I believe we need a constitutional amendment that would tie the hands of our elected officials as it pertains to budgeting. Tax increases alone will not solve our problems. The federal goverment needs to drastically reduce spending in addition to any tax increases. I hope, but know that our elected officials on both sides of the isles will not live up to this. Here are the brutal numbers: Our federal budget is 3.73 Trillion dollars. Roughly 1 Trillion of this does not exist, leading to defecit spending. If we let the Bush era tax cuts on incomes of $250,000+ expire that would generate 829 Billion, so we are still 171 Billion in the hole. If we increased corporate tax rates by 20% we would still be in the hole by about 120 Billion. Let's assume all of these tax increases do not negatively effect the economy, although it most certainly would, the federal government would have to cut somewhere around 700 Billion per year from it's budget to erase the deficits and begin to pay back the 16 Trillion we owe. It would take us about 20 years to pay of the US debt at this rate. I only wish we had some elected offical with the intestinal fortitude to propose such a plan. Painful yes, but we need drastic spending cuts to go along with any increased taxes. Anything less is just prolonging the problem.