Based on the last few weeks, it seems like Washington is absolutely consumed, even obsessed, with the federal budget. Democrats and Republicans spent countless hours fighting as if the End Times would be triggered by relatively minor shifts in domestic priorities and proposed tax hikes for hedge fund managers. And yet in the end, the political system once again ignored the very real threat lurking in wait. Everyone in Washington knows that federal finances can’t go on the way they have, but they’re not letting the citizenry in on that dirty little secret.

Oh, things got done, certainly. The country does in fact have a budget. President Bush got the limits on discretionary spending he wanted, the Democrats swung more money to domestic programs. The alternative minimum tax got patched, again, saving more than 20 million families a considerable amount of money.

In the meantime, the national debt is at $9 trillion. Another $50 trillion in liabilities stretch out into the future as Medicare and Social Security continue on a path to disaster. There are things that need to happen if the federal government is going to avert its real fiscal problems. And none of those things happened.

Most people in politics, in their moments of off-the-record candor, shake their heads and tsk, tsk about the serious problem of entitlement spending, and then, in a Jack Nicholson moment, blame the American public: “You can’t handle the truth!â€? And there’s an element of truth in that. But here’s another truth: You can have a ferocious debate over an arcane but important topic like paygo, and the public essentially won’t notice. But when it comes time to do the things that are necessary to solve the budget problems, the public will notice. The public will know and care about major changes to the health care system or their Social Security benefits or their taxes. And if they don’t like it, if they don’t understand why things have to change, if they’re unprepared and caught off-guard, they won’t let the government do it.

That’s why it’s time to have a real public discussion of these issues. If we’re going to avoid fiscal disaster, the public has to understand the problem, have a real say in the solutions, and trust the government to follow through fairly. The questions are too fundamental to be left to the policy wonks, and the problem is too serious to be set aside - once again — as the parties jockey for position in the next election. What everyone in Washington knows about the budget has got to become the basis for what everyone in Washington does about it. Or nothing is going to get done at all. And it’s really way past time for someone to step up to the plate.

Scott Bittle, an award-winning journalist, is executive editor of Public Agenda Online (www.publicagenda.org), a public affairs site twice-nominated for the prestigious Webby Award. Jean Johnson is executive vice president of Public Agenda and a founder of the Web site. Together, they are the authors of Where Does the Money Go? Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis, available in February from HarperCollins.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 8:50 am and is filed under Politics .