I agree. Unfortunately, these are the only choices that are typically envisioned by people advocating balanced budgets, so they are automatically associated to the concept. It's the responsibility of such advocates to come up with alternative choices; alas, as we've just seen, they don't seem willing to entertain the possible existence of alternative paths.

> The problem with most macroeconomic theories is that they ignore too many important details. So for example [...] you can come to completely different conclusions as to the effectiveness of government spending.

Among the many important details these theories ignore is the actual identity of people responsible for such spending.