How to reign in government spending, control the burden of taxation

An interactive budget-balancing tool (for example the one published by the New York Times) illustrates that with good will and common sense any state's budget problems could be solved quite easily and the tax burden reduced considerably. Usually spending is a one-way street were politicians buy votes with money that is ultimately raised from their constituents and we all love to spend other people's money. Letting citizens vote on each individual spending item will make it much more difficult for politicians to continue playing this game. Naturally, each group of citizens will still fight to gain as much from the government spending as possible but in each case there will be a larger group of citizens that does not participate in the benefits from this particular spending measure and will oppose it. The usual backroom deals between representatives of different interest groups will be impossible as they lack the final say on any spending.