Problem one is a fair portion of congress is "bought". There are some good guys there, but enough bad ones to keep the crooks in business.

Problem two is most of the bureaucracy is not elected but career government "officials". People in the enforcement agencies all  the way through agencies like EPA, FDA, Dept of Ag, etc. etc. all but the heads of those agencies (which may be appointed by current crony in office) are career people. They were there before the current president and will be there after he leaves. If they don't like something or are also bought either with money or simply personal agendas they can stall, be aggressive, drag their feet, or about anything else they want to do to either further the elected officials agendas or bury them. Witness Ron Paul trying to get anything out of Bernanke.

It is not just the politicians. We have whole bureaucracies that are ingrained and operate under their own agendas sometimes ignoring what the elected officials tell them to do with the laws they pass. Witness the feet dragging on commodities futures position limits. Witness EPA trying to controll everything under the sun (maybe they are even trying to regulate the sun now, they went after the wind and got it). Every agency tries to expand their powers. Along with a little legal help from their financial backers in the way of court challenges, lawmakers have it tough to get the agencies to do anything they do not want to do.

That is why I say the only way to fix the beast is starve it to death. Cut their money supply off. Heck we do not need a balanced budget, we need half the budget we currently have and when the money runs out, shut down the government till the first of the next year. Do it once and they will get the idea next year. Cut EVERYTHING in government 50-75%, drastically reduce agency size and eliminate half of them (we never used to have all these agencies and somehow the US got along ok). Then if we see we cut something we should have not cut, bring it back as needed. There is NO chance of getting any reform as long as all the same old cronies are still sitting at their desks. We need a clean sweep to get any relief from an over bloated government. But we are not going to get it. Instead we will go till it all blows up, then we will reform.

Think Greece. See what they look like in about a year or two, and we will be behind them a few years.

This is not going to end well.

John