Budgeting involves give and take — even in Washington

Republicans should not be sur- prised — nor should they act shocked — that the budget President Barack Obama presented this week does not contain all the cuts they think it should.

Any more than Obama should be shocked or surprised that Republican leaders in the House have their own ideas about what a budget should or should not contain.

That Obama and Republicans, especially House Republicans who now hold the nation’s purse strings, have different views of economic reality is a simple fact of political life. And here’s another: If either had absolute power, neither would know exactly what to do.

The one thing they should be able to agree on is that the level of deficits that have been run up over the last three decades — in good times and bad — are a disgrace. They can’t deny that extraordinary deficits brought on in recent years by two wars and a financial crisis that threatened the collapse of major elements of the banking, insurance and manufacturing industries now exceed irresponsible. They are clearly unsustainable. But knowing something has to be done and knowing what to do are two different things.

Republicans and some Democrats won the year-end argument on whether all the Bush-era tax cuts should be extended by pointing out that any tax increase during a weak recovery from a crippled economy was asking for a relapse. By the same token, massive cutbacks in government spending represents the same threat to recovery.

Churning the economy

The money government spends doesn’t disappear into the ether. Some of it goes into pay checks for government employees. Some of it funds education, policing and other services at the state and local level, again ending up in pay checks. And some of it goes for infrastructure projects, that involve buying steel and mortar and hiring civil engineers, heavy equipment operators, ironworkers and laborers.

Cuts in education, research and infrastructure have the potential of crippling the United States in decades to come, especially when emerging economic powers are increasing their spending in those areas. Even cutting in that area in which most taxpayers seem most eager to make cuts — foreign aid — can have long-range implications for the U.S. standing in the world and national security.

Obama has put forward his budget proposal, and now Republicans get to respond. Both can then defend and seek compromise, while the public watches the debate, ideally with interest and open minds.

That’s the way the process is supposed to work. Reverse the excesses of the past with an eye toward building for the future. And with a recognition that neither side has all the answers.