The debate over the need to establish a constitutional limit on spending or debt is nearly as old as the nation itself. Thomas Jefferson is often cited as an intellectual forefather in the current debate because of his distrust of government debt. He once wrote that the way to cure what he felt was extravagant spending by the Administration of John Adams was a constitutional amendment that took away the power of the federal government to incur debt. Support for such an idea has waxed and waned continuously since that time. Support was echoed in the "Contract With America" advanced by Republican House candidates during the 1994 congressional campaign, and by the wide consensus on a balanced budget as a political ideal, especially since the late 1970s. The current call for a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget reflects its status as one of the most persistent political issues of recent decades. In the current Congress, the House Judiciary Committee has reported a proposal, H.J.Res. 1 , that includes provisions that would require a super majority to allow a budget with outlays in excess of receipts, to allow outlays to exceed 18% of the "economic output" of the United States regardless of whether the budget were balanced, to increase the debt limit, or to increase revenues. Generally the term balanced budget simply refers to a situation wherein the annual expenditures made by the government are equal to its receipts. Disagreement about just exactly how these key components should be defined and measured has been one of the chief stumbling blocks in the consideration of balanced budget proposals. Although these sound like straightforward concepts, this definitional problem is far from trivial; any sound definition must say what is to be included and, at least by inference, who is to be responsible for insuring that its provisions are carried out. When coupled with additional provisions, as with H.J.Res. 1 , the debate takes on even greater complexity. The goal of balancing the budget was rarely controversial during the 18 th and 19 th centuries, and budget deficits were considered abnormalities to be tolerated only in extraordinary circumstances such as war. Prolonged deficits in the aftermath of the Civil War and the depression of 1893 had an impact on the way in which budgeting was done, but did not alter this objective. As late as the 1920s, adherence to this ideal meant congressional commitment to a policy of surpluses throughout the decade to retire some of the huge debt accumulated due to the First World War. The unprecedented magnitude of the deficits incurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II seem a watershed in American fiscal history, but those deficits did not represent a revolution in fiscal policy. Although the New Deal and the "new economics" ascribed to John Maynard Keynes are intertwined in the minds of many, there was likely no direct and substantial influence of Keynes on President Roosevelt's fiscal policies. Indeed, Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money , the work that spurred the transformation of economic thought, was not published until 1936. The Roosevelt Administration's fiscal policy in the 1930s accepted deficits as a consequence of "providing relief," but not as part of a deliberate policy to bring about recovery or full employment. The transformation of economic thought that followed Keynes had a growing impact on fiscal policy after World War II, demonstrated by such legislation as the Employment Act of 1946. Even President Dwight Eisenhower, who was sometimes criticized for making a "fetish" of balancing the budget, had some degree of flexibility on this question. He stated that, "it has sometimes seemed a little bit odd that we have to make our whole ... economic cycle coincide with the time it takes the earth to get around the sun." By the time of the Kennedy Administration, the ideal of budget balancing had lost its primacy as an influence on fiscal decisions. Advocates of Keynesian economic theories supported the concepts of counter-cyclical spending and "full employment" budgeting. These concepts implied increased government spending and tax cuts to offset downswings of the economy even if a deficit resulted, and decreased spending, tax increases, or both in order to run surpluses during upswings. This idea was based on the premise that governments should balance the economy, not simply the budget. Although there is no generally accepted Keynesian orthodoxy, even among economists, and there is much debate on the impact of government in the economy and on the economics of budget balancing. The declining significance of balanced budgets as the singular goal of fiscal policy prompted opposition efforts to establish formal legal underpinnings for the principle of a balanced budget. Perhaps the first example of this occurred in 1935 when Senator Millard Tydings introduced the first measure designed effectively to require the federal budget to be balanced (S.J.Res. 36, 74 th Congress). This resolution unsuccessfully sought to prohibit appropriations in excess of revenues in the absence of new debt authorization, and require that any new debt be liquidated over a 15-year period. The following year Representative Harold Knutson introduced the first