First of all, the fastest growing category of federal ewntitlement spending is in the area of health care (Medicare and Medicaid), not retirement ecurity (Social Security). The efforts by progressives to reform health care is aimed at exactly that problem – the Congresisonal budget office verifies that the bills now before Congress indeed reduce the deficit, not increase it (notwithstanding false claims from the Right).

Secondly, reversing the bulk of the Bush tax cuts would simply return rates to their perfectly sustainable levels of the Clinton, even Reagan eras, and move towards balanced budgets. There was neither economic nor fiscal justificatiion to handing all those Social Security Trust Fund dollars (and that is exactly what they were) over to the top few percent of the wealthy.

And thirdly, the massive espansion of military and related spending are what has driven us over the brink. And what do we have to show for it? What dictates that it is the human safety net that must be shred when irresponsible office holders drive us into the ditch?