There's been talk for quite some time of an amendment to the constitution that would require some fiscal responsibility. For example, Heartland.org has proposed a balanced budget amendment.
Whether we could ever get to the point of a possible amendment is another issue. But a pretty good guideline would be the Debt Break that the Swiss adopted. It seems to be working. Here's a quick and easy explanation of that from Michael Tanner in Economic Lessons from Europe:
For example, we could well benefit from adopting a Swiss-style “debt break.” By law, the Swiss government cannot run a budget deficit over an economic cycle. This is not, strictly speaking, a requirement for an annual balanced budget, but rather it limits the growth in government spending to no more than the average of revenue increases over a multiyear period, after adjusting for the cyclical position of the economy (as calculated by Switzerland’s Federal Department of Finance). This allows the government to smooth budgets during economic slowdowns, when revenues decline and expenditures rise, but prevents ongoing deficit spending. Nor can the Swiss easily raise federal taxes to finance more spending. Maximum tax rates at the national level — an 11.5 percent income tax, an 8 percent value-added tax, and an 8.5 percent corporate tax — are set by the constitution. They can be raised only through a referendum, in which the proposed increase would have to win both a majority of the national vote and a majority of the vote in more than half the Swiss cantons. The equivalent in the United States would be that every tax hike had to be approved by a majority of all American voters and a majority of voters in at least 26 states.
Instead of trying to recreate European welfare and immigration programs here, maybe we should look to the Swiss model for debt reform.
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1:58 PM 2/28/2018
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