
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 8, 1995                   TAG: 9504100033
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: NEWSDAY
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

GINGRICH VOWS TO BALANCE FEDERAL BUDGET WITHIN 7 YEARS

House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in an unprecedented televised speech from the Capitol on Friday night, told the nation that Republicans intend to balance the federal budget in seven years without touching Social Security or raising taxes.

But Gingrich, in his 25-minute prime-time speech, conceded that the now-completed ``Contract With America'' was ``the preliminary skirmish to the big battles yet to come.''

``The big battles will deal with how we remake the government of the United States,'' Gingrich said.

Perhaps mindful of polls that indicate voters see him as extreme or too partisan and divisive, Gingrich pledged to ``open a dialogue because we want to create a new partnership with the American people, a plan to remake the government and balance the budget that is the American people's plan - not the House Republican plan, not the Gingrich plan.''

Gingrich said he anticipated ``screams from the special-interest groups.'' But he promised that the ``budget can be balanced even with the problems of the federal government without touching a penny of Social Security and without raising taxes.''

Indeed, he said, overall spending on the way to a balanced budget in 2002 would increase, limited to about 3 percent a year.

But even such an increase, when inflation is included, means a decrease, which would be compounded as the population and its needs grow. Furthermore, while overall spending might rise marginally, cutting sharply into the rate of spending would inevitably mean the death of many programs and the abolition of federal departments and agencies that employ thousands and serve millions. Already Republicans have targeted the departments of Commerce, Education, Transportation and Energy for consolidation or death.

Gingrich indicated that such changes would be in the works. ``The key is the willingness to change, to set priorities, to redesign the government, to recognize that this is not the 1960s,'' when many social programs were passed.

He repeated, however, that ``Social Security is off the table. But that leaves a lot on the table - corporate welfare, subsidies of every special interest. Defense is on the table.''

Gingrich, who also is a history teacher, sat on the edge of a table in his second-floor Capitol office and much of his speech repeated his classroom lectures at a Georgia college on ``Renewing American Civilization.''

He ticked off the items in the 10-point ``Contract With America'' that were passed under his leadership by the Republican-dominated House of Representatives. It was the first step, he said, in the Republican effort to change a federal government that has ``an allegiance to failure.''

In a response meant to dramatize their view that the Republicans have taken from programs for the poor to provide tax breaks for the wealthy, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and his house counterpart, Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., made their replies from a classroom in an Arlington, Va., elementary school.

Gephardt derided the contract: ``Never before has so much been done, in so little time, to help so few, at the expense of so many.'' And he denounced Republicans for cutting back on school lunch programs, job training funds and college loans.

Daschle, in shirtsleeves, charged that the contract's tax cut favored corporations and the wealthiest of Americans, and demonstrated the Republicans' ``true loyalty to the forces of privilege and power.''

President Clinton, speaking earlier at the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Dallas, said he was ready to work with Gingrich and the Republicans, but not if they kill worthwhile programs.

Gingrich, speaking in professorial tones and with little of the pugnacity he has become noted for, called on high school and college students to study the effect of budget deficits on their lives.

While congressional leaders have addressed the nation before, they've usually done so in reply to the president of the opposite party. Gingrich's appearance was a first, for he took the initiative, asking for and getting free television time, to deliver a presidential-style state of the union report.

by CNB