No offense Eb but that's exactly the kind of thinking that has gotten us where we're at. We've been sitting at the dinner table staring at our peas for decades - sooner or later we're going to have to eat them. Cutting spending and raising taxes will no doubt have significant and immediate negative effects, but in the long term that's what we have to do IMHO. Somewhere along the way our politicians lost their collective intestinal fortitude to make the right decision - they're primarily concerned about their ability to get re-elected, which is why you see all this "Oh no we can't even consider that, the consequences would be too great!" talk in the media. It's the consequences to their political career that are too great - we have weathered worse as a people in our past, and we can and should do it again to get to a better place.