- if budget isn't balanced all members of congress become ineligible for election

Ask Colorado how TABOR[0] is going. The answer is a 1.5 BILLION[1] deficit because TABOR restricts how money is collected and spent by the state.

A balanced budget isn't actually all it is cracked up to be. The deficit spending at the federal level we have now is bonkers, but a balanced budget every year is just unrealistic. Learn from Colorado and do not put yourself into an unrealistic corner. A budget will grow and shrink with the economy -- a balanced budget over X years seems much more realistic. It would mean we could have never, at a federal level, done the kind of spending necessary to cope with COVID, for example.

What I'd like to see is Congress be entirely unable to draw a paycheck while the government is shutdown. Shutdowns are a last resort, but are now so common we have normalized them. This is immensely unfair to federal workers and everything downstream that depends on a functioning government, like SNAP benefits. If the government shuts down over budget issues, make the people who made that decision pay HEAVILY for the action.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxpayer_Bill_of_Rights [1] https://coloradosun.com/2026/03/19/colorado-budget-shortfall...

Most of this can be done through statute.

I’d strongly argue against the community-service bit, however. That’s just job loss for those who earn income from labor and an inconvenience for those who earn it from capital.

> term limits for congress

Then the most knowledgeable and experienced people in the room are lobbyists. And at its root, lobbying is just "asking congress for things".