Between 1985 and 2002, several statutory budget controls were enacted to reduce the budget deficit. Chief among these were the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 and the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990. The mechanisms included in these acts sought to supplement and modify the existing budget process, and also added statutory budget controls, in some cases seeking to require future deficit reduction legislation, and in some cases seeking to preserve deficit reduction achieved in accompanying legislation. The Balanced Budget And Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (known as the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act; P.L. 99-177 ) created statutory deficit limits and a statutory mechanism to enforce the limits. While Congress was already using the congressional budget resolution as a way of setting and enforcing desired spending and revenue levels, the statutory deficit targets were created to address at least two limitations of the budget resolution. First, although a budget resolution can act as a procedural limit on the enactment of new spending and revenue legislation, the new statutory deficit limits sought to limit not just new legislation, but also the effects of enacted revenue and spending laws. Second, whereas the levels in the budget resolution are enforced by points of order on the House or Senate floor, the deficit targets were enforced by a mechanism that would require the President to order automatic spending cuts if deficit limits were breached. By the early 1980s, the growing deficit had begun to cause concern. The deficit for fiscal year (FY) 1982 was $128 billion or 4% of gross domestic product (GDP), and for FY1983 was $208 billion or 6% of GDP, whereas the average deficit for the prior five years had been approximately $61 billion or 2.5% of GDP. The deficit for FY1985 had grown to $212 billion or 5.1% of GDP. When President Ronald Reagan submitted his annual budget proposal for FY1986, it included significant cuts to domestic spending, a 5.9% inflation adjusted increase in defense spending, and a $180 billion deficit. This proposal was not well received by either the Democratic-controlled House, which disliked the pairing of spending cuts affecting the middle class with spending increases for defense, or the Republican-controlled Senate, which felt the proposed budget deficit was too high. After seven months of negotiations, the House and Senate agreed, just before adjourning for August recess, to a budget resolution that assumed a $171.9 billion deficit with the underlying assumption that to reach that deficit level, Congress would have to enact legislation producing $55.5 billion in deficit reduction. Upon Congress's return from August recess, it was faced with raising the ceiling on the federal debt to $2.079 trillion. The debt-limit increase measure, H.J.Res. 372 , originated in the House and was passed under automatic procedures after agreeing to the budget resolution. The Senate added to this measure an amendment based on a bill introduced by Senators Phil Gramm, Warren B. Rudman, and Ernest F. Hollings that was designed to bind Congress and the President to balancing the budget within a six-year period by employing budget process mechanisms to force subsequent legislative action. The House and Senate engaged in several months of negotiations, using both conference committee and amendment exchange, before agreeing to the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act on December 11, 1985. The measure was signed into law by President Reagan the following day ( P.L. 99-177 ) and came to be generally known as the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act. This idea of employing budget process mechanisms to force subsequent legislative action on deficit reduction was not entirely new. During the 97 th and 98 th Congresses (1981-1984), several House and Senate committees demonstrated an interest in budget process reform as a way of dealing with growing deficits. These included standing committees, as well as special groups like the Senate's Temporary Select Committee to Study the Senate Committee System (also known as the Quayle Committee) and the House's Task Force on the Budget Process of the House Rules Committee (also known as the Beilenson Task Force). The work of these committees arguably shaped and added momentum to the budget process discussion, which ultimately led to the enactment of budget reform in 1985 and beyond. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act established a requirement for the gradual reduction and elimination of budget deficits over a six-year period by specifying annual deficit limits ( Table 1 ), and by creating a means of developing and enforcing a budget within these established limits. The act did not specify what policy changes should be made to achieve deficit reduction, leaving Congress and the President to negotiate over possible revenue increases and spending decreases. To enforce the specified deficit limits, the act set forth a specific process for the cancellation of spending by executive order, known as a sequester order, in the event that the deficit limits were breached. In the event of sequestration, the funding reduction necessary to achieve the specified target was to be equally divided between defense and non-defense spending. Programs (except for those