Looming deficit should be reality check for Washington

It did not take long for reality to set in. No, it is not possible to have it all. It is not possible to have lower taxes, higher domestic spending, higher military spending and extraordinary expenses in fighting a war on terrorism without getting into serious fiscal problems.
The projected deficit for this fiscal year, which will be at least $455 billion, should be a wake-up call for everyone in Washington, and especially for those lawmakers who like to think of themselves as deficit hawks.
The White House Tuesday released a deficit estimate of $455 billion for the fiscal year ending this Sept. 30, and that doesn't include some of the anticipated costs of the occupation of Iraq. The figure is a startling $150 billion over White House estimates released earlier this year.
And the estimate for next year is $475 billion, which is, again, conservative. It is safe to say that over this year and next, the United States will add $1 trillion to the national debt.
Income down, spending up
The Associated Press reported that during the first nine months of the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, revenues were down by 3.5 percent to $1.35 trillion, compared to a year earlier. Individual income tax payments totaled $604.6 billion, a decline of almost 6 percent from the previous year. Corporate tax payments plunged to $97.5 billion, a 15.8 percent drop.
Federal spending for the nine months totaled $1.62 trillion, a 6.9 percent increase from the corresponding period in fiscal 2002.
The biggest spending categories so far this budget year are Social Security, $380.4 billion; programs of the Health and Human Services Department, including Medicare and Medicaid, $376.6 billion; military, $284.7 billion; and interest on the public debt, $277.8 billion.
Take a long look at that last figure -- $277.8 billion in interest on the public debt -- and you can almost imagine it rising before your eyes, because as the nation continues to spend more than it takes in, the cost of borrowing will continue to go up. If you don't think that's a problem, your children and grandchildren will.
The White House almost boasted that the deficits will start to fall after the 2004 fiscal year, to less than $300 billion in 2005. But even with falling deficits, the cumulative effect will be the addition of $4 trillion to the national debt over a decade. And $300 billion is hardly a target worth shooting for, since until this year the largest deficit ever registered was $290 billion in 1992.
These are appalling numbers, especially given that President Bush ran as a fiscal conservative and inherited a $127 billion budget surplus his first year in office.
Whistling past the graveyard
Congress and the administration have to stop pretending that the nation is not on its way to a fiscal crisis.
Any homeowner knows that you can't continue to spend more than you make and that you have to put something away for your old age. In this case, the nation will begin hitting old age in just about 10 years, when the first of the Baby Boomers begin collecting full Social Security benefits.
That's when Congress will not only have to balance its budget, but it will have to start repaying the Social Security trust funds it is borrowing from to support its profligate ways.
It has been relatively easy to go from a budget surplus to the largest deficit in history in just three years. Reversing the trend will be painful and slower, especially since sudden massive cutbacks in government spending now would only damage the nation's weakened economy.
But the first thing that has to be done is for the White House and some members of Congress to stop acting as if running up record levels of debt isn't worth worrying about.