The thing is - you can't act as if all costs are equal. At least you recognize that NEITHER side have actually done a balanced budget so you're not one of those who thinks Obama is a big spender (when in actual fact his deficit run-up is the lowest since Nixon) with a completely one-sided view.
But as I said, all costs aren't equal. Progressives are hugely in favour of cutting military spending - a LOT.
And that could solve the problem easily - without actually putting America at any risk. America right now has a military spending 13 times bigger than the next biggest, and 6 times bigger than the entire rest of the world COMBINED.
Nobody needs that.
Just the part of the military budget that goes to contractors - that's not barracks or feeding soldiers or even bullets and guns, just the part that's spent on contractors is 700 billion a year.
The total budget for social security is 70 billion.
One welfare-ish program, is about one TENTH of one part of the military budget.
Cut the military budget in half, you can have the same number of soldiers and the same level of military prowes (do you really think it makes a difference whether you buy 11 new aircraft carriers a year or 5 - when almost nobody else has even one ?) while at the same time paying for every welfare and safety net program you need without running up a deficit.
You may EVEN be able to do it without actually making the rich pay taxes (though you SHOULD anyway because nobody should get the benefits of living in a country without contributing to it's upkeep).
But show me one conservative who would even consider that ...
Now here's the real problem - America doesn't have a liberal party in government. The greens are liberal but they aren't on the hill, the democrats sure aren't progressive or liberal, they are center-right, the reps are just batshit insane.
The real problem America faces is that the 60% progressives in the population have no party actually representing them, Liberals don't vote democrat because democrats are liberal, they vote democrat because center-right is better than batshit insane.
And just how center right ? Compare actual policy and the following presidents were ALL more leftwing than Barack Obama:
Millard Filmore (refused to grant Utah statehood until governor Brigham Young created a welfare system).
Richard Nixon - created the EPA, supported welfare reform.
Ronald Reagan - argued for matching the capital gains tax to the income tax (basically he was trying to pass the Buffet rule 3 decades before Buffet was). Ran up a massive deficit.
Truman - tried to pass universal healthcare (and single-payer at that - which is a hell of a lot more liberal than Obama's version which made everybody a customer of an insurance company).
Gerald Ford - tried to pass Nixon's healthcare reforms but wasn't in power long enough to succeed.
Rooseveldt - the one who sent in the army to protect UNIONS from corporate thuggery and called for a second bill of rights that could have come right out of a democratic socialist country like Denmark.
Eisenhower - by a huge margin.
And ultimately - this is the wrong time for your suggestion. Despite what Austrian economists say - there's a reason they are a tiny fringe group in economics who get laughed at a lot. A recession, by definition, is CAUSED by a LACK of spending. Nobody spends, means nobody else has INCOME - so THEY don't spend either.
The only way OUT of a recession is for SOMEBODY to start spending - a LOT. And the only actor who can do that is the government.
Every government that tried austerity made their recessions worse, MUCH worse. The biggest economic problem in the USA today is that your government is underspending, massively. The stimulus package was no more than 40% of what economists were recommending.