You don’t have to “sell” it. It’s more than just “necessary” as you say. It’s going to happen. The promised money isn’t there, and is never going to be there. The question is how/whether the GOP can position itself to politically benefit. Clearly the current DC class doesn’t have a clue.

Of course, the problem is that the evidence that things have to radically change regarding government overspending is going to be economic disaster. But economic disaster means that the government has to overspend to compensate! Quite the catch-22, isn’t it?

I’m still relatively hopeful that America isn’t France, or Greece, and that people won’t be completely blind to what has to happen, but it may very well be a close run thing.

In summary, I don’t have an answer to your question. Clinton blew a gift-wrapped chance to use the Cold War peace dividend to reform things gracefully, and Bush/Obama probably blew the final chance. Now it’ll be the hard way…