Government spending is out of control, and deficit spending is wild, pretty much all over our politically ignorant and depraved Welfare State world. Thus virtually every country needs a Constitutional Amendment which runs something like this:
"All legislators who deliberately vote for, or accidentally experience, an unbalanced yearly budget are immediately removed from office, and permanently banned from ever serving in government, or voting again. Their pensions are revoked, and the salary previously paid them must be returned, including interest and penalties.
"All executives which attempt to implement this unbalanced budget, and all judges which attempt to validate it, receive the same penalties. All such legislative, executive, judicial, and other government agents are instantly to be jailed for ten years of hard labor in a maximum security prison.
"The unbalanced budget itself is publically declared unconstitutional, and immediately rendered null and void.
"To help secure a legitimate budget, all legislators are commanded to cast at least ten votes per year in favor of significantly different versions of balanced budget spending bills, until a proper budget is passed.
"If no budget is passed within 60 days prior to the start of the fiscal year then, insofar as possible, last year's budget is automatically renewed, but with ten percent spending cuts across the board. The failed legislators -- those who couldn't come up with a successful majority vote for a yearly budget -- are terminated, jailed for one year, and permanently barred from public service."
It's understood that legislators in their sessions can declare an emergency, and then have a temporarily disbalanced or deficit budget -- i.e. one with a contradiction between taxing and spending -- but only for a few months at a time. By the end of the fiscal year, however, there must be a net budgetary balance, or the previous penalties apply.
If anyone doesn't like this, they need to work to create giant surpluses in the early months of the fiscal year, in order to fund their ubiquitous "national emergencies", or else learn to shut the hell up!
Attempts to balance the budget with tax increases, rather than spending cuts, should result in a ten percent salary reduction for legislators for every one percent of tax increase. And the tax rises themselves should be largely funded by overwhelming cuts in all other government paychecks, and massive forced contributions from the net worths of all legislators which voted for them.
No doubt this balanced budget Constitutional Amendment will cause a tiny amount of problems -- perhaps even ten or one percent of what critics will likely claim. But this obligatory financial self-discipline in government will probably solve at least twenty times as many problems as it creates. The long-term, net benefit of this balanced budget Amendment will almost certainly be: stunning, miraculous, utopian, and paradisical.