thing to halt Bill Clinton's limited health care reforms, quite another to pile even higher medical bills onto millions of hard-pressed middle income US families.
It's hard to see how either of the parties of big business in the USA would even countenance cuch a move Pensions With an increasingly aging population the difficulties deepen further. It has been calculated that by 2010 pensions and health care alone will need the total budget revenue. Dick Armey, the House majority leader acknowledged that the extent of cuts required - "will make the knees of congressmen buckle".
Both Republican and Democrat politicians are well aware of this. But neither party wants to make it an issue for fear of sparking off mass opposition.
The scale of cuts required is THIEF LIAR CROOK • ADULTERER PSYCHO staggering. Perhaps this is why the Republicans have left a number of loopholes for themselves. The amendment does not specify what would happen if the budget was not balanced. It could also be waived in the face of 'imminent and serious military threat'.
They have also been careful to place the requirement of "balancing' upon the President, not the Congress, so that it would be the President who was seen as responsible for the cuts.
In a sense then the Republican proposed law is not intended for implementation. Economic commentators are unimpressed by the move.
The Financial Times editorial sniffs its nose, declaring "as is well known, the economic logic behind such a rule is flawed, at best".
Alan Greenspan the chairman of the Federal Reserve board has warned that the markets would react badly to any change in the budgeting system.
What is in no doubt however is that it is intended to prepare the ground for massive cuts in welfare and set in course a profound restructuring of society into what the new House speaker Newt Gingrich calls 'the conservative opportunity society'.
This is a code word for social dumping, mass unemployment, the strengthening of the repressive state and the war on the poor. Gingrich has promised $500 credit for every child in a tax-paying family and to halve capital gains tax.
Moreover the 'Contract with America' commits itself not only to restoring defence spending, but to financing a new development of the hugely expensive Strategic Defence Initiative - more money to big business less to those who need it most.
The Democrat response has by the Republican poll victory. But a second glance at the supposed 'Republican landslide' indicates otherwise.
In the November 1994 election only 38 per cent of those eligible to vote took part. It was a 'landslide' of 20 per cent of eligible voters! The real landslide was one of rejection - a rejection of an electoral and political system that is totally failing the majority ot Americans.
The lack of resistance by Clinton to the ultra right offensive led Gingrich to conclude after their meeting that there was a "real willingness to try to find a way to work together".
All the mock radicalism in which Clinton draped himself before his election has disappeared. He is even proposing a bill to deny benefits to single mothers.
There is no more sorry a sight than Hiliary Clinton confessing to how she had been "naive and dumb". On the focal point of the Democrat election campaign she now says "I regret very much the efforts on healthcare were badly misunderstood, taken out of context, and used politically against the Administration. I take responsibility for that, and I am very sorry for that".
Instead of fighting back, the President has taken to the road with his "middle-class bill of rights" - a half hearted attempt to honour some of his campaign promises.
In every significant area the