We're another day older and deeper in debt -- do the math

Nine trillion dollars.
That's what Congress has approved as the new debt ceiling for the U.S. government.
If Congress -- and President Bush, who has not vetoed a single bill -- continue to spend more than is taken in, that debt limit will be reached in a few years. And when it is reached, every man, woman and child in this country will have a $30,419 piece of the debt.
This is, in a word, unconscionable. Because, in truth, paying this bill is not going to fall to all 296 million Americans. It is not going to be paid by old citizens, perhaps not even by middle-aged citizens. It is going to fall to the young to pay the tab.
Congress and the administration, largely made up of upper middle class and middle-aged or older men, are spending as if there is no tomorrow -- knowing that tomorrow the penalty for their profligacy will fall to their children and grandchildren.
Unconscionable is probably too kind a word. Whatever the word is, it applies not only to our elected officials, of course -- it applies to those of us who elected them. There was a day when this nation elected tax-and-spend Democrats. Now it elects borrow-and-spend Republicans.
By the numbers
Last week, Congress raised the federal debt limit by $781 billion, to $8.996 trillion -- we're rounding it off to $9 trillion as a convenience. Congress had no choice. Treasury Secretary John Snow had been tinkering with the books for weeks to keep the reported debt below the old limit of $8.2 trillion. Which means, by the way, that every American is already $27,800 in the hole.
This was the fourth debt-ceiling increase in the past five years, after boosts of $450 billion in 2002, a record $984 billion in 2003 and $800 billion in 2004. The statutory debt limit has risen by more than $3 trillion since Bush took office.
In other words, the debt limit has increased 50 percent under the president's watch -- and when he took office, he inherited a budget that had started to run modest surpluses, meaning that the debt was being reduced.
To be sure, the economic upheaval of Sept. 11, 2001, made it difficult to balance a budget. But that is only a partial explanation, it is not an excuse.
Decisions have been made by the president and Congress to spend money -- on the war, on No Child Left Behind, on the ill-conceived Medicare Part D prescription plan -- and no parallel decisions were made to cut spending in other programs or provide tax income to cover the costs.
It is economic cowardice to shift the cost for today's spending programs to citizens who are too young to vote or who have not yet been born. It is time for Republicans and Democrats alike in Washington to show some courage.