To balance the US budget, the government can increase revenue (through tax hikes, closing loopholes) or decrease spending (by cutting programs or increasing efficiency). A balanced budget occurs when government revenues equal expenditures, eliminating a deficit. However, the US Constitution does not require a balanced budget, and achieving one is complex, requiring politically difficult choices about which taxes to raise, which programs to cut, or how to combine both strategies.  

Strategies to Balance the Budget

• Increase Government Revenue:
  • Raise Taxes: This could involve increasing overall income tax rates, payroll taxes, or implementing new taxes, such as a carbon tax. 
  • Close Tax Loopholes: Eliminating deductions or loopholes that allow for tax avoidance can increase revenue. 
• Decrease Government Spending:
  • Cut Programs: This could mean reducing funding for specific government agencies, programs, or overall spending across the board. 
  • Improve Efficiency: Making government operations more efficient can reduce costs and save money. 
  • Target Mandatory Spending: Significant cuts to major programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which make up the majority of federal spending, could be necessary. 

Challenges in Achieving a Balanced Budget

• Political Ideology and Popularity: Decisions about increasing taxes or cutting spending are often influenced by political ideology and the popularity of specific policies with voters. 
• Economic Conditions: Balancing the budget is more difficult during economic downturns, when government spending might need to increase to support the community. 
• Legislative Constraints: There is no constitutional requirement for the US federal government to have a balanced budget, unlike most state governments. 
• Balancing Interests: Policymakers must negotiate various options for cutting spending and raising revenue, which can be challenging when faced with differing priorities and potentially angry constituents, notes the George W. Bush Presidential Center. 

Examples of Proposed Measures 

• Caps on Discretionary Spending: Some proposals suggest placing caps on discretionary spending to control government outlays.
• “Pay-As-You-Go” Rules: These rules require that any new tax cut or increase in mandatory spending be fully offset by other spending changes, ensuring the budget remains balanced over a longer period.

Why Sustained Deficits are Harmful

Persistent deficits are likely to lower standards of living, make us dangerously dependent on the rest of the world, and pass on large fiscal burdens to future generations. Balancing the budget, while politically difficult, must be a priority. In an effort to stimulate debate over a compromise that would appeal to different groups, we present three ways to achieve balance over the next ten years. One option emphasizes spending cuts and leads to a smaller government. A second relies on tax increases and leads to bigger government. The third maintains the government’s current size, but makes it more effective, and contains a mix of spending reductions and tax increases, sufficient to achieve balance in ten years while preserving room for some high-priority new initiatives.

Not all budget deficits are bad—indeed, recent deficits accelerated recovery from the recession that began in 2001. But longer-term deficits of the current magnitude are harmful for five reasons:

They slow economic growth. By 2014, the average family’s income will be an estimated $1,800 lower because of the slower income growth that results when government competes with the private sector for a limited pool of savings or borrows more from other countries.

They increase household borrowing costs. A family with a $250,000, thirty-year mortgage, for example, will pay an additional $2,000 a year in interest.

They increase indebtedness to foreigners, which is both expensive and risky. The United States is the largest net debtor in the world. The income of Americans will ultimately be reduced by the interest, dividends, and profits paid to foreigners who have invested in the United States. Moreover, if foreigners lose confidence in the American economy—or begin to worry that the United States is not managing its fiscal affairs responsibly—they may reduce their investment. This can decrease the value of the dollar and raise the prices we have to pay for imported goods. If the dollar’s fall were precipitous, it could cause rapid increases in interest rates, recession, or even a serious financial crisis.

They require that a growing proportion of federal revenues be devoted to paying interest on the national debt, which is estimated to increase by more than $5 trillion over the next decade. By 2014, this increase in government borrowing will cost the average household $3,000 in added interest on the debt alone. One out of every five tax dollars will need to be set aside for this purpose.

They impose enormous burdens on future generations. Today’s children and young adults and their descendants will have to pay more because this generation has been fiscally irresponsible. At the same time, deficits and rising interest costs are likely to put downward pressure on spending for education, nutrition, and health care that could make today’s children more productive and thus better able to pay these future obligations.

Can Growth Solve the Problem?

