Balanced Budgets American Politics

A topical issue but hardly a new one, the concern for balancing the federal budget has been a perennial source of conflict in American political life. In Balanced Budgets and American Politics, James Savage explores the causes and development of the nation's preoccupation with this issue. Savage argues that the American fascination with the idea of balancing the federal budget is deeply rooted and reflects more than a contemporary concern about interest rates, inflation, or even the outcome of recent budget battles. His analysis demonstrates the considerable influence that the principle budget balancing has had on politics and public policy from 1690 through Ronald Reagan's first term as president.

When the first edition of Why Budgets Matter was published in 2003, the federal budget had fallen back into deficit. At the time, fairly modest changes in taxes and spending would have ensured that deficits and debt would remain at tolerable levels. Instead, the disconnect between taxes and spending that had plagued the United States since the 1960s grew even greater. A near-catastrophic economic collapse beginning in December 2007 then magnified the fiscal consequences of irresponsible policy choices. This new edition examines how and why the balanced-budget equilibrium of the 1990s was destabilized in the 2000s. It also places this latest partisan battle over the size of government in historical perspective by exploring its connection to earlier budget policy eras.

This Second Edition of Kettl's landmark work on public budgeting has been completely updated and is now part of the "Longman Classics in Political Science" series. Deficit Politics, as part of the Longman Classics series, features a new Foreword by Ross K. Baker of Rutgers University. The rest of the text has been completely updated. Like the original, the Second Edition puts deficit politics at the center of our political system and explores the politics of public budgeting with special attention to its historical roots (what are the traditional battles over budgeting?), economic impact (how do budgets steer the economy?), and the role of political institutions (how do presidents and members of Congress, in particular, resolve the political tradeoffs that lie at the core of budgetary policy?).

From the clashes between Federalists and Republicans in the 1790s until today, partisan battles over taxing, spending, and public debt have shaped American political development. These battles were formerly constrained by fiscal norms that mandated balanced budgets and low debt. In his Farewell Address, President George Washington counseled the nation to "cherish public credit" by using "it as sparingly as possible". In the 1980s, however, tax cuts and spending increases created large structural deficits and much higher debt levels. With only a brief interruption in the late 1990s, deficit politics has been a mainstay ever since. Over this period, the Republican Party has passed large tax cuts but failed to retrench the large entitlement programs that continue to raise spending. Likewise, the Democratic Party has expanded the domestic role of government but has abandoned the broad-based taxation it supported in the 1990s. Funding their domestic agenda with matching revenues is now as unappealing for Democrats as entitlement cutbacks are for Republicans, contributing to the current stalemate of Republican tax policy, Democratic spending policy, and soaring deficits and debt. The economic risks this entails are serious, yet an end to the era of deficit politics is nowhere in sight.