Winner of the Harold D. Lasswell Award from the American Political Science Association A Choice Outstanding Academic Book for 1988-89 "The ideology of a balanced federal budget has maintained a remarkable hold over American politics. No generation has been free from pitched battles over national debt. In this lively and well-written book, James D. Savage contends that the federal deficit must be understood as a primarily political, not an economic, phenomenon whose symbolism has shaped more than two hundred years of American economic policy. "--Journal of Politics