programs with special status) within each category were to be reduced by a uniform percentage necessary to achieve the total overall reduction. Although the act included the sequester mechanism as a way to enforce the limits, one of its authors has stated that "It was never the objective of Gramm-Rudman to trigger the sequester; the objective of Gramm-Rudman was to have the threat of the sequester force compromise and action." Nevertheless, the sequestration mechanism was designed to exempt or protect certain programs from sequestration in case the mechanism did take effect. Programs exempt from sequestration included Social Security; Medicaid; veteran's compensation; veterans pensions; Aid to Families with Dependant Children (AFDC, currently known as TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI); Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); food stamps (currently known as SNAP); postal service fund; the earned income tax credit; and various other programs. Also, under the act, certain programs could only be cut by a certain percentage (1% in 1986 and 2% in subsequent years), such as Medicare, veterans' medical care, community health centers, migrant health centers, and Indian health facilities and services. Other programs, such as guaranteed student loans and child support enforcement, had specific rules related to calculating reduction amounts. By exempting specific programs from sequestration, the act caused non-exempt programs to bear a greater reduction in the event that sequestration was implemented. Further, the sequestration design did not distinguish between programs that had been already reduced through legislative action and those that had not. This created a situation in which funding for a program that was not exempt from sequestration may have been reduced (relative to the baseline) through the legislative process, but if spending on other programs grew, or were not reduced sufficiently to achieve the deficit target, the program that had already been reduced though legislation, would still be subject to reduction through the sequestration process. It was also argued that exempting certain programs from sequestration meant that advocates of those programs had less of an incentive to negotiate spending decreases for those programs if they knew the program would not be subject to sequester. The deficit reduction procedures under this act allowed for suspension in wartime and in the event of a recession. If in their joint deficit and sequestration report (described below), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected negative real economic growth in two consecutive quarters, or if the Commerce Department reported that actual real growth was below 1% in two consecutive quarters, the deficit level provisions could be suspended. In such an event, Congress could consider a joint resolution under expedited procedures, that once enacted would suspend the deficit reduction provisions for the current fiscal year, or for all fiscal years. It would not, however, suspend a sequestration order that had already taken effect. The act required that both the President and Congress adhere to the deficit limits when developing their budget plans. The President was directed to submit to Congress a budget proposal consistent with the specified deficit targets for each fiscal year, and Congress was prohibited from considering any budget resolution that violated the deficit levels set forth in the act, except in a time of war. Further, the budget resolution was required to include any reconciliation directives, directing committees to report changes within their legislative jurisdiction, necessary to achieve the levels specified in the budget resolution. The act stated that in August of each year specified, the directors of OMB and CBO were directed to issue a joint deficit and sequestration report for the ensuing fiscal year. The report was required to include (1) an estimate of revenues and budget outlays anticipated for the next fiscal year, (2) a determination stating whether the projected deficit for each year would exceed the specified deficit level (allowing an excess of $10 billion for the fiscal years 1987 through 1990), (3) an estimate of the rate of real economic growth that was projected to occur, (4) the amount (if any) by which the deficit targets were projected to be breached, and (5) if deficit levels were breached, the base from which reductions were to be made in each nondefense and defense account, and the dollar amount and percentage of reduction necessary to each account to eliminate the deficit excess. Originally the Comptroller General of the General Accounting Office (GAO) was required to review and consider the OMB/CBO report and "with due regard for the data, assumptions, and methodologies" included, then issue a report to the President and Congress on August 25 including estimates parallel to those required of OMB/CBO and also explain any differences with the OMB/CBO report. This left Congress less than two months to pass deficit reduction legislation in order to avoid sequestration using expedited procedures for Senate consideration of such legislation provided in the act. Under the act, following the submission of the Comptroller General's report, the President was required to issue an initial sequestration order consistent with the reductions prescribed by the Comptroller General.