and we will do that, and everything has to be cut, and that is unnecessary or a low priority, but we've got to keep the things that the government really must do and not cut those in mindless ways.

MR. LEHRER: What would you say to people who, who would say, well, this election on November the 8th was about a feeling in the country that that courage does not exist in Washington right now?

MS. RIVLIN: I think Washington listens to the country. I think they have heard -- we have all heard -- certainly we in the Clinton administration have heard that the country wants a less big and much less interfering federal government, and I think they can get it without writing it into the Constitution in ways that in years down the road might be very harmful, more harmful to our grandchildren than a -- than the situation we have now.

MR. LEHRER: Well, we have to leave it there. Alice Rivlin, gentlemen, John Kasich in Washington and gentlemen in Colorado, thank you, thank you all four very much. FOCUS - EDITORS' VIEWS - BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

MR. MAC NEIL: Now the same balanced budget debate as viewed by our panel of regional editors and columnists. With us tonight are four regulars, Ed Baumeister of the Trenton, New Jersey Times; Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune; Lee Cullum of the Dallas Morning News; and Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Constitution. They're joined tonight by Patrick McGuigan of The Daily Oklahoman in Oklahoma City and Phil Haslanger of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. Cynthia Tucker, will the country be better off? Will our grandchildren be better off with a balanced budget amendment in place or without it?

MS. TUCKER: Robin, I fear that they won't be. Let me say first of all that the country is absolutely too deeply in debt, and Congress must absolutely discipline spending, but I have two concerns about the balanced budget amendment. One is that it would give the President and Congress absolutely no room in special cases. Sometimes to get out of depressions or recessions, history teaches us that the government needs to spend more money, increase public spending. You might -- the government might have to go into debt to do that, and the balanced budget amendment would not allow that. But my greater fear is that Congress would find a series of gimmicks to escape really following the spirit of a balanced budget amendment. Suppose, for example, they decide to take Medicare off budget. We just don't count that. And we'll continue to spend as much on it as we ever have, or perhaps even more, but we'll call the budget balanced. And I have the very great fear that if we do that, we'd be in bigger trouble than we are now.

MR. MAC NEIL: Lee Cullum, how do you feel about the fears that Cynthia Tucker has?

MS. CULLUM: Robert, I think Cynthia makes some sense. There is no question that to write this economic policy, a balanced budget, into the Constitution as a constitutional principle does do away with the Keynesian stimulus that would allow us to lower taxes or increase spending in order to fight a recession, no doubt about that. However, the deficit is so high now, in excess of $200 billion, that such a stimulus is out of the question and will be out of the question for another ten or twenty years. So I think we're going to have to have the balanced budget amendment to force this country, not just the Congress, the country to face up to its true circumstances, and if twenty, thirty years from now the amendment has to be repealed, that can be done. Jefferson, himself, would approve of that, but for the next two decades, we're going to need the amendment.

MR. MAC NEIL: Phil Haslanger in Madison, we need it specially for the next two decades, what do you feel?

MR. HASLANGER: No, I don't think so. I think I share Cynthia's concerns that politicians are ultimately very creative people and will find ways to get around this. I'm concerned that if the amendment does go into effect, we're going to have federal judges making decisions about budgets, rather than Congress, because people will be challenging the decisions and taking it to court. I'm concerned about what will be pushed back upon the states. And I'm -- what happens if we take an amendment out to the states, and the states don't adopt it, is that a green light then for Congress to spend as much as it wants?

MR. MAC NEIL: How about that, Patrick McGuigan in Oklahoma City?

MR. McGUIGAN: No, it wouldn't be a green light for more spending. I think clearly this debate that's even gotten this amendment this close to enactment shows that the people want fiscal discipline. One of the things that interests me about this is the lack of times that the experience of the states is actually compared to what they discuss here. We've had this since the 1940's in Oklahoma, and it seemed to work pretty well. The state operates on estimated revenues. Those estimates are revised as you get closer to the fiscal year. People operate within those parameters. It does not end policy debates. It does not end the process that has to be gone through of deciding what you really want to spend money on, and what you have to cut this year. That will all continue, but what it does bring to bear is the discipline of a balanced budget. And if we don't get that in this country, all the horror stories that Kasich and others have pointed to, I fear, will come true.

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, Mr. McGuigan, what about the argument of Mr. Feeley, the minority leader in the Colorado senate, where they, like you, have a requirement to balance the budget, that the federal government is just a different institution than state governments, that it needs to have a different flexibility?

