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In the post-WWII era, the idea of a balanced federal budget has generally been linked in the public mind to the Republican Party. There's no particular reason for that -- as R.W. Bradford points out in Liberty magazine, the GOP has generally been the less fiscally responsible party since the presidency of Richard Nixon -- but the image persists nonetheless.
The pettifoggery of the Clinton era aside, there hasn't been a truly balanced federal budget since 1969 (said budget having been proposed by outgoing Democratic president Lyndon Baines Johnson and passed by the Democratic 90th Congress). Nor does the sixth consecutive Republican Congress, working in concert with a two-term Republican president, seem inclined to end the Age of the Deficit. As Irwin M. Stelzer of The Weekly Standard points out, Bush's "halving the deficit by 2009" claims for the current budget track are largely hot air.
Looks like it's up to the Democrats again ...
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