Consider Whole Budget

Here's how not to deal with the federal government's long-term fiscal problems: Focus on only a third of the budget.

But that's what Congress is doing as the government veers toward a potential government shutdown less than two weeks from now.

Members of Congress are fighting over discretionary spending, a small slice of the overall budget. Democrats are making a new pitch, this time to trim $20 billion more, on top of the $10 billion of cuts Congress already has made. Republicans, facing tea party pressure from their right wing, have sought up to $61 billion in cuts.

Sorry, but we won't get the nation's fiscal house in order by arguing over National Public Radio and the national parks. Entitlement spending — for Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid — should be addressed. And significant cuts to the defense budget must be on the table.

The federal budget deficit is expected to hit a record $1.65 trillion this year.

Congress faces an April 8 deadline for reaching agreement on a spending plan for the current fiscal year.

House Republicans say they are preparing a budget resolution that will propose spending reductions for entitlements. We give them credit for trying — if they do that. Entitlement spending and interest on the nation's growing debt is increasingly becoming a burden that the nation cannot bear.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of senators, the so-called Gang of Six, is working to reach agreement on a broad deficit-reduction scheme that includes a tax code overhaul and changes to entitlements, including Social Security. President Barack Obama's deficit-reduction commission last year suggested how such a scheme might work.

The Government Accountability Office has found that "current fiscal policy is unsustainable over the long term." Rising health care spending and an aging population have put the nation on a fast track to insolvency. The sooner the nation acts to rein in entitlement spending in a humane fashion, the better.

REPRINTED FROM THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL.

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