Look ... we don't have to decrease spending but rather stop the annual increases. If federal spending remains flat for 5-6 years we can balance the budget. However, this would require excellent management and that's simply not going to happen. Congress gets graded on how much cash the acquire for their districts. Democrats must have millions upon millions of poor, suffering people to hand this money to, ensuring their own survival. By nature, government is by design incompetent. This is why Obama wanted sequestration to really hurt American people, even if this hurt was manufactured by the administration. Simply, the statement being, government and government alone is best for making decisions, not individuals. For fifty million people or so, this is true. No matter what, these people cannot and will not take care of themselves. This is the democratic base.