A balanced budget (particularly that of a government) is a budget with revenues equal to expenditures, and neither a budget deficit nor a budget surplus ("the accounts balance"). More generally, it refers to a budget with no deficit, but possibly with a surplus. A cyclically balanced budget is a budget that is not necessarily balanced year-to-year, but is balanced over the economic cycle, running a surplus in boom years and running a deficit in lean years, with these offsetting over time.
Balanced budgets, and the associated topic of budget deficits, are a contentious point within academic economics and within politics. The mainstream economic view is that having a balanced budget in every year is not desirable, with budget deficits in lean times being desirable. Most economists have also agreed that a balanced budget would decrease interest rates, increase savings and investment, shrink trade deficits and help the economy grow faster over a longer period of time.
Read more about Balanced Budget: Economic Views, Balanced Budget Multiplier
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... Because of the multiplier effect, it is possible to change aggregate demand (Y) keeping a balanced budget ... In general, a change in the balanced budget will change aggregate demand by an amount equal to the change in spending ... Balanced budget multiplier as taxes depend on income ...
... A balanced-budget amendment is a constitutional rule requiring that the state cannot spend more than its income ... Balanced-budget provisions have been added to the constitutions of most U.S ... It is often proposed that a balanced-budget rule be added to the national United States Constitution ...
... The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (99th Congress, S.1702, Pub.L ... § 900) and Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Reaffirmation Act of 1987 (Pub.L ... budget ...
... and would have committed the president to a seven-year balanced budget ... The shutdown ended when Clinton agreed to submit a CBO-approved balanced budget plan ... from the perception that the Republicans' hardline budget stance was owed partly to an alleged snub of Gingrich by Clinton during a flight on Air Force One to and from Yitzhak Rabin's funeral in Israel ...
Famous quotes containing the words budget and/or balanced:
“We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“[T]hat moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty. It is then that the plight of being alive becomes attenuated to its least possible dimensions.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)