01:05 AM CST on Sunday, January 17, 2010

By JIM LANDERS Washington bureau jlanders@dallasnews.com

WASHINGTON – When the ink on the federal balance sheet is red all over, somewhere a Texan is sounding the alarm.

Last year's deficit was $1.4 trillion. The national debt soared past $12 trillion.

San Marcos obstetrician Alan Parks says the nation's "house is burning down." Parks is president of Americans for a Balanced Budget Amendment, a small organization with a big cause that not long ago dominated American economic and political debate.

It's been a slog.

The 34 names are familiar to anyone who has followed economic policy in Washington for the past generation, one-third of them former chairmen or members of key committees of Congress, seven of them former directors of the White House Office of Management and Budget, two of them former comptroller generals of the United States, seven of them former directors of the Congressional Budget Office, and one of them -- Paul Volcker -- a former chairman of the Federal Reserve System and now an adviser to President Obama.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said large U.S. budget deficits threaten financial stability and the government can’t continue indefinitely to borrow at the current rate to finance the shortfall.

Big revenue losses mean that the U.S. budget deficit may be larger than predicted this year and in future years.

"It's one of the drivers of the ongoing expansion of the federal budget deficit," says John Lonski, chief economist for Moody's Investors Service. The Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.7 trillion budget deficit for fiscal year 2009.