Balanced Budget Law and Legal Definition
Balanced Budget is equality between the revenues and expenditures that constitute a budget. The notion of a balanced budget is most important for governments, where revenues are taxes and expenditures are assorted public goods, administrative expenses, etc. More generally, it refers to when there is no deficit, but possibly 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, notably American politics.
