Via Mediaite, the saddest cable news segment you’ll see today. The guy’s intentions are obviously good, but c’mon. If you’re generous with the numbers here — assume every American, infants included, is fully employed and receiving a weekly check — you’re looking at raising something like $16 billion a year to offset a debt that’s grown since 2007 at a rate of almost $4 billion per day. He’s got something in the plan too about “big business” donating $1 for each transaction over $10. I don’t know how to guesstimate the revenue we’d get from that, but it’d be enough of a hit to major retailers and financial firms that there’s no way they’d comply without being compelled by government. And if they did, economic growth might well slow to the point that we’d end up losing tax revenue on balance.

Anything that pushes America’s debt problem in front of voters is potentially helpful, and amid the back-slapping and attaboys here, Fox does manage to sneak in the fact that the $7 million raised so far by this guy’s cause is enough to pay down the debt for … three minutes. But the takeaway from this bit is that there are in fact non-painful solutions to the debt crisis out there, with wealthy corporations ready, able, and hopefully willing to shoulder most of the load, and that’s simply not true. Reminds me of Obama’s dumb Buffett Rule in that regard: Neither O nor Soucy claims to have solved the red-ink problem completely, but they do imply that their plans would ease the situation considerably, which is nonsense. There’s no way out of this without entitlement reform and/or tax hikes on the middle class. One way or another, average Americans will sacrifice. Stuff like this does nothing but leave them less prepared for the reckoning.