THE economic issue of our time is the obscene expansion of government.
Until that is reversed, the economy will never heal.
Shrinking government is not going to heal the economy. The problem with the economy is that we lowered the import tariffs and are now competing against third world and communist labor that costs 10% of our labor. We're off-shoring jobs like crazy and it won't stop simply by shrinking government spending.
We need to raise the import tariffs and put Americans back to work. When the 23% unemployed go back to work that's a 30% increase in the labor force (23%/77%). That will boost annual government revenues and put a really large dent in the deficit. Plus government outlays will fall as safety net payments shrink.
Once people are back to work, we can work on undoing that $700 billion stimulus plan that Obama sold as a one time expenditure but was instantly baked into the budget for future years, so it became recurring.