MR. McGUIGAN: Well, it's certainly a different institution. It's a different level of our government. The problem is, other than defense, the federal government has gotten into a lot of things that are best left to the states and the people. This whole tenth amendment and the prairie wildfire movement that's happening out here in the West is linked to this idea of rolling back the role of government. And one of the things Kasich is trying to point out in all of this is the things the Republicans intend to do that will, in fact, lessen the role of the federal government in our lives and leave more of these questions to the states and the people where they belong.

MR. MAC NEIL: Ed Baumeister, do you see this as mainly an effort to get rid of the deficit or reduce the debt, or an effort to get rid -- Republicans to get rid of programs that Democratic administrations have accumulated?

MR. BAUMEISTER: I think it's the latter, clearly. I mean, when you listen to Congressman Kasich, what he's saying is, listen, we can't do this, we can't balance the budget without this. You know, we had a 12-step program in Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, and that didn't work, and now we need another 12-step program to get us to do it. It's like him saying, you know, please send me to my room. It seems to me that what this is, is an attempt to use the financial difficulties of the nation to re-craft, re-design the role of government. Clearly, the Republicans think it's much too big everywhere, and I think in most newspapers this morning there's a picture of a federal helicopter moving a Canadian wolf to the United States, to Yellow Stone, and people ask me: Should we be spending money on that? I think that there is probably theRepublican will to balance the budget, given the current crop in the Congress, but I think it goes well beyond that. It goes -- it goes to the accretion of programs since the New Deal, and they see this as an effective way of getting it done.

MR. MAC NEIL: Clarence, how do you see it?

MR. PAGE: Well, I certainly agree that the public wants -- demands some fiscal responsibility and discipline in budget making in Washington. Unfortunately, I disagree that we have had a real debate so far. Sen. Paul Simon from Illinois, the state I operate out of, kind of launched this debate in earnest a few years ago as a leading Democratic proponent of a balanced budget amendment, and the reason why he did was sort of as a last resort, something John Kasich referred to earlier, "we can't balance the budget without it, we need these tools." There's one of my friends back in Chicago who says it's like Washington is sending out a ransom note on itself saying that stop us before we spend again. In fact, it's kind of a -- too good to be true, and it probably is not true, that this balanced budget amendment is going to bring the budget into balance. What it will do is to throw ultimate budget making authority over to the Supreme Court. We heard that earlier in the comments made by the Colorado legislators, that if Congress can't come to agreement on, on who's going to feel the most pain, it goes to the Supreme Court, in other words, an unbalanced budget goes to the court. What would the Supreme Court do? It probably would demand across-the-board cuts, meaning everybody gets angry and starts looking for the folks who first advanced this balanced budget amendment idea. I suspect that it may not even get through the states, but when it really gets to the point where it's down to two or three states, we may see a lot of people balking.

MR. MAC NEIL: One of the arguments that the Clinton administration is putting forward, and we heard Ms. Rivlin articulate it again, is that Republicans should have to spell out the cuts they would make to balance the budget. Lee Cullum in Dallas, do you think the Republicans should have to do that before the movement to make the amendment goes forward?

MS. CULLUM: No, Robin, I don't think that makes any sense. It's perfectly obvious if you start spelling out the cuts, we'll never get this amendment passed. I think it's a practical political matter. We're talking about a painful thing here. It's -- I think there is going to be a pain for a number of people. There already is. This is simply a ratification of what already exists. I do want to say that we have a balanced budget amendment here in Texas. We've had it for more than the whole of the century. We've had only one problem back in 1903. The state comptroller, who last Friday, every Friday before the legislature meets on Tuesday, and it meets tomorrow here in Texas, must say how much money is available for the next two years. In Texas, it's 78.2 billion for the next two years. In 1903, the comptroller gave his report. People got so upset they shot and killed him, but they still couldn't raise the 4/5 vote it would take to override his figures. So the balanced budget amendment endures in Texas. I think it would endure in the country but with some activity in the courts. Clarence is right about that.

MR. MAC NEIL: Cynthia, do you think the Republicans should have to spell out what the cuts would be before they go ahead with the amendment as the White House is saying?

