A method and system (102) provide adaptive modulation/coding with distribution of excess resources based on one or more system criteria. The system (102) may be any system with more than one modulation rate or more than one coding rate and may be a wireless communication system using CDMA, TDMA, OFDM or any other signal formats. Generally, the method determines excess resources of the system based on desired characteristics of links supported by the system. The excess resources may be any number of system resources, such as transmit power. These excess resources are then distributed to the links based on various system criteria, such as to increase system coverage, to increase system capacity, to modify a data rate profile of the system or to reduce interference in the system. Methods for providing such distribution of the excess resources are also provided for equal data rate systems.