We are living above our means. Cut government employees salaries, benefits and pensions by at least one third to start. The same for high paid monopolies. The same for high paid trades unions. The same for high paid private jobs that have funding issues. Stop or reduce the paying for people who have multiple children and multiple abortions and taking from the system. Reduce those pensions by different percentages from highest to lowest for current and future retirees. Reduce longshoremen salaries, benefits and pensions massively. We went from On the Waterfront to Blue Blood. Now we start to get near equality in privileged and non privileged employment. Then we can start spouting about the improvements in other areas and issues like medical for real. You don't lie this. Neither do I!
Your first sentence is correct. You are living above your means. All of the rest of your suggestions are punishing the workers who are basically making the same money they were making in 1978, while management and exectives has seen their wages rise by 270%, and their tax burdens decreased by 3 huge tax cuts over that time frame, while more and more of the costs of social programs are on the backs of working Americans as corporations and the wealthy no longer pay their share, even though the social programs act as a wage subdidy to large highly profitable corporations.
Rescind the tax cuts. Period. Cutting government salaries by 1/3, means cutting working people's salaries. The military. The people who keep things running. And they have a union so you can't cut their salaries. Try to get back to the level playing field you had before Reagan and the Republican Party started transfering wealth to the top. Get the unions BACK to help rebuild the middle class. Put workers' representatives on every Board of Directors of every publically traded company in America.
And break up the mega corporations.