To a large extent especially today, government depends on deficit spending to fund many of its programs and there seems to be no limit to the deficits that the government is willing to mire the nation into debt.  [Thereotically there is a limit but it is a limit that can be and is continually being raised by Congress.]

Now imagine what the government would do if they could not place the nation into debt, could not recklessly commit the nation to print IOUs to fund their projects.  They would only have 2 choices, the first and prefered is the elimination and/or reduction of government programs, the second to raise taxes to cover the shortfall which they are relunctant to do because that could be political suicide.

So how would the people go about depriving the government from spending money it doesn’t have.  First consideration is to determine under what authority does the government currently have to placing the nation into debt.  There isn’t anything in the constitution that addresses deficit spending probably because the writers never consider that the government would carry an ever increasing debt from year to year.  The constitution only says that the government can levy taxes to pay off its debts, a vague statement that the government has interpreted to its advantage.

Tt would seem that the most direct action to pull in the government is to make them balance its books, eliminating whatever debt it has accummulate at the end of each fiscal year. That
measure has already been proposed in various forms as a balanced budget constitutional
amendment.  However balance budget amendments are not likely to be passed by the very congress that is guilty of running up the deficits.  California has been moderately successful in limiting government spending by passing various propositions.  The advantage of propositions is that they can be authored by ordinary citizens thus bypassing government however a similar right does not exist for the Federal government.

It would seem that our only option is to elect fiscal responsible representatives, those
that would be willing to fit the congress with budget balancing shackles.  Whatever method
is used, it seems obvious that the only way to reign government spending hogs is to somehow take
the piggy bank away from them.