@Platapus
I don't know how far you are willing to push this "control spending" thing. While I agree both in principle and in practise that the people should have control over spending, or at least shown exactly what each citizen got out of his or her euro, while still enduring that no-one can decide arbitrarily to stop the welfare state. For example, such a guarantee is in our constitution, although its deconstruction has been going on for quite some time.
What worries me about your proposal is, that you cannot extrapolate that the same problem afflicting Congress (see Skybird's latest thread) will also affect any and all other agencies, being governmental or non-governmental in nature. That's the paradox of democracy. While some things might arguable be better done in a fiscally more restrictive environment, with democracy, no-one can take constitutional secured rights. The fourth estate in the classical public (see Habermas) was the media, before capital got its greedy hands on it and even then not everything was perfect. A fourth branch of government would have the same problems as Congress. A Congress directly controlled by the people, now that's the solution. One needs to find a balance between stability (limited yet almost irrevocable mandate) and security (irrevocable mandate). Yet that would be almost impossible to due on such a large scale as the USA, which brings us back to another of Skybird's idea about a smaller system with direct democratic rule, which again is a utopia in itself.
You'll have to accept the fact that the system is how it is, and changing it won't do a thing. Changing the people to which the system has given certain powers and prerogatives, now, that's the way forward. Again, then you have the question of how to ensure that the system will not be abused, the problems with representative democracy and elections and so on.
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