A budget in which expenditure is equal to, or not greater than, income. In the 1990s, there has been growing concern about the federal budget deficit, and a proposal for a constitutional amendment that required die federal government to balance its budget annually passed the House of Representatives in 1995. It was, however, defeated in the Senate. Some economists argue that an unbalanced budget may not always be bad. Sometimes it is necessary to go into debt to ensure a stable future. For example, almost all states have laws that require them to balance their budgets each year, but they will issue bonds to finance large projects that are not within their annual budgets.