Is it impossible to do what's necessary to save America?

I've been thinking about the noise one is hearing today in the media about an ostensibly growing number of Congressional Pubs who are caving to various degrees on the role of taxation in averting the fiscal cliff.  My thought process is taking the form of a dialogue in my head, as is often the case when I ponder something.  I can picture some kind of east-coast wonk, maybe even someone who is supposed to be one of my people - a Bill Kristol, perhaps - feeling like he is comfortably successful in refuting my insistence on principle - namely, the principle that a person's money is his or hers, not a football in a Capitol Hill scrimmage.  Here's how the snippet went that began when I was washing dishes a few minutes ago.

Me: Any talk about revenue is way, way premature.  Certainly tax rate increases, but even preoccupying ourselves with loopholes.  Save that for a discussion on overall tax reform.  Of course, we know that tax hikes would be ridiculously inadequate for addressing our debt / deficit situation, and they would, no matter what Warren Buffett says, cause economic contraction.  The problem is that if one does indeed get truly serious and put on the table, as Pennsylvania Avenue types like to say, the stuff that most needs to be on the table - moving the big three entitlements toward privatization, letting FHer-care die on the vine for lack of funding, and dismantling whole cabinet-level departments and agencies - one is dismissed as a crank, a wacko.

Beltway Wonk: Okay, I will not call you a crank, but I will flatly state that it is a cold, hard fact that it is a certainty that those items will not get an airing at any fiscal cliff negotiations.  For one thing, many people of public and private influence honestly, whether mistakenly or correctly, believe such programs, departments and agencies do significant good. Secondly, there are thousands of entrenched career bureaucrats that have a keen self-interest involved.  They will not sit idly by and see the plug pulled on their livelihoods.  Thirdly, yes, unbridled conservatism has been marginalized in Washington.

Me:  But none of these people are idiots.  They know that we know that they have at least glancingly been exposed to the study findings  - CBO, Ernst & Young - showing the futility and indeed the harmfulness of tax increases.

BWW: Yes, they have, which compels them to be all the craftier in sticking to talking points, glossing over inconsistencies in their worldview, and dealing in platitudes whenever possible.

Me: So you're saying it's impossible to do what's necessary to save America.  If that's so, we have indeed passed the tipping point.