ROFL, you didn't ask me what's possible. I am under no delusion that I'd even get past floating the idea that Medicare needs reform before I'd be tossed... ;)

I completely agree with your reasoning and conclusion with 2 additional caveats. The first learned from the recent financial debacle. When the crisis arises, the "solution" will be to kick the problem down the road through "reform" regulation, "fair" taxation and crony giveaways which will further exasperate the medium-long term problem while calming the masses in the short run just long enough for the politicians and their contributers to reap their rewards.

The second is that $40 Trillion is a gross understatement, even if the upcoming reductions via PPACA are enacted.

>In the unlikely event that your proposals were policially acceptable you'd be accused of far worse than Death Boards... every avoidable death would be attributed to you and shrines would be set up for all the Grandmas you have murdered. And still the $40T deficit would be looming above.
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>IMHO the reason why the current Ponzi scheme is likely to survive until it is an irrecoverable disaster can be summed up quite easily:
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>1) Current politics make it easy to attack any proposal on moral grounds until it becomes a crisis, at which point action is finally justified. In a perfect world, attribution of morality would be the other way around.
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>2) Electorates want simple solutions, preferably paid for by somebody else, and they will punish any politician silly enough to deviate from this recipe. If you are considering Medicare reform, the Medicare electorate is massive and growing bigger. Confuse or frighten them and they will remove you.
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>IMHO this is a recipe for borrowings and teeterings to shore up the Ponzi scheme until it collapses, at which point "brave" politicians will institute draconian reforms far worse than what might be implemented now if not for screams of "Death Board!" and Snow birds voting en masse. So it's easier for decisionmakers to treat the $40T deficit as "the elephant in the room" until it gets so big it bursts the room apart. Forget partisan politics: they're all guilty of this one, as is the electorate. We co-operate to inflict own-goals of which bin Laden would have been proud, and we think we're behaving morally.