This article from the Cato Institute is very hard for me to argue with. Essentially the only parts of gov’t that matter when talking about deficits are (drum roll please) Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the Defense department. And even the DoD is relatively small beer, it’s a traditional bee in the bonnet of Libertarian/Cato types (with some reason.) Mr. Bandow points out that all of these programs have to become purely means tested, I think the age has to move up into the mid seventies and should start doing so essentially on a year every year basis ASAP and that anyone ten years or more from ‘retirement’ would be affected, ten years is a huge time horizon to deal with the change.

Anyway read the article it’s timely and prescribes the sort of major overhaul we need.