Because the government had adopted the unified budget during the Johnson administration, this surplus offsets the total fiscal debt, making it look much smaller.

That was the basic reason the Budget Concepts Commission recommended the unified budget in the first place.

If a backlash against the elderly were at hand, why would Congress even be talking about separating Social Security from the unified budget?

Should the Social Security programs remain in a unified budget?

He also warned of dire consequences such as hyper-inflation if the country failed to maintain a unified budget and a co-ordinated fiscal policy.

Would we then be free to spend whatever surplus there is in the unified budget?

The government adopted a unified budget in the Johnson administration in 1968.

The usual measure of those deficits is now, as it should be, in terms of the unified budget.

The agreement could even lead to a unified budget.

The Bush administration, for example, provided only five-year forecasts of the unified budget in its latest documents; the practice had been 10 years.