Even that doesn't work because those that want smaller government never seem to want to cut the programs that they like, they just want to cut programs that other people like and in the end there is no program which the majority is willing to cut.
Until people abandon the notion of "what government can do for me" and willingly step forward to take a hit on their own favored government spending, the system is on auto-pilot at best and steered by politicians divorced from the people at worst.
What we really need is a dictator to impose cuts on nation, someone immune from the wailing and hair pulling which will result as spending junkies are denied their fix of government spending. A regular politician is not immune from such angst and so he does what is expedient for HIS SURVIVAL and not what is in the best long term interests of the entire nation.
It isn't going to be easy. Nothing worth fighting for ever is though. Their should be no sacred cows when trimming our budget, all areas must be cut. The problem is petty partisan politics. When the GOP suggests cuts for the social safety net they get accused of hating the poor, when the Democrats suggest cuts to the defense budget they get accused of gutting military. It's nonsense and therefore nothing gets done. Frustrating to say the least.
It's not the politicians, it's the people. Actually, the problem is Democracy - when people find out that they can use their vote to enrich themselves, then good governance and fiscal prudence evaporate.
The people share some of the blame as well. No doubt. We need candidates that proudly state that they are going to make these cuts and do so despite the howls of their opponents.
The opponents are not the problem, it's the supporters that are the problem.
A heroin addict can have good intentions about kicking the habit, but as soon as he freely and willingly misses a fix, then the withdrawal starts and principle gets thrown out the window and he scrounges up a new fix. The only way to help that addict is to lock him in a room and impose withdrawal on him. You can bring him down slowly with methadone but he can't be in control, you have to impose the regimen on him.
Heroin addict = voter.
Damn, I typing on the fly and I meant type opponents/supporters in my post. lol
What solutions do we have before us then? What can be done about our debt if no one has the stones to tackle the problem? It does seem like a damned if we do and damned of we don't type scenario. I am not ready to throw in the towel.
Canada did the job back in the 90s with a 7:1 spending cuts/tax increase program but Canada, despite the English/French divide, was a far more unified nation than we are, so the people actually suffered together. Most of the hit was directed at the medical system, people started dying, and all the stories we American heard about the Canadian system came from that period.
We have two big problems - medical research is allowing people to live longer and allowing us to treat ill people who are no longer economically productive. Social Security was designed for people to retire at 65 and die at 75.
Screw it, the problems which divide us would take pages to describe.
We have more poor people than Canada because we're more racially diverse than they were 20 years ago. They had more unity because they were mostly a middle class nation not riven by racial divides. Here the racial divide actually, you know, divides us. Minorities are disproportionately in poverty. A Canadian was more willing to spare some cuts for the poor and take on an even higher burden onto himself because the poor were fewer in number and culturally/racially connected to him, but there is no such willingness in the US and that's completely understandable. Look at what happened when America was structured like Canada, we passed the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the Great Society and then multiculturalism exploded and the people divided and that cultural cohesiveness has now evaporated. American before 1965 was a nation, today it's not.
So if we did as Canada did, a 7:1 formula, most of the cuts are going to hit minorities and poor and the elderly. The elderly can always turn to their family to help ease some of the financial hit but the Death Panels are not going to be popular.
Oh, and as for taxes being raised to fix the problem, that's not a total solution, as Canada's 7:1 formula shows, for tax rates are something which Capital is responsive to - raise the rates too high and capital flees and then so do jobs. We really do have a spending problem, not a tax too low problem. We already have the most progressive tax scheme in the industrialized world.
So we are in a Prisoner's Dilemma - we all need to agree to harm ourselves but no one wants to go first and efforts are instead directed at harming the other guys. This results in nothing happening up until the whole experiment, society, comes crashing down.