But government is needed to address the issues individuals can not control.

You can not control the interest rate that other people charge you. But the government has some influence on this. One way they massively influence the global interest rate (as well as the national and local interest rate), is how much money they borrow in the short term as well as how much debt they keep on their balances sheet longer term. If the governmental debt goes to 100% of GDP, 120%, 150%, 180%, etc the world becomes a more risky place and thus the interest rate goes up, and thus everything gets more expensive. Including that electricity or natural gas that warms your little pot you take a shower in.

If businesses have to pay a higher interest rate, than there growth will be less than it would be if the interest rate was lower. Lower growth means less money for you, less job security, or possible unemployment.

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We need to cut government spending in the long term (not this does not mean we need to cut government spending in the short term).

We also need more governmental revenues. If we do not do both our debt will grow larger and larger until it causes our economy to stand still and barely grow. We are an aging population and we need a growing economy to pay for our wrinkles.

We can't solve this long term debt problem just by spending cuts alone, if we do so we will cause irreplaceable harm to the middle class and the poor. We can not solve this long term debt problem with just taxes increases for if we only do tax increases we will also slow down our growth (but to a lesser extent). We need to do both.

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We need to raise taxes on the rich as well as the middle class. And these tax raises are going to be higher than just let the Bush tax cuts lapse.

Of course if we do tax reform we can make this revenue increases less painful by making our economy more efficient, by reducing the deadweight loss that occurs with our current tax code.