Need expert advice on debt

Presently I am unemployed. Income is; my retirement, VA disability, my wife. We have $24K on a Navy Federal Credit Union credit card (recently went from 9.9 to 12.9% APR), 2 mortgages to the tune of $200K, 3 car loans and a couple of other small accounts. I can't get anything refinanced locally because we're at a 40+% debt to income ration and needed to be at 50%. I tried to get them to see the logic in refinancing to bring me closer to 50% so that we could not only give them new business (car loans) but also reduce our payments to better solidify our ability to pay the notes. No dice.

We've been paying down the small accounts but it's close to the point of being too much for us with no room for emergency expenses. I just requested a package from the credit union for rate reduction consideration.

My questions are;

1) Any key words or phrases I should use in requesting the reduction other than the obvious?
2) Is there a better way to consolidate short of bankruptcy court or would that be the only way?

What I don't want to do is to refinance anything at a variable rate as everything I have is fixed rate if at all possible.