"State Budgets and the Business Cycle: Implications for the Federal Balanced Budget Amendment Debate".

• Author: Greifer, Nicholas
• Position: Abstract - Brief Article

McGranahan, Leslie

Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Third Quarter 1999, pp. 2-17.

This articles reviews proposals for a federal balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution, and compares it against states' experiences in striving to balance their budgets. Most state governments are either statutorily or constitutionally required to have a balanced budget. The author argues that while there may be valid reasons for seeking a federal balanced budget amendment, the argument that the federal government should model itself after state governments is flawed. In essence, the federal government would not be able to take the same budget-balancing steps as states because: a) it could not issue...