This week's In the News discusses the recent announcement that the US government has effectively balanced the budget for the first time in 30 years. The eleven resources discussed offer a variety of information on this topic. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently issued revised projections showing that the federal budget is effectively in the black and should remain that way in the coming decade. The 1998 deficit was once forecast as high as $120 billion, but the new report shows that it will be only $5 billion, a very small amount compared to the overall annual federal budget of $1.7 trillion. If the economy continues to grow at the same steady pace, lawmakers can expect the last vestiges of the deficit to disappear by 2001 and see surpluses as large as $138 billion by 2008. Despite warnings that the economy could slow down and concerns over spending money we do not yet have, lawmakers and the White House are already contemplating ways to spend this expected windfall. Both parties favor some sort of tax cut, with Republicans calling for a larger and more immediate cut than Democrats. The president and many Democrats have declared their support for smaller tax cuts along with expansion of Medicare, child care and other programs. Speaker Newt Gingrich also has called for more spending for defense, highways and scientific research in the event of a surplus.