The Gap that never closes

The United States government collects 1.8 trillion dollars every year, however at the present time it is spending twice that 3.6 trillion dollars per year. In the years 2000-2008 5 trillion dollars were added to the national debt, making the national debt as of Dec 2008 10 trillion dollars. Unfortunately at the current rate of spending, another 10 trillion dollars will be added in the next 8 years. The problem is even at a low rate of interest, interest of 20 trillion dollars eight years from now will amount to over 600 billion per year or 30% of the annual budget just to service the debt in interest every year. That does not count the 57 trillion in unfunded obligations for Medicare or the 4 trillion that was "borrowed" from the Social Security trust fund.
At the current rate, estimated revenue by the General Accounting Office is that by 2040 all revenue will go to entitlements and interest, leaving nothing for defense or any other govenment agency. So where will we get the money to pay for entitlements as there is a limit to how much we can borrow at any one time, and we are probably at that limit right now, since we are borrowing 5 billion dollars each and every day!!
Well, rather than raise the income tax rate to 60% on people with incomes above 250,000 which the majority of Americans do not support, what is being floated right now are two taxes , taxes on health insurance benefits and the "European" solution, The VAT(Value Added Tax), a tax of 10-15% on everything at each stage(manufacturing, wholesale and then retail). VAT is a true hidden tax because by time you get it you do not know how much it has been taxed. Of course this would be in addition to a cap n trade(carbon emissions) tax. The carbon emissions(hidden) tax is estimated to bring in 60-80 billion per year, the tax on healthcare benefits is estimated to bring in another 100 billion per year, but the "mother" of all taxes is the VAT, it could bring in 800 billion dollars per year.
C ongress has not proposed the VAT yet, it is still in discussion as they want to pass the cap n trade first, then healthcare reform "funded" by a tax on healthcare benefits along with "ghost" savings of 300 billion or more according to the White House, which would be one of every 7 dollars currently spent on healthcare by eliminating waste and fraud. That does not fool anyone even the CBO Congressional Budget Office.
Then to really bring in the dough, then the VAT. The question is how far down this yellow brick road to the Land of Ob, are we willing to go before we say enough with the smoke and mirrors, this is as President George H. Bush said nothing but voodoo economics.