The biggest problem I have with the OMIGOD! deficit debate is that everybody thinks that the solution is to throw all the Federal programs into the mix. So, even though Social Security is fiscally sound, has always operated under its own budget, and is good for the near term, "reasonable" folks want to allow it to be gutted.
But many of us know that the way you deal with very large seemingly intractable problems is to split the problems into smaller pieces, and to then deal with those smaller problem individually. For Social Security (and Medicare) this has already been done. Medicare is certainly a significant problem with an estimated $5trillion deficit over the next ten years, and deserves focused consideration.
The rest of the near-term deficit difficulty comes from the "U. S. Government" budget, which currently consists of interest payments, "mandatory" spending, and (non-)security spending. If "divide and conquer" is the way to go, should we consider chopping the "U. S. Government" budget into virtual pieces, giving (e.g.) Defense its own revenue stream (e.g. a percentage of tax revenue)?
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