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Well first things first, food and energy. We need to be self reliant on food and energy the rest can wait. Oh and control of our borders is a must.

Not sure why this is relevant.

What we need to do is cut spending - reduce our indebtedness back to an acceptable level.

We are already self-reliant on food - while quite a bit of our produce is imported, our domestic grain, meat and dairy production provides probably 90% or more of the calories we consume.

We import some of our energy from abroad because it is cheaper that producing it here due to regulatory and labor costs. Cut government overhead and our domestic energy contribution grows automatically.

While government money is indeed spent on illegal immigration, that number pales in comparison to Medicare fraud, to cite one example.

Illegal immigration is, in terms of public finances, one of the least of our problems.

If we were to embark on a program of compulsory autarky in food and energy, our public indebtedness would go up, not down - and it would go up by much more than the savings realized on more aggressive border enforcement (which we do need).

For someone who professes to be wide awake, you seem to neglect one important point: neither you, nor any other 'citizens' are in control. Your list of practical solutions are presented as if anyone has the ability to implement them ie the rationale adult approach.

Sorry, but the debt-money system can NEVER contract - it must ALWAYS expand. It is the one true universal policy driver. That is why immigration, illegal & otherwise, is unofficial policy, regardless of what 'citizens' want. You can use this same top-down exercise to explain any growth in debt, both public (government) and private.

It's why the Fed is now bailing out Europe. The balance sheet must ALWAYS expand. It doesn't matter what "assets" are purchased/swapped eg Treasuries, toxic MBS, Euro bonds, etc.

My advice is to forget 'solutions'; this baby was designed to fail from the day the Fed was created on Dec 23, 1913.

"Not sure why this is relevant."

I was talking about what will be important to the USA after the global economic collapse. Right now I don't think there is the political will to anything more then kick the can, I submit the failed super committee as evidence. I also submit Ron Paul, cut 1 trillion now, at 10% as more evidence. For some strange reason, folks seem to think we can just continue to spend 43% more then we earn forever. And that is just at the federal level, local gov and state gov are just as bad.