Deficits are very sensitive to the rate of economic growth. Should the economy grow faster than the 3 percent rate, in real terms, assumed by the CBO and most private forecasters, deficits will be smaller. If the economy grows more slowly than this, they will be still larger. Some believe that recent changes in tax law will lead to higher rates of economic growth. But as long as these tax cuts are deficit financed, the weight of professional opinion suggests that they will not lead to higher growth.

Three Different Ways of Getting to Balance

All three plans start from adjusted baseline projections, which indicate that in the absence of policy change, the deficit in 2014 will be about $687 billion. (This estimate and others in the table are based on the Congressional Budget Office’s August 2003 report, adjusted in the ways described above. CBO revised its forecast in December 2003, but these revisions do not materially affect our analysis in any important way.)

Balancing the unified budget by 2014 will produce interest savings of around $153 billion, leaving a deficit of $534 billion to be eliminated by spending reductions or revenue increases in that year. If we chose the more stringent criterion of balancing the budget excluding the federal retirement programs, it would be necessary to reduce the deficit by another $316 billion. Although achieving the larger goal would be desirable, the plans amply illustrate that even meeting the less ambitious target requires tough choices that are sure to be unpopular.

The Smaller Government Plan

The smaller government plan would reduce total spending as a share of GDP from 20.2 percent in 2003 to 18.3 percent in 2014. It balances the budget primarily by cutting $400 billion from projected domestic spending in 2014.

These cuts are achieved by reducing government subsidies to commercial activities ($138 billion); returning responsibility for education, housing, training, environmental, and law enforcement programs to the states ($123 billion); slowing the growth of other nondefense discretionary spending ($58 billion); cutting entitlements such as Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare ($74 billion); and eliminating some wasteful spending in these entitlement programs ($7 billion).

Revenue increases of $134 billion are added to the package, primarily by raising the gas tax, lowering but not repealing the estate tax, and improving enforcement of existing tax laws. Although tax increases are unpopular with those who favor smaller government, no one has suggested how to achieve balance without them. Moreover, the revenue measures included in this plan are relatively modest, they are focused on compliance with existing laws, and they avoid changes in the tax rates or brackets enacted in 2001 and 2003.

The Larger Government Plan

A larger government plan would increase total spending as a share of GDP from 20.2 percent in 2003 to 20.9 percent in 2014. The increase occurs partly because some existing programs are slated to grow rapidly over the coming decade, as the population ages and the costs of health care rise, and partly because the plan includes additional spending for health care, education, and some other priorities that are only partially offset by savings in existing programs. Paying for this new spending and balancing the budget requires that taxes be raised substantially. Revenue measures that would accomplish this objective include scaling back the 2001 tax cuts that benefited the affluent, eliminating the Social Security earnings ceiling so that all earnings would be taxable, and creating a new value-added tax that would affect almost everyone.

The Better Government Plan

The better government plan is based on the assumption that government has a positive role to play in improving people’s lives but could perform this function far more effectively than it does now. What distinguishes the better government plan from the other two is that instead of changing the size of government, it reallocates spending in ways designed to improve government performance. The plan is likely to be more politically feasible than the other two over the next few years, no matter what the outcome of the 2004 presidential election. The next president will face a huge fiscal hole that cannot realistically be filled by spending cuts or revenue increases alone, and so a very substantial amount of both will be needed.

National Security

The United States can use the tools of hard power (military force), soft power (diplomacy and foreign assistance), and domestic counterterrorism (homeland security). These tools are complementary and the national security budget is best viewed as a unified whole. The better government plan calls for cuts in defense spending, but these are only possible because it is assumed that the reconstruction of Iraq will have been completed by 2014. The world is likely still to be a dangerous place in 2014. Defense costs per uniformed member of the armed forces have generally risen by 2 to 3 percent a year, major weapons systems are aging and need to be modernized, and health care costs for military personnel are rising rapidly. Thus, containment of defense spending to the levels assumed in this plan will only be possible if weapons modernization is very selective, if privatization of military support operations is more cost-effective than it has been in the past, and if it proves feasible to share more of the defense burden with our allies.

