I don't think a flat tax is the way. There have been tons of arguments against it before me and I'm sure you've heard them all. I do think that we should eliminate certain deductions, but often the ones that certain politicians try to eliminate are ones that help the poorest, rather than ones that help tax dodging rich people. There should perhaps be a minimum tax, perhaps with a slight rise according to income. But any change that drastic to the tax code would require them to rework all sorts of things and the reason we're in this mess is because they're too lazy and corrupt to fix it in the first place.

I think they should start cleaning up the laws and the tax code, but they won't. They could also have extra fees for certain things. Carbon taxes and the like are there to reduce the profit on dirty industries and force them to update their technology. Instead they fight against them. They could put all sorts of extra taxes on specific industries and reduce their profits. They could also reduce exemptions for certain industries.

They're not going to do anything though, unless people force them to, and I doubt they will.