How To Avoid Printing Money

An Instapundit reader asks how do we get out of our fiscal mess without printing money, and the good professor poses this as a challenge.

I have my doubts that we can do it, but it would look like this:

1) First, on discretionary spending, do this.

2) On revenue, allow unrestricted drilling for oil and gas in US waters and impose competitive royalties.

3) Sell all, non-essential federally-owned land.

4) On entitlements, means test out the richest citizens, say over $5 million in net worth. Allow the middle class to completely opt out, a) from Social Security in exchange for complete capital gains tax forgiveness on IRA and 401K distributions, and b) from Medicare in exchange for expanded Health Savings Accounts.

That's it. It is actaully relatively easy from a numbers perspective, but next to impossible from a political perspective.