While some cuts in defense spending are possible under this scenario, the plan calls for more spending on homeland security and foreign assistance. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, air travel is safer, more intelligence is being shared, and ports and public infrastructure are better protected, but additional steps are needed in these areas as well as in some others, such as protecting private infrastructure (chemical plants and trucking, for example). Finally, U.S. foreign assistance is arguably as important as military power in making the world a safer place. This assistance should be increased, but it could be allocated and organized far more effectively than at present, including combating global poverty.

Domestic Programs

In the domestic arena, it is possible to trim spending on existing domestic programs sufficiently to both fund some new initiatives and contribute savings toward the goal of balancing the budget. The plan proposes modest additional outlays in a number of areas, including restructuring the safety net to encourage and reward work, improving preschool opportunities for disadvantaged children, extending health care coverage to lower-income families, and helping states fund the costs of the extensive testing and teacher training required by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. These kinds of public investments, if appropriately structured, can increase productivity and growth as much or more than private investments in new technologies, facilities, and equipment, while simultaneously creating opportunities for everyone to participate more fully in a stronger economy. There must also be more attention given to energy efficiency and a clean environment, but this need not increase budgetary costs. The best way to achieve these goals is to use taxes or a system of auctioned and tradable emissions permits to align the price of energy use with its social costs. The added revenue can then be used to help close the fiscal gap.

To fund the new initiatives and contribute savings toward balancing the budget, our proposal contains a menu of spending cuts that is far more selective than that of the smaller government plan. But like the smaller government plan, it attempts to identify programs, like farm subsidies, that provide unwarranted assistance to commercial activities or to state and local governments (for example, construction grants for wastewater and drinking water). It also includes cuts to programs—such as manned space flight—that have not produced benefits commensurate with their costs and to programs—such as student loans—that could be administered more efficiently.

Entitlement Programs

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are badly in need of long-term reforms, which will be less disruptive if they are made soon. But because significant cuts in benefits for retirees or people who are already close to retirement age are not desirable, such reforms will produce few budgetary savings over the next decade. Nonetheless, some savings are identified, primarily from accelerating (to 2012) implementation of the already enacted increase in the retirement age under Social Security, from more accurate inflation adjustments to Social Security benefits, and from increased premiums for Medicare.

Revenue Increases

Despite its reliance on a number of very controversial spending cuts, the better government plan necessarily depends heavily on revenue increases to achieve balance in 2014. Revenues as a share of GDP fell from 20.8 percent to 16.6 percent between 2000 and 2003, so all three plans—including the smaller government plan—must use revenue increases to fill at least some of the fiscal gap. The better government plan relies on revenue increases to fill 75 percent of this gap. The biggest increases in revenue come from returning the top four income tax rates to 2000 levels, raising the Social Security earnings ceiling so that 90 percent of earnings are taxable, repealing the 2003 capital gains and dividend tax reductions, and retaining the estate tax with a higher exemption. We refer to these changes as tax increases, but many are only increases relative to our adjusted baseline. Compared with the official tax code, which assumes that the tax cuts enacted in 2001, 2002, and 2003 will expire in 2010 or before, for most people the changes will still result in a tax reduction.

Improving the Budget Process

Reform of the budget process is essential to restoring fiscal discipline, and should involve at least three elements:

• Caps on discretionary spending that extend for ten years;
• “Pay-as-you-go” rules requiring that any tax cut or increase in mandatory spending be fully “paid for” by offsetting spending or tax changes over a ten-year period, and that these changes normally not be assumed to sunset;
• A stricter definition of “emergency spending.”

While process reform alone will not restore fiscal responsibility, it can strengthen the resolve of politicians to do the right thing as well as provide political cover for resisting deficit-increasing actions.

Conclusion

America’s fiscal situation is out of control and could do serious damage to the economy in the coming decades. It could sap U.S. economic strength—making it much more difficult to respond to unforeseen contingencies—and pass an unfair burden to future generations. However, no one in a political position to do something about the problem has thus far crafted an adequate solution. Unless policymakers move quickly to find a compromise and enact reforms, the budget problem will only get worse.

The Programs You’d Have to Cut to Balance the Budget

By Alicia ParlapianoMargot Sanger-Katz and Josh KatzMarch 6, 2023

Several conservative lawmakers say House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has promised a House vote on a balanced federal budget. That’s a harder task than it sounds, given the size of the federal deficit.

