This article has a good broad-brush discussion of what it would take to achieve sustainability without raising taxes.
Let's look at one sober analysis, from the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Public Administration. Released this year, "Choosing the Nation's Fiscal Future" was produced by an all-star, bipartisan cast that included two Republican former directors of the Congressional Budget Office, President George W. Bush's former deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, and the Cato Institute's director of tax policy.
For much more, see Fiscal Truths, November 7, 2010 at The Washington Post.
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The Nov. 20th Economist weighs in on this topic in their lead article, "Speak softly and carry a big chainsaw". They say that you need only 2% combination of cuts and taxes to stabilize the growth by 2015. Start with a target of 60% by 2020, scrap exemptions, tax consumption ( vat) (incl carbon), set a ratio of 75% spending cuts and 25% tax increases would do the job. Problem is in political will and leadership.
Unfortunately that's 2% of the GDP, not of the federal budget. And that's "if growth recovers".
And I'm leery of all the articles which give opinions on how the deficits should be dealt with. They either present concrete solutions to 1% of the problem or broadbrush solutions such as "raise the retirement age" without examining the actual impact of that on people.
When was the last time you heard of a layoff in the Federal Government? A job in the federal bureaucracy is the closest place to a permanent income that there is. I find it impossible to believe that one must always talk about the pain of program elimination when the programs in place could most likely be operated much more efficiently if the will existed. It simply doesn't and we have what we can't afford to pay for.
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