Bruce Bartlett thinks the United States...

...should enact a value-added tax (VAT) as soon as possible. But he also acknowledges that it may take ten years before it's politically feasible:

Personally, I think it's stupid to put up with a decade of unnecessary pain and suffering before we finally bite the bullet and do what has to be done to stabilize our nation's public finances. But I don't see any other path that will get us there. The right-wing, tea party fantasy that we can solve our fiscal problems only by cutting spending has to be proven by experience to be a failure before rational people can finally put real solutions like a VAT on the table without being denounced by Larry Kudlow and the Wall Street Journal editorial page for trying to Europeanize the American economy and turn every American into a tax-slave.