In the movie, Shooter, there is a scene where some bad guys have created a contraption that forces one’s arm to point a gun at their head and pull a trigger.  The following article about the coming debt panic discusses what needs to be done:

The fiscal situation was serious before the recession. It is now dire. An important proposal being released Monday by the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reformurges Congress and the White House to commit immediately to stabilizing the debt at 60 percent of GDP by 2018; come up with a credible plan for getting there; and begin phasing in the necessary policy changes in 2012, once the recovery is fully underway. Warnings about fiscal danger may sound familiar, but one reflection of the current circumstances comes in the composition of the group that signed on to this report and agreed that both tax increases and spending cuts would be required. They range from a liberal former chair of the House Budget Committee,  William H. Gray III of Pennsylvania, to a conservative former chair, Jim Nussle of Iowa. The recommendations envision annual benchmarks, enforceable by a debt trigger that would impose spending cuts and a surtax if the specified reductions were not achieved. Once the debt is stabilized in 2018, the goal would be to set it on a glide path to further reduction, closer to the historical average of below 40 percent. (emphasis added)

I don’t think the Peterson-Pew suggestion goes far enough.  Some triggers are more effective than others, and I have little faith in a debt trigger that would supposedly force Congress to cut spending and increase taxes.  It is also interesting the same group that insists that we can reduce CO2 emissions to ridiculous levels, despite the fact that our control over the natural world is limited, shows no ability to control spending.  Unlike natural elements, money, and our current systems of currency and credit are entirely man-made, and therefore entirely subject to our manipulation.  If we can’t control something as simple as our debt, by what line of thinking do we think that we can control something as complicated as the climate of our planet?