The Budget Deficit

Abstract

Concern about the federal budget deficit has continued to dominate the politics of the United States at the beginning of the Bush Administration and has placed severe constraints on the conduct of public policy. Not only has the size of the budget deficit become a major political problem in its own right, but it has tended to subsume other issues within its embrace. The annual battles over taxation and spending regularly exclude consideration of other substantive questions and have generated considerable partisan bitterness between President and Congress.