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There will be no “real cuts.”

It is to every politician’s advantage that his constituency be as dependent upon him as possible.

This will only end when the State is brought to its knees under the weight of its own excesses, as happened in the Soviet Union and China, and is now happening throughout the so-called European Union.

such schemes wouldn’t raise enough revenue.

NO scheme will raise enough revenue.

Federal revenue is always 15-20% of GDP. Always, for many decades. We're around 18% right now, giving us a max possible revenue boost of 2 points - that's $282B. Max. Realistic optimism should plan on 1 point - that's $141B.

Eyeballing the chart, more likely that no matter what is done we'll have a revenue DROP of 2 points ... or, given economic trajectories, maybe even 4.

So at best, whatever the scheme, we can plan on anywhere from a $141B increase to a half-trillion-dollar decrease in revenue. Any variation in those numbers depends on changes in GDP, which is pretty stagnant now. BTW: to squeeze that out of "the rich" would require raising the top tax brackets on anyone making over $200,000 to 57% - and that's really optimistic; approaching that would slow the economy to stay within the 15-20% revenue/GDP curve.

We're not going to tax our way back to prosperity, no way, no how. The realistic upper limit of about $150B revenue increase is only one-tenth the $1500B we need to cover.

A truly radical change to the tax system that doesn’t punish work or savings just might generate massive growth

Per prior graph, the change would have to DOUBLE the GDP just to cover the deficit. Via this chart it took 15 years to double GDP to where we are now, 11 years to double prior, 6 years before that. (BTW: GDP has always increased - until 2009. For sake of argument I'll ignore that anomaly.) For a SWAG, figure GDP will grow at $1T per year for now; a "truly radical change [which] just might generate massive growth" could, with wild optimism, increase that to $2T/yr, boosting federal revenue (always 15-20% of GDP) by at best $0.4T/yr.

[begin tangential blather]

Linking that to some of my other boundary-condition posts of late, we're looking at an optimistic all-inclusive scenario where a "soak the rich" plan would net $0.15T additional revenue, and a "truly radical change to the tax system" (or whatever plan can be devised) to "generate massive growth" boosting revenue another $0.40T.

OK. From one side the feds squeeze as hard as they can. From the other we double the economic growth rate.
That gives us new federal revenue of $0.55T/yr.
That still leaves spending $1T/yr in the hole.

Or something. My head hurts now. Time to go get eye drops for the dog.