Balanced-budget rules not linked to expenditure limits, such as America's Gramm-Rudman-Hollings act of 1985 and the European Union's Stability and Growth Pact, have been less successful.
Indeed, it was last adopted, with some success, when it was part of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act (1985).
Modeled after a similar provision in the successful Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law of the 1980s, this sequester puts real teeth in the CAP Act and ensures that the burden of government spending actually would be reduced.