proposed constitutional amendment that would have required a balanced budget (H.J.Res. 579, 74 th Congress). That proposal would have allowed for the possibility of deficits, but would have established a per capita limitation on the federal public debt during peacetime. Since the limit suggested was lower than the outstanding debt at the time, it would have effectively mandated budgetary surpluses. The first congressional action beyond the introduction and referral of proposals occurred in 1947. By special arrangement, the Senate Appropriations Committee had a balanced budget amendment jointly referred to itself as well as the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Appropriations Committee reported the measure on May 5, 1947. However, the Judiciary Committee did not take any subsequent action, and no further formal consideration occurred. Since the 1930s, dozens of proposals have been made to require a balanced budget, to limit the size or growth of the federal budget or of the public debt, or some combination of these ideas, including several notable recent efforts. These have come in the form both of bills and proposed constitutional amendments. Possibly reinforced by previous experience that many Members of Congress have had at the state level, where balanced operating budgets commonly are required, the issue has remained alive. For a period, some observers feared that the goal of a balanced budget, or even the Keynesian ideal of using budget policy to balance the economy, had been totally abandoned. This was particularly so in the 1990s because until FY1999, no President had proposed a budget in balance since FY1971. Further, before FY1998, the federal government had not ended a fiscal year in surplus since FY1969 (see Appendix A ). During that period the size of annual deficits had increased, both in terms of dollars and as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The increasing level of both the federal deficit and debt (see Table 1 ) increased the popularity of the idea of mandating a balanced budget. In particular, it generated strong interest in the idea of using constitutional change as a remedy for seemingly intractable current budgetary problems. Indeed, Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush supported this position. President Bill Clinton also expressed support for a balanced budget, although he opposed using a constitutional amendment to require one. Popularity for a balanced budget amendment arguably waned during the late 1990s as the budget came into balance. Between 1985 and 2002, other statutory budget controls were in effect as part of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 and the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990. Further, a combination of spending decreases, revenue increases, and a thriving economy brought the budget into balance, and a surplus existed from FY1998 through FY2001. Concern has recently spiked once again over an increasing deficit and its potential effect on the nation's fiscal and economic health. The budget deficit each year from 2009 to 2011 has been the highest ever in dollar terms, and significantly higher as a share of GDP, than at any time since World War II. Under current policies, the federal debt is projected to grow more quickly than GDP, leading observers to term it unsustainable. While there has been no difficulty financing the deficit to date, it has been argued that at some point, investors could refuse to continue to finance deficits that they believe are unsustainable. According to some observers, the deficit problem is due to a budget process that permits the government to run persistent substantial deficits and to a political system wherein deficit spending may be rewarded. The fact that responsibility for deficits cannot be indisputably assigned to any one action or actor, or even to either undertaxing or overspending alone, leaves balancing the budget as a visible, but unrealized, priority. This has meant a surge of recent support for measures guaranteeing a balanced budget, while deficits have grown to unprecedented size. Despite fiscal and budgetary policies that doubled the national debt in the first five years of his Administration, President Ronald Reagan was an outspoken advocate of the ideal of a balanced budget. Even before the beginning of his tenure as President, during his 1980 campaign, he wrote "Excessive Federal spending and deficits have become so engrained in government today that a constitutional amendment is necessary to limit spending." In his first inaugural address, Mr. Reagan spoke against public spending that had "piled deficit upon deficit," and had "mortgag[ed] our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present." Later, during his second term, he spoke of an "economic bill of rights" with a balanced budget amendment as its centerpiece, and suggested that it was long overdue. In his first budget submission (FY1991) President George Bush reiterated these themes, stating that a balanced budget amendment should be adopted to "halt the steady build-up of national debt," in order to "protect the interest of future generations." President Clinton's approach was more guarded: supportive of the idea of a balanced budget, but generally opposed to a constitutional requirement.