Don't underestimate their ability to redefine GDP or 'budget deficit'. Also, if push comes to shove, there is always the option of cranking up the printing presses (Congress can wrestle control of monetary policy if the Fed is too uncooperative).
We just learned this lesson in California where voters recently passed an "on-time budget" initiative. The way it worked was Legislators didn't get paid after the budget deadline. In theory this would get them to pass a budget on time instead of drawing it out to the point of state insolvency like they did every previous year.
Did it work?
Of course not. They passed an absolutely fictional budget. It not only depends on California getting three times its previously anticipated tax revenue but it also depends on tax hikes that haven't been passed (passing a budget requires a majority while passing a tax increase requires a 2/3rds vote where at least a few Republicans have to sign on)
But they didn't get paid. That's the point. The fictional budget was passed (but not signed by the governor), and the controller said it was ridiculous, and therefor he would not be authorizing payment in accordance with the on-time budget initiative.
One of the broadly-speaking Anglo-Saxon innovations was the idea of a government of laws, and not men. I think it's one of those "good lies"; it isn't ever true, in reality "we're all just folk" and it's always government of men, but it's very good for all members of a society globally to maintain the fiction. Unfortunately, it does require a significant fraction of the society to choose to maintain the fiction (with varying levels of awareness of the fact that it is actually fiction), and locally it advantageous for people of power to implement government of men, not laws.
And in our sophistication pretty much all the intellectuals we've got busily tearing apart all the foundation that "government of laws, not men" is built on. So back to government-of-men we go. Hooray.
I'd like to see legislators _pension_ provisions tied to future economic metrics.
Hopefully that would inspire them to take a longer term view, and they would be less able to redefine terms when they are being applied as they are no longer in power. Probably hopelessly naive thinking though ...
