US budget decficit panel verdict: increase taxes and cut spending

Warning of a “death spiral” without drastic changes, a group of experts on the U.S. federal budget deficit on Wednesday called for a 2011 Social Security tax holiday, a soft drink tax and government spending freezes.
In an ambitious plan to slash the deficit and the fast-mounting national debt, the group also called for a new 6.5 percent national sales tax, as well as lower and simpler individual income and corporate tax rates. It comes as a presidential commission targeting the same problem reconvenes on Wednesday for another closed-door session with just over two weeks before its final report is due.
The bi-partisan panel called the deficit “a quiet killer” undermining the economy and compared the effort required to vanquish it to the sacrifices made by Americans during World War II.
My thought: this is the right line of thinking. If we can get citizens to buy into collective effort and sacrifice in the present in order to reign in spending and reduce debt for the future we will finally get the recovery back to long-term health underway. Now if we can convince policy makers to support the effort to increase savings and down-size consumption and spending rather than trying to goose it back up on more credit…