THE IDEOLOGICAL ROOTS OF DEFICIT REDUCTION POLICY

This article identifies those members of Congress who have most often supported deficit reduction on floor roll-call votes since 1980. An examination of the reciprocal relationship between fiscal policy preference and the more holistic concept of ideology reveals that at an abstract level conservatives and Republicans continue to support fiscal restraint. When we examine specific issues, however, we find that more moderate legislators are generally the most supportive of deficit reduction in the contemporary policy process. This, in turn, suggests a bifurcation of fiscal policy as it relates to ideology. It seems that even though legislators do sometimes think of fiscal policy along the traditional lines of budgetary balance or deficits, the issue is now more often recognized as consisting of the two distinct and separate sub-issues of government expenditures and revenue policy. Copyright 2002 by The Policy Studies Organization.