The three sacred entitlement cows in the room that no politician wants to poke are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. A blinding statement of the obvious is that we are never going to get our financial house in order until these sacred entitlement cows are not only poked, but slaughtered. Until the slaughter is over, everything else is just taxation window dressing.

In addition to slaughtering the three sacred entitlement cows that consume a vast majority of the federal budget (and I use the term budget generously), let’s truly spread the pain around and raise taxes on everyone, including the nearly 50 percent of Americans who pay zero federal income taxes. Those Americans need to have some skin in the game, too. I recommend at least a 5 percent federal income tax bracket for them. The insane free ride needs to end.

Every federal agency and department should be required to take an immediate, real 15 percent cut in its budget — no funny accounting tricks, but a real 15 percent cut. Agency budgets then should be rolled back to their 2005 level before the end of 2013.

No tax-raising deal should be signed without including a balanced-budget amendment.

Let’s also stop the insanity by suspending the right to vote of any American who is on welfare. Once they get off welfare and are self-sustaining, they get their right to vote restored. No American on welfare should have the right to vote for tax increases on those Americans who are working and paying taxes to support them. That’s insane.

In addition to suspending a welfare recipient’s right to vote, we also need to get our voting system straightened out and eliminate voter fraud. We need to ensure that only Americans vote by requiring polling places to validate the identification of each voter.

It shouldn’t take a Motown guitar slayer to come up with these common-sense bargaining chips before taxes are raised on the producers, which will further choke the economy. How about it, GOP?