However stupid tea part 2.0 was, the recovery act is water on a grease fire, Mr. President.

^ So what would be a lid on the pot?

Cutting wasteful, politically motivated spending. That's the only solution.

Yeah, but first you have to define "wasteful, politically motivated spending". Personally, i think 80% of what the federal goverment does is done wastefully and for political reasons.

The solution is not simply reducing government [spending], but decentralizing it. Downsizing the federal government and especially empowering county goverments (even many states are too big to be centralized).

"One size fits all" is terribly inefficient, has a MUCH higher cost of failure, decreases the value of political involvement by the average individual (thus discouraging it), and increases the motivations for corrupt government. Ultimately, it means the we become a government by and for the lobbyists, rather than the people.

Our nation's founders did a great job of putting in checks and balances. But they did not sufficiently plan for population growth. Add the fact that their primary population adjustment (the House of Reps) was killed off (frozen at 435) about a century ago, and now we our current twisted form of democracy.

If you want real change, we have to fix the scaling problems. This means localizing/decentralizing power (i.e. spending). But no, Obama would never consider that to be a "serious" option. No Democrat ever has, and once in office, few Republicans have either. We need more options.