The real difficulty is that no one can afford to be the bad guy telling the spending addicts that are the federal government and the electorate that they've bottomed out. Politician A: "We have a strict budget and you're not going to get candy this year." Politician B: "You can have all the free candy you want because we're going to take it away from The Rich, who stole it from you in the first place." Who gets elected?
A related difficulty is that more than one term's worth of austerity is going to be required to dig us out of this hole. Could 0bama fix this in the three years he's got even if he had the slightest desire to? (He doesn't; nearly everything he wants to accomplish will make the problem worse.) Could any politician in eight years? And what happens after eight years of austerity when the next demagogue comes along promising the moon for free?
It is due to that need for something encompassing both political parties and spanning multiple terms of office that I suggest the Balanced Budget Amendment be reconsidered. It isn't a perfect solution but it's better than what we have now. Discussion?
I hear you. What is encouraging though is that sometimes a politician elected that is not promising more candy - like Reagan.
Balanced Budget is a law in most (all?) states. Why not on the Federal level? Besides ability to print money...