Yeah, the place to solve this is within Congress. If they want to keep the debt limited, they can control that by passing budgets that fit. If they want a rule to manage that, they can make one.
https://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit-und...
The most significant long-term problems they created were probably exempting rich people from Social Security taxes on more than their first $125k of income and Medicare plan D, both of which created massive time bombs as the boomers headed towards retirement. The longer we delay dealing with those, the harder it’ll be to close the gap — which is exactly what they were counting on to build support for privatization.
But debt can be fiscally sound, as anybody with a mortgage knows.