More recently, Mr. McCarthy has said he doesn’t want to cut spending on defense, Medicare or Social Security — or raise taxes. Those constraints mean cuts to the rest of the budget would have to be brutal.

What You’d Have to Cut if You Take Options Off the Table

Three scenarios for balancing the budget in 10 years without raising taxes.

“It’s incredibly difficult to balance the budget within 10 years,” said Marc Goldwein, a senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group that backs deficit reduction. “It goes from being incredibly difficult to practically impossible if you start taking things off the table.”

The federal deficit is expected to be so large over the next decade that it would take about $16 trillion in spending reductions or new revenues to balance the budget by 2033. That’s about the size of the entire Social Security program. Or the entire Medicare program in addition to every anti-poverty program and refundable tax credit. Those outlandish examples come from a recent analysis from the committee.

Balancing the budget without tax increases, or cuts to the military, Medicare or Social Security, would mean cutting the rest of the budget by a whopping 70 percent. Cuts of that magnitude would mean the firings of most federal workers in agencies like the F.B.I., the Parks Service and the State Department, and huge reductions in food assistance and military retirement.

So what would it take to balance
the federal budget in a decade?

The Republican Study Committee, a group that includes 173 of the 222 Republican House members, has offered a fairly detailed plan. Its budget includes deep cuts to Medicaid and to discretionary spending on things other than defense, the part of the budget that funds functions like environmental protection, public transportation, medical research and homeland security. But those changes alone don’t get the budget to balance. The committee also relies on significant reductions in Social Security and Medicare to erase the deficit.

The plan’s changes to Medicare include increasing the eligibility age to 67 from 65, gradually rising to 70; increasing premiums for higher earners (while reducing them for lower earners); and reducing federal funding for private Medicare Advantage plans by making them compete on a more equal footing with the government plan.

It would modify Social Security for future beneficiaries by raising the eligibility age for full retirement slowly from 67 to 70 and adjusting the formula so that higher earners receive smaller lifetime Social Security payments.

Ways to balance the budget
through tax increases alone

The Congressional Budget Office maintains a list of more than 100 policies that could reduce the deficit. Its catalog had several options that would generate substantial revenue, including a consumption tax similar to those levied by most European governments, increases to income and payroll tax rates, and a new tax on carbon dioxide favored by many environmental groups.

If lawmakers didn’t make any cuts, they could roughly balance the budget by combining several of these large tax increases.

Of course, Republican lawmakers don’t want to raise taxes. Instead, they have tended to favor tax cuts, passing major legislation to reduce taxes in the Reagan, George W. Bush and Trump administrations.

Democrats proposed some tax increases last year, when they were trying to pass their large social spending package, but as a way of paying for new federal spending, not lowering the deficit.

Three Scenarios for Budget Deficits

Sources: Congressional Budget Office; Republican Study Committee Note: Changes in the tax increases scenario include a selection of the largest options analyzed by the C.B.O. Some of the options might overlap or interact, so they cannot be added precisely. The R.S.C. plan was released in 2022 and is based on outdated projections for the baseline budget. The New York Times

Mixing cuts and tax increases

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has its own plan to reduce the deficit. But it would not balance the budget in 10 years. The plan includes spending reductions in every part of the budget as well as new taxes. By 2032, it would cut the deficit approximately in half, an amount the group believes is sustainable because it would stabilize the ratio between federal debt and the overall economy.

The group’s goal — along with its reputation as a shop of deficit hawks — demonstrates how many politicians and economists reject the very goal of a rapidly balanced budget.

The committee’s budget includes specific policy proposals attached to its reductions. The plan includes a carbon tax, reductions in spending on various parts of Medicare, and an increase in the full retirement age for Social Security by at least a year.

Mr. McCarthy is asking Democrats to make budget concessions while using the leverage of a possible default on debt and payment obligations. But right now he is not talking specifically about balancing the budget, or about Social Security and Medicare.

Those two programs are very popular, and cuts to them would entail political risk. President Biden, in his State of the Union address, drew boos and cries of dishonesty from Republicans when he said they wanted to cut Medicare and Social Security, though several of them have proposed to do so.

But avoiding changes to Medicare or Social Security really complicates the math.

Social Security represents the largest share of federal spending, followed by Medicare. The programs also represent the fastest-growing parts of the budget in coming years, aside from interest on the debt, as more baby boomers age into retirement and need more health care.

