If you want to decrease the debt, you need to raise some taxes. There is no other way.
Not necessarily.
Portugal' 2012 is a good that it's not linear as that.
Portugal has always had one of the highest tax burden in Europe (associated with low salaries and purchase power). With the financial agreement and austerity, the Government decided to raise taxes even more.
Guess what: The tax revenues instead of increasing... It's decreasing 10%. Which means that there's a "celiling" for the maximum taxing that a State can hit.
Portugal has already reached that "ceilling". From now on, it'll have the opposite effect. That means that the more you increase the taxes, the more the revenues will decline.
The same goes to the economic adjustement and austerity in the Euro-currency context.
The EU, Merkel, Schauble, the IFM have the illusion that with economic adjustment, after hitting low, the economy will start to grow again.
That's what usually happens when you have an economy that exports, ut mostly, that has sovereign instruments like having a currency that can be printed and/or devalued, or manipulate inflation.
That's not the Euro countries case lik Portugal or Greece. Which means that since these instruments do not exist, this devaluation has to happen in the State's services but, most of all, in the salaries and income of the people, which leads to an even lower purchasing power.
In an economy like Portugal, which lives from the domestic demand (+/- 70%) that's fatal.
It means that recession will continue for a large number of years and that when growth come, it'll be anemic again, maintaining the collapse of the businesses and increasing even more unemployment which turns these high rates from temporary to structural.
It's a spiral and any economist knows it. Only these fanatics haven't achieved this.