MS. TUCKER: I think that both the Republicans and the Democrats ought to come forward and let the people know honestly what would be involved in balancing the budget. Alice Rivlin gave the figures earlier this evening, $1.2 trillion in cuts. Now, again, I think that this -- the government needs to have much more fiscal discipline, but I think that the average American voter believes that the budget can be balanced by tossing off a few widely unpopular programs, foreign aid, welfare spending, grants to the humanities and the arts. That is simply not the case. And I think the American people ought to be informed about what the hard choices will be if the budget is going to be balanced.

MR. MAC NEIL: How about that, Mr. McGuigan?

MR. McGUIGAN: I don't agree at all. I mean, the entire fiscal situation will change in the next two or three years as the Republicans make some of these other cuts. The economy will be more dynamic. The situation will change. We also have a balanced budget amendment in Oklahoma that's somewhat similar to the one in Texas. The estimate of revenue is put forward, the board of equalization can then tinker with that if they wish, and then that is what is sent to the legislature. It's fine tuned as the fiscal year approaches. This has not been the source of crisis. What's been the source of crisis is that dollar figure. Once you know what that dollar figure is, that's what you have to work with, no more, no less. This idea that somehow what has worked in 48 of the states relatively well cannot work on the national level is just offensive to me. I don't understand it.

MR. MAC NEIL: Is it offensive to you, Phil Haslanger?

MR. HASLANGER: Well, I think there are a couple of points that are worth making here. One is I'm less concerned about what the - - whether the Republicans and Democrats spell out the cuts in the future is looking at what they're talking about right now. They're talking about a big increase in military spending. They're talking about a middle class tax cut. Those aren't things that are going to help bring down the deficit. Beyond that, we kind of look at what's been happening in Wisconsin, like Texas, like Oklahoma, we have a balanced budget amendment in this state. We have since the beginning of the state, but the state also can borrow money on capital budget, which is not included in the federal budget, and when a state gets in trouble, it looks to the federal government for help, whether it's for a hurricane or an earthquake or for a savings & loan crisis.

MR. MAC NEIL: Clarence Page, the Washington Post in an editorial yesterday says the really dangerous thing in this proposal from their point of view is that in this balanced budget amendment a 3/5 majority in both Houses would be required to vote for an unbalanced budget, which the Post argues would enshrine minority control in the Congress. Do you agree with that? Do you see that as a danger? What do you think?

MR. PAGE: That's an interesting mechanism or scenario, which is undoubtedly true. I wonder, though, about the real problem, which is that the most, the most widely felt pain that would be felt in the budget would be the most necessary cuts, in other words, the biggest spending items and the most popular items, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense. I don't know of any minority in Congress that seriously wants to offend such, such large blocks of voters as are represented by those groups, and so I really suspect that we're going to run into a continued problem trying to get Congress to be accountable and that this balanced budget amendment is a cop-out, tossing accountability over to the courts as Congress always does with hot button issues like abortion and affirmative action.

MR. MAC NEIL: Do you think this super majority, heavily weighted majority, issue is an important one?

MR. BAUMEISTER: It is. The right hand is the balanced budget amendment. The left hand is the super majority. As we were discussing before, there's an attempt here to bring down the size of this beast and hand in hand, if it goes through, it well may work.

MR. MAC NEIL: Go back to you for a moment, Mr. McGuigan. Are you saying that you think because of the changing economy and the cuts the Republicans will make in the next couple of years, that you can balance the budget over seven years without doing what Ms. Rivlin said you will have to do, and that is either cut Social Security or Medicare or defense, because those are the only items in the budget that are big enough to cut?

MR. McGUIGAN: I don't know what the situation will be in two or three years. No one can predict that. I do know that just as in Oklahoma, we had budget crises in 1990, and the situation is different now, what the spending needs to be directed towards. Right now, the discussion is on higher education and corrections. In 1990, it was more focused on common education. The issues and the dynamic changes, the nature of Congress changes. As far as the super majority requirement goes, that is, in fact, a protection for minorities, minorities of a different kind maybe than the way we define them normally, but property owners, people who are income producers, people who are income earners. Those folks, that provides a little bit of protection against the ability of simple majorities to increase taxes on their backs in order to continue some of these programs.

MR. MAC NEIL: Cynthia, how do you feel about the Kasich argument, which Mr. McGuigan I think agrees with, that because of creative budgeting over the next few years that it won't be necessary to make the sort of draconian cuts that Ms. Rivlin and the Democrats say?

