I'd also like to note this is what I would do in the context of the game. Truly I'd like us to scrap the current tax code (and spending bills) completely and start over.

Kevin, exactly...I kept looking on the taxes for eliminate the income tax, shrink the IRS to a tiny organization, allow the states to administer the federal sales tax (for a fee, so the states get money). I also think it would be nice to set up percentages for each major department, ie department of defense gets 10% of the Federal Budget, and what they don't spend they can save (in a true lockbox) to finance their own big budget acquisitions. Same with other agencies and we might actually see efficient government.

The budget hero is right on.  Education is the only thing that will work.  Candidates will continue to avoid the hard choices as long as they feel an uneducated public will trash them if they propose real solutions.  People need to know that most of our federal spending goes to entitlements like medicare and social security or the military.  

Politicians who only talk about cutting some pork or raising taxes only on the rich are just not being honest.  But they are giving people what they want to hear, which is easy fixes. 

Taxes need to be on the table and people should have a better understanding of what their tax dollars actually buy.  Spending cuts also need to be on the table, but will be useless unless defense and entitlements are part of the conversation.

As I wrote today on my news blog, "There is little that any individual can do about the national debt.  But we should all be concerned about it because the hard decisions that will have to be made will affect all of us."

Politicians won't address this until voters demand real action, not window dressing solutions that only serve to mask the real magnitude of our dilemma.  

You can find the entire story at current.pic.tv/.../an-inconvenient-debt