“tax the rich” by itself is not a fiscal plan. The serious proposals deal with several different problems—entitlements, health-care costs, tax preferences, defense and discretionary spending, and the tax system itself.

The important point is that Congress has a very large menu of proposals already on the table. The Congressional Budget Office's latest comprehensive list contains 76 deficit-reduction options. Congressional Budget Office+1

Here is how I would organize the serious proposals.

1. Reform Social Security rather than simply cutting it

This is one of the biggest issues because Social Security's financing problem is structural.

Proposals include:

• Raise or eliminate the Social Security payroll-tax ceiling, so very high earners pay Social Security tax on more of their income.

• Apply the tax to earnings above $400,000 or $250,000, rather than eliminating the ceiling entirely.

• Gradually raise the retirement age, reflecting longer life expectancy.

• Reduce benefits somewhat for high-income retirees, while protecting lower-income retirees.

• Change the formula used to calculate annual benefit increases.

• Make Social Security benefits more explicitly progressive.

The CBO estimates, for example, that reducing benefits for high earners could save roughly $48–197 billion over ten years, while changing the benefit formula could save hundreds of billions. Congressional Budget Office

There is currently considerable bipartisan interest in creating a commission to force Congress to confront this issue. CRFB

2. Attack the enormous growth in Medicare and health-care spending

This may actually be more important than trimming ordinary government programs.

CBO proposals include:

• Reduce payments to Medicare Advantage plans.

• Increase Medicare Part B premiums for higher-income beneficiaries.

• Change Medicare cost-sharing.

• Reduce certain hospital payments.

• Change payments for prescription drugs.

• Reform Medicare's payments to teaching hospitals.

• Put tighter controls on Medicaid spending.

• Reduce various Medicaid matching arrangements.

Some of these are enormous. CBO estimates that changing Medicare Advantage payments, for example, could save $124 billion to more than $1 trillion over ten years, depending upon the approach. Congressional Budget Office

This is one area where I think the public discussion is often misleading: you cannot seriously solve the long-term deficit without dealing with the growth of health-care spending.

3. Go after tax expenditures—the "hidden spending" in the tax code

This is particularly relevant to your point about wealthy Americans finding tax advantages.

Instead of simply raising the top income-tax rate, Congress could reduce or eliminate special preferences such as:

• preferential treatment of certain investment income;

• deductions and exclusions;

• special treatment of business income;

• preferential treatment of particular industries;

• complicated shelters and loopholes;

• tax advantages associated with certain types of investments;

• favorable treatment of inherited wealth.

This approach is sometimes called broadening the tax base rather than simply raising tax rates.

The advantage is that it can bring in substantial revenue without necessarily raising the headline tax rate on everybody.

CBO, for example, estimates that taxing the foreign income of U.S. corporations at the full statutory corporate rate could raise about $340 billion over ten years. Congressional Budget Office

4. Strengthen enforcement against sophisticated tax avoidance

This is much closer to the issue you raised.

There is a difference between:

legal tax avoidance
and
illegal tax evasion.

A serious deficit program could put considerably more resources into the IRS to pursue:

• offshore accounts;

• complicated partnerships;

• trusts;

• shell companies;

• cryptocurrency transactions;

• wealthy taxpayers using pass-through entities;

• abusive deductions;

• artificially shifting income to low-tax jurisdictions;

• complicated estate-planning arrangements.

The important point is that you don't have to change the tax rate to collect more taxes.

You can simply make the existing tax system work better.

5. Consider a national consumption tax or VAT

This is politically very difficult in America, but economically it is one of the most powerful possibilities.

A 5% value-added tax (VAT) is estimated by CBO to raise approximately $2.18 trillion to $3.38 trillion over ten years, depending on how it is structured. Congressional Budget Office

Every major industrial democracy except the United States uses some form of VAT.

The problem is that it is a tax on consumption, so without offsets it can disproportionately affect lower- and middle-income people.

One possibility would be a VAT combined with rebates or tax credits for lower-income households.

6. Defense spending

There are also substantial proposals for reducing military spending without necessarily weakening national defense.

CBO options include:

• reducing or restructuring weapons programs;

• retiring obsolete weapons;

• reducing the size of certain forces;

• changing military compensation;

• eliminating unnecessary bases;

• reducing overseas commitments;

• changing procurement practices.

One CBO example is retiring the F-22 fighter force, estimated at about $29 billion in ten-year savings. Congressional Budget Office

This isn't enough by itself—but $30 billion here and $50 billion there begins to matter when combined with other reforms.

7. Reduce agricultural subsidies and corporate subsidies

There are numerous federal programs that receive relatively little public attention.

For example, CBO estimates about $47 billion in ten-year savings from reducing crop-insurance subsidies. Congressional Budget Office

Other possibilities include:

• agricultural subsidies;

• housing subsidies;

• federal loan guarantees;

• corporate tax credits;

• subsidies to particular industries;

• various federal grants.

These are politically difficult because each program has an organized constituency.

8. Reform federal pensions and benefits

There are proposals involving:

• federal employee retirement benefits;

• health benefits;

• military retirement;

• veterans' benefits;

• disability programs.

Again, these aren't enough individually, but they become significant when combined.

9. Impose spending caps

One approach isn't to decide individually which programs to cut but to establish overall spending limits.

For example:

Federal spending cannot grow faster than inflation plus population growth.

Or:

Spending cannot grow faster than GDP.

Congress could then force itself to make the difficult choices within that ceiling.

There is also a very straightforward proposal currently in Congress: the Dollar-for-Dollar Deficit Reduction Act, introduced in August 2026, would require any increase or suspension of the debt ceiling to be accompanied by an equal amount of spending cuts over the following decade. GovInfo

10. Create a bipartisan fiscal commission

This is probably the most interesting political mechanism, rather than a specific policy.

The proposed Fiscal Commission Act would create a 16-member commission with members from both parties and outside experts. Its goal would be to produce a package capable of stabilizing the debt-to-GDP ratio by 2039. CRFB

There is a precedent: the 1983 Social Security reform commission helped Reagan and Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill reach a bipartisan agreement.

The advantage of a commission is that members can say:

"The commission made us do it."

rather than individually volunteering to raise taxes or reduce benefits.

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The really important point: there is no single solution

If I were designing a serious deficit-reduction package, I would not choose "tax the rich" or "cut spending."

I'd combine perhaps six or seven relatively painful but manageable measures:

And here's the uncomfortable truth:

Even all of that would require political compromise.

CBO's current projections show federal revenues around 17.5% of GDP in 2026, while spending is substantially higher; the agency projects the deficit continuing to be very large. Congressional Budget Office

And this is why I would distinguish between "reducing the deficit" and "reducing the debt."

If Washington runs a $1 trillion deficit instead of a $2 trillion deficit, that's a huge improvement—but the debt is still increasing by $1 trillion.

To actually stabilize the debt, eventually the government has to get to something close to:

revenues = spending + interest costs.

And one thing I would not rely on

I would not build a fiscal plan around the hope that economic growth will magically solve everything.

Growth helps enormously. But with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest payments growing as they are, the arithmetic eventually catches up with you.

The CBO's own list is useful because it lets us move beyond slogans. It puts actual dollar estimates beside dozens of alternatives. Congressional Budget Office

If you'd like, I can next give you something even more useful: a realistic “$2 trillion deficit-reduction plan” combining about 10 measures, showing roughly how much each would save and who would bear the cost. That would make the trade-offs much clearer.