"I also favor entitlement reform and provatization [sic] as one of our must urgent tasks, and hope that we are able to make some progress in this area in the next Congress. "
No doubt you do - as do many other taxpayers - however it hasn't happened in the last couple of generations nor in fact for almost 100 years now (with respect to the income tax itself), so "hoping" as you do that the situation will magically correct itself within Congress is something like "... if wishes were horses then beggars would ride ...".
In fact, the only real likelihood of meaningful change in the tax laws or S/S & M/C that I see is to separate them from an income tax that can be (and is) incrementally manipulated at the whim of Congress to a tax form such as the FairTax where raising tax rates raises them on ALL taxpayers - something most congressmen would think long and hard about since Job 1 is getting elected again.
Such a change in S/S & M/C funding will be the most rapid possible demonstration to an individual taxpayer what the real cost of these entitlements is to him each and every time he buys a taxable thing ... and no, it's not the cost of the thing involved "plus 30%" as is so often seen in the demagoguery on these threads, but the cost of the thing plus the effective FairTax rate (normally much less than the 23% ti marginal rate).
This is the first time its been suggested that the SS and Medicare portion of the FairTax will be called out on the sales receipt.
But who cares, the aggregate cost of the prebate is larger.