IMO, a lot of entitlement reform will happen on its own when the state debt becomes too high. At the national level we'll probably see a collapse of medicare and at state levels we'll see the end of public education. Sadly, it will probably require that the states completely bankrupt themselves, but maybe that is what was necessary.

Governments have demonstrated time and time again that they cannot be trusted with managing a multi-trillion dollar budget. Optimistic statists will always suggest that we just need to make reforms and keep improving the government until we have an accountable and efficacious government. But they fail to understand how people and groups respond to incentives and how fucked up the system becomes when that incentive structure is distorted.