There are two things we could enact immediately (at least in political time) that could help make serious headway into clearing the deficit: moderately increasing taxes on the wealthiest tax bracket and drastically reducing military spending.
The Bush era tax cuts were a really great political tool, but it's gotten our economy nowhere. We have to raise taxes; there's no way around it. In the meantime, while the economy is hurting, I'm okay with Obama's plan to keep the Bush cuts for the middle and lower classes. However, I do not agree with him that it should be permanent. I think it needs to be reevaluated periodically to make sure that we're meeting our obligations of paying off the nation's debt. But for the wealthiest folks in the country...screw it. Capitalism was good to you. Do your patriotic duty and throw a few bucks back to the country that allowed you to live in a $400K home and drive an Audi. It's the least you can do.
As far as the military spending goes, it's time to start hacking away. I felt every bit as safe when Bill Clinton was spending $400 billion a year as I am with Obama spending $700 billion. In fact, I felt more safe because our economic state was much stronger. I don't care how they do it, but that thing needs to get cut nearly in half. I refuse to listen to either party's BS plan until someone starts taking a chainsaw to the defense budget. Spending over $500 billion a year is beyond asinine. I bet if we really tried, we could get it to under $400 billion. I just doubt any politician has the guts to tell that to a nation full of country-music inspired pseudo-patriots.
As far as entitlements go, social security is the easier of the two to tackle. That's like saying Walter Payton was easier to tackle than Barry Sanders, but it really is. You're just going to have to continue to raise the age where you can start taking benefits, and you're going to have to raise the cap on how much you take out of earnings. It sucks, but it is what it is if we want to keep it.
Medicare is a whole other mess. You can't solve this problem until you tackle the cost of health care in general. Medicare is expensive because health care is expensive. The entitlement isn't an issue. Other countries around the world have single payer systems, they enjoy better levels of health, and health care takes up less of their GDP. Trying to solve Medicare is like trying to cure cancer with a band aid. You're trying to solve a symptom and not the problem.
Anyway, this thing about the Republicans trying to politicize the Joplin disaster is revolting. We have real problems here to solve, and unless either of these two worthless parties decides that they'd like to start helping the country and not trying to constantly win elections, we're beyond screwed, and Jopin is just an example of the collateral damage.