“Health care costs tend to rise as people grow older, so it is not a surprise that Medicare spending is rising each year,” said Tricia Neuman, the executive director of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s program on Medicare policy.

Paul Winfree, a former Senate Budget Committee staffer who is concerned about the escalating federal debt, said it would be impossible to change the long-term trajectory of federal spending without addressing the growing cost of health programs, including Medicare.

“If they don’t meaningfully address Medicare, Medicaid and the federal health care programs in general, it’s essentially a fool’s errand,” said Mr. Winfree, now a distinguished fellow of economic policy and public leadership at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

And Medicare and Social Security aren’t the only popular programs. In 2019, the Pew Research Center polled Americans on which parts of the budget they thought should be bigger, about the same, or smaller. Large majorities opposed cuts to just about every area. Most Americans wanted increased government spending on Social Security, education, infrastructure, environmental protection and scientific research. The budget area where the public would most support reductions is in aid to the poor overseas. Still, only 28 percent said the U.S. government should spend less on that, and foreign aid is on track to represent only about one percent of the federal budget over the next decade.

Leading Republican budget hawks have called some areas of spending inappropriate. A proposal to balance the budget from the Trump-aligned Center for Renewing America takes direct aim at a “woke and weaponized government.” But the highlighted programs are relatively insignificant compared with the size of the deficit. (Added together, these cuts would total $67 million, or around 0.005 percent of the federal deficit this year.)

Most of the center’s major savings would come from reductions in domestic spending, including the repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s health coverage expansion. It also leans heavily on aggressive projections of economic growth that lack historical support. Those assumptions, which differ from the budget baselines used by most other research groups, allow the group to reach balance without having to find as much savings.

“People imagine that the government does a bunch of things that they think are wasteful, and they point to a $10,000 grant,” said Bobby Kogan, the senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning research group. He noted that most federal spending goes to direct transfers to individual Americans, so meaningful cuts would almost certainly sting some important voting constituency. “At the end of the day, the budget is over $6 trillion, so if you find me a million dollars of waste, cool,” he said. “But that’s not balancing the budget.”

Should the U.S. balance the budget?

It’s not just fear of political backlash that explains the paucity of serious proposals to balance the budget.

Democrats in Congress and the White House are not just opposed to a rapid balancing of the budget; many oppose deficit reduction as a priority, pointing to the stability of federal bonds and the benefits that government spending on poverty prevention, health care and infrastructure have on Americans’ lives.

Even many conservative economists don’t view a balanced budget as an important goal for preserving a strong economy. Many suggest focusing instead on maintaining a stable ratio between debt and the size of the economy over time — arguing a larger federal debt can be sustained if the economy is also growing.

The size of that ratio continues to be disputed. But if current trends continue, the debt is on track to grow substantially faster than the economy overall, particularly with recent increases in interest rates. Whether and how that changes depends as much on politics as on math.

What Are the Pros and Cons of a Federal Balanced Budget?

Few issues are more contentious in contemporary American politics than the federal government’s budget. Those who argue in favor of a balanced budget claim that the growing federal debt will have harmful effects on taxpayers in the future. Others counter that a government budget isn’t like a household budget and shouldn’t be viewed as such. They say that deficits must be run to ward off economic or foreign threats and that a nation’s debt isn’t an urgent problem.

Proponents of balanced budgets also support restricting the power and scope of the government. Their opponents want the government to have the power and the funds to affect wide-reaching change, if necessary.

The history of U.S. debt goes back to the American Revolution. Almost all the deficits in the early days of our country were the result of war. The federal government managed to pay off its entire debt in 1835. This was the first time that the country was debt-free. Wars, economic conditions, and stock market crashes have all had a hand in forcing the government to accumulate the nation’s debt since then.

Economists Are Divided on Deficits and Debt

Running the country with a balanced budget means the government would have to operate without a deficit. Economists are divided on the question of just how important it is for the U.S. to tackle its budget deficit and its total outstanding debt.

• The mainstream view is that the debt isn’t a big cause for concern so tackling the deficit isn’t urgent.
• Others argue that the government’s debt will eventually become a problem and should be tackled now.
• Other economists argue that government budget deficits don’t matter, at least up to a point. This group generally falls in the minority.

