Balanced Budget Amendment say whaaaat?

I remember coming across the above video during my undergraduate studies. It changed the way I thought about personal finance, and cause me to seriously rethink my entire approach to money. This was in direct contrast to how my mother ran our household, which was by shuffling money and bill due dates until they could all be paid. Bills were sometimes deliquent, and other times they were paid in full, but the type of financial management system that my mother employed could be called a deficit spending model. When I developed an interest in public policy and government, I wondered often why the federal govenment couldn't just pay off our debt and put the country on a "lean times" economic plan until we were able to afford all of our pressing national expenditures. Now I know why we can't.