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
Famous quotes containing the words balanced and/or budget:
“[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)
“The United States is the only great nation whose government is operated without a budget. The fact is to be the more striking when it is considered that budgets and budget procedures are the outgrowth of democratic doctrines and have an important part in developing the modern constitutional rights.... The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)