Arguments for Balancing the Budget

One of the main points of the argument for a balanced budget is to protect coming generations from the effects of accumulated debt.

Consider the national public debt at the end of the fourth quarter of 1980. It was $930.2 billion at that time compared to $34.8 trillion at the end of the second quarter of 2024. Some say that continuously running a deficit like this would make debt more unsustainable in the future.

The ever-rising amount of debt may also force investors to question whether the U.S. government will ever be able to repay its debts. They say that this results in surging interest rates that will quash private-sector investment as well as the economy. Interest rates that rise too quickly could make it very difficult for the government to afford interest payments on the national debt, leading to default or still higher inflation.

Proponents of balancing the budget also claim that running large deficits when an economy is at full employment can shift economic activity from the private sector to the public sector. This could tamp down growth in the long run.

No Need to Worry About Deficits for Now

Just how easy would it be to implement ways to balance the budget? Not very, according to some economists. The taxes you pay each year to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are counted as revenue that’s used to reduce the deficit. But there’s no guarantee that this revenue stream will be realized or, ultimately, how much it’ll be. Not everyone pays their taxes or even files a tax return.

The more mainstream view among economists is that the nation’s debt may ultimately become a problem but it’s not one we must face by balancing the budget right now. U.S. government bonds are still considered the safest investments in the world and decades of predictions of bond-market doom have yet to be realized.

Economists also caution that taking drastic measures to balance the budget could hurt the economy. A balanced budget would require steep spending cuts and tax increases that could amount to a double body blow to the nation’s economy. And it could have the opposite effect, actually increasing the deficit by lowering tax revenue and causing the government to spend more on social programs.

Deficits Don’t Matter—To a Point

One view of government deficits and debt that has risen to prominence is related to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Proponents of MMT are usually liberal economists and politicians. They argue that deficits and debts don’t generally matter because the government can simply print more money, unlike a household.

This theory only holds when inflation is weak or at least contained, however. MMT supporters say that government borrowing becomes a problem only when it raises aggregate demand to inflationary levels.

Arguments Against a Balanced Budget Law

Some conservatives suggest passing a law or even a Constitutional amendment requiring the government to balance its budget. Running a deficit would therefore be deemed unconstitutional. Enacting a law like this would also ensure that a balanced budget is presented to Congress and that any excess spending is capped.

Most mainstream economists argue that this is a risky way to tackle the debt, one that could hamstring the government in times of economic crisis or other emergencies when additional spending is required. Ratifying such a law could lead to increased unemployment as well as deeper and longer recessions.

Experts say that a constitutional amendment may also lead to a breakdown in certain federal social programs, including Social Security and retirement programs for military personnel and veterans.

Federal spending must offset revenue collected in the same year so some of these programs wouldn’t be able to rely on anything collected in previous years even if they had a surplus balance.

When Was the Federal Budget Balanced?

The national debt was paid off in 1835 and this is the only time that the national budget had a $0 balance. The country has run under many deficits since then. The last time the U.S. had a surplus balance was in 2001.

Which Presidents Balanced the Federal Budget?

A balanced budget occurs when spending equals revenue but a balanced budget may also be one where a surplus exists. President Andrew Jackson paid down the national debt in 1835 which resulted in a $0 balance.5 The country had a surplus budget in 2001 under President Bill Clinton.

Is a Balanced Federal Budget a Good Thing?

Some economists say that a balanced budget is necessary because it helps to protect future generations from untenable taxes and to keep interest rates low. It also keeps the economy growing.

Opponents say that taxes would have to be raised to reduce the deficit. They suggest that the deficit isn’t necessarily a problem because investors don’t consider U.S. debt to be a problem. They see federal bonds as among the safest investments on the market.

The Bottom Line

Balancing the nation’s budget isn’t an easy feat and it’s nothing like trying to keep your household budget balanced. The U.S. has run deficits ever since it gained independence from Great Britain. The government has to spend to keep running and providing services. Federal government debt has always been one of the safest, most attractive investments. This is why some aren’t eager to balance the budget.

But those who support balancing the budget feel that not doing so spells dire financial trouble for future generations of Americans who will be saddled with high taxes.