Increase taxation to 100%, and it will still not balance the budget as long as Congress has the option of creating programs which run on borrowed money -- no matter how nice or necessary the programs may seem to the voting mass. No mathematical conjuring will change the law of TANSTAAFL (*There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch), and consequently, no individual or government can long survive economically on a policy of spending beyond income -- without ripping somebody off.

How to balance the budget? Here are some ideas:

A.
Eliminate the notion of seniority pay from labor policy -- that is, that time in service demands an increase in pay, production not considered. This policy increases the cost of labor with time, without offering any compensating increase in production. To preserve the illusion on a national scale, you pay more dollars that are worth less. It is technically a lie, and a primary cause of "inflation" (using more money worth less to represent units of real value -- like an hour of a person’s time -- right?). This notion also increases our national debt, since the only place to get more of those less-valuable dollars is to borrow them from the Fed. The worker’s buying power does not increase; he is not being given a real raise. His debt to the bank (his share of the deficit) does increase, however, and he must pay it with his real time.

B.
Put all government employees on the basic minimum wage until the budget is in the black, and can be kept there. Why should the government be permitted to borrow more money which can only be paid back by taxing the private sector, in order to pay itself salaries which are "competitive" with industry? Surely the powerful could hardly complain the pay is insufficient to live on -- they are happy to insist it is enough for millions of us, so why not for them as well. The deadwood and the greedy will depart to the private sector instantly, leaving only those remaining whose reason to be there is to responsibly administer the necessities of government. There might not be an incumbent reelected in 50 states the following year, but it might preclude our having to start another war to keep the bank from foreclosing on the National Debt. [It would likely also increase the quality of low-rent housing in Washington, DC.]

C.
Instruct the Fed to write off the National Debt. Every business I know of is allowed an expense line item called "Bad Debts". The Fed was permitted to print up and "lend" Federal Reserve Notes to the government, to be paid back with interest in real dollars by taxing the citizens. The media of exchange: their paper vs. our time. Since they "wrote up" that money in the first place, and at that level money is pretty abstract anyway, they could just as easily "unwrite" it -- and rewriting the books to make it work will be nothing new to those guys. (They can get a tax break, right?) This policy might be rough for a few years, but in the end, responsible economic control of the government might be returned to the Congress.