MS. TUCKER: It would have to be very creative, indeed, Robin. It strikes me as a very similar argument that the supply side economists made in the early 80's, that we're going to cut taxes, and we're going to produce so much income that the debt will automatically disappear. Well, we know what happened to that. Let me say one more thing about the balanced budget amendment in the states. Georgia has a balanced budget requirement in state law in its constitution. It's very similar to that of Texas, but I have never been persuaded that that is the best way to do business. It does not allow any imagination, anywhere to go, when you have special needs, and I was delighted to hear someone say earlier that we have to bear in mind that the states do not bear most of the responsibility for taking care of people who are in need, taking care of people who are elderly. So it is easy enough for the states to balance their budget. Those are the things that we expect the federal government to do.

MR. MAC NEIL: Okay. Sorry to cut into you, Cynthia, but we have to end it there. Thank you and everyone else. UPDATE - BATTLE FOR CHECHNYA

MR. LEHRER: Next tonight, that Russian war in Chechnya. Much of the latest fighting has been over the presidential palace in the Chechen capital of Grozny. Julian Manyon of Independent Television News reports.

JULIAN MANYON, ITN: The Chechens are now making a desperate stand around their presidential palace. In the ruins left by constant shelling, small groups of fighters try to save their wounded as they exchange fire with Russian snipers. They are heavily outnumbered, totally outgunned, but they are still fighting. Under shell fire, the Chechens are still pushing in reinforcements. Indeed, in this confused battle in an inner city, they may even be scoring some successes. [artillery fire] Heavy fighting is now going around the Denamo football stadium over there, which is about 1/2 mile away from the presidential palace. The football stadium is one of the main staging points for the Russian forces inside the city. And the fact that so much fighting is happening there indicates that in that district at least, the Chechen lines are holding. But the presidential palace is at the heart of the battle, and while the Chechens still hold it, the Russians cannot claim any kind of victory. Scores of the rebels, both men and women, are still occupying the building which has been repeatedly set ablaze by the Russian shells which strike each day and night. The basement has been turned into a makeshift hospital, where volunteer medical staff work in the hearth light to try and save the wounded. The Chechens still hold one important card, a large number of Russian prisoners. In a village south of Grozny, they paraded 39 members of the supposedly elite Russian Parachute Brigade. THese men were sent on a reconnaissance mission but surrendered when they were cut off.

MR. LEHRER: Several Russian military units have been involved in the effort to bring Chechnya under control. Among them are troops from the interior ministry. Ian Williams of Independent Television News met up with some of them this weekend in the town of Nazran. Here is his report.

IAN WILLIAMS, ITN: On a muddy hillside in Western Chechnya, troops from Russia's interior ministry scramble at the sight of an approaching armored personnel carrier. They don't know if it's one of theirs or one of the Chechens'. As it passes, they open fire, wildly, still none the wiser who they're firing at. Minutes later, a white car is spotted on a road below them. With little thought, they again open fire. Somebody shouts that it looks like a car from which a gunman fired at them yesterday, and they give chase in a small tank, shooting at the car in the distance. This is how we met these troops, when our car came under fire without warning. A passenger in another traveling on the same road was shot in the chest. These soldiers are nerveless and ill disciplined. One officer, who told us only that his name was Yuri, said they're only responding to attacks on them, launched from local villages.

YURI: [speaking through interpreter] During the night, the local population comes out. They have an arms dump somewhere here. During the night, they mine the roads, and in the morning, our armor gets blown up. Snipers are shooting at night. We have already lost several of our guys. It's hard.

IAN WILLIAMS: These men are isolated and confused. During the quieter periods, they have target practice, firing at boxes and bottles on the slopes behind their camp. The base is near the village of Zartan Yurit, some 20 miles West of Grozny. Their role is, supposedly, to disarm fighters who may have fled to villages outside the capital. But few of these men want to be here. They don't understand what they're supposed to be doing. All they know for sure is that the local people don't want them, and the more nervous they get, the more cruel and unpredictable they become. These pictures were shot earlier in another local village where 52 cows were slaughtered by interior ministry troops. They attacked a farm in apparent retribution after a sniper allegedly fired at them from the village. The deputy commander of 2,000 interior ministry troops in the region is Andre Skripnikov, known as "The Owl." He told us he is a cruel person by nature and believes the soldiers here have been betrayed by the Russian government.

ANDRE SKRIPNIKOV: [speaking through interpreter] We, as the interior ministry troops, are conducting battles of so-called local significance here, but we are losing people for the sake of nothing. It is terrible what we have here. If I had an order to go back home, I would be happy to go and hug my wife and children. I don't need anything else.

