Solving the long term problem requires 2 main things:reining in healthcare costs and increasing taxes to pay for programs that Americans really want. Republicans refuse to admit that taxes ever need to rise and Democrats don't have the backbone to raise them.As for the American people we only want to cut spending on the other guy. The only area where Americans agree on spending cuts is in foreign aid. We want it all but do not want to pay for it.Thus we have these rather minor republican 100 billion dollar cuts with none of them even mentioning the big 3. That's just a joke.