IAN WILLIAMS: The troops complain they are short of food and at the weekend, they shot a cow from a local farm, this time for a meal. They have been able to celebrate new year and the Russian Christmas last weekend. These men, interior ministry troops and special Spetsnas forces, are among the toughest in the Russian armed forces. But many complain that Christmas was a somber event. Few of their families know they are stationed in Chechnya, nor that they are already fighting what is becoming the second more deadly phase of the Chechen War. There's been much talk about if there will be a guerrilla war once Grozny has been taken. This provides ample evidence that such a war is already beginning, and these troops, inexperienced and edgy, are already bearing the brunt of it. Since our car had been crippled by gunfire, we left the area courtesy of an army truck, passing columns of fresh tanks heading for Grozny, more than 30, plus all manner of support vehicles. For these tanks, Grozny is still the target, though another war is already underway in the countryside and hills around them. ESSAY - EXPOSED TO DANGER

MR. MAC NEIL: Finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt talks about some of the unintended casualties of conflicts like the one in Chechnya.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: A painful statistic reported in the New York Times a few weeks ago: 56 journalists were killed in war zones in 1993. Many of these 56 were photographers, photojournalists, which sadly makes sense. Photojournalists have to get close to the action, which means close to the danger. Once in Beirut in 1982, a photographer had to be pulled down from the top of a roof of a building which he had climbed to get a clear picture of the people who were shooting at him. He was crazy, to be sure. But most photographers are. Or to go softer on their mental stability, the will to get the effective shot puts them, by necessity, in the line of fire. So they may not be crazy technically, but it helps. What they are doing in these murderous places like Rwanda, the Sudan, Somalia, Haiti, Central America, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, the Middle East, is getting a representation of the story so that people not there can see it. The debate over whether photography is a true art will probably never be settled, but one thing it has in common with art, the art of literature as well as the arts of painting and sculpture, is that it makes one see. To see is to believe, which is why there is a proper fight these days over computer digitized photographs. The altered picture makes you believe what you see, but what you see is not what the photographer saw, because people know how important, how trusted pictures are, how seriously they are taken, how much they reveal. Photojournalists are treated much more warily in war zones or anywhere else actually than writers. I recently wrote a story in Brooklyn, New York, a minor war zone, with the great photographer, Sebastian Salgado. Nobody minded my presence in the neighborhood in which we traveled. I was deemed odd but harmless with my pen and pad of paper. Salgado, on the other hand, was a source of imperiling exposure with his camera, someone who for any reason did not wish to be seen could be caught in a lens. The great war photographers, James Nachtway, Susan Miseilas, Eugene Smith, know that when people turn away from them, they are also turning away from the truth. Sometimes when these photojournalists pursue the truth too avidly, someone shoots them back. You remember Eddie Adam's famous photo of the Viet Cong prisoner being shot with a pistol by a Vietnamese officer, or the most famous war photo of all, Robert Cappa's Spanish Civil War soldier taking a bullet on the run. In both these instances, two shots went off at the same time. One caught death; one caught the life of death. It is the life of death that war journalists seek to show; the moments of extreme human behavior in which all gestures toward rationality, peace treaties, truces, talks have been cast away like trash, and people are naked apes again, though better armed. Why does one need to see the light of death? Why send photojournalists to places where they are likely to be killed? Editors suffer a good deal of heartsick guilt when a reporter dies on assignment. Why do the journalists go? To get the story, is always the answer. And maybe that is deeper than it sounds. The story in Rwanda or Bosnia or in Haiti is of people who do not know how to get along in groups, in other words, the oldest story, the story of us. So year after year, men and women with pens, pads, and cameras in hand are dispatched to continue to tell this old story, because the story is incomplete, not yet fully told, and it always has a bad end. One day, perhaps, we will get the story of us right, and there will be no danger in telling it. Until then, war journalists will go to work, and many will die, as many as 56 in a year, for no higher purpose than to show the world what it looks like. I'm Roger Rosenblatt.

MR. MAC NEIL: An American photojournalist, a young freelancer named Cynthia Elbaum, was killed by a Russian bomb in Chechnya two weeks ago. RECAP

MR. MAC NEIL: Again, the other major stories of this Monday, jury selection began in New York for 12 Muslim men charged with plotting a wave of urban terrorism, and flooding forced evacuation of several hundred people in Northern California. More rain was forecast for the area later this week. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.