Spending cuts alone not enough

Sooner or later the nation is going to have to face a hard truth about the federal government's woeful fiscal condition. The government officially hit its debt ceiling yesterday, and Republicans like House Speaker John Boehner, as well as a few Democrats who insist federal deficits can be reined in through spending cuts alone, are just plain wrong. Taxes will have to be raised, too. President Barack Obama and Congress should let all the Bush tax cuts expire after 2012.

After a decade of massive tax cuts, costly wars, financial crisis, bailouts, recession and stimulus -- layered atop the prospect of ever-growing Medicare and Medicaid spending -- the hole is just too deep for half measures. Federal spending is at its highest level in 65 years while federal tax revenue is at its lowest in 60 years, each as a share of gross domestic product. The gap between the two is what has saddled the nation with a $1.65-trillion deficit this year, and a $14.3-trillion national debt.

Services the public has come to rely on from Washington -- Medicare, the military, homeland security, environmental protection, education, highways, bridges, medical research, law enforcement and all the rest -- come at a high price. To control federal borrowing without irresponsibly gutting those things critical to the nation's well-being means we're going to have to swallow hard and pay for what we get.

Allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire would return taxes to the level they were in 2000 -- back when the federal budget was actually in the black -- and increase federal revenue $4 trillion over the next decade. Everybody who pays income taxes would pay more than they do today, so the burden would be shared fairly.

Before Obama agreed last year to extend the Bush tax cuts for all through 2012, this board argued that only those for the 2 percent of taxpayers earning more than $200,000 a year as individuals or $250,000 as couples should be allowed to expire.

The economy was particularly fragile then. It was important to let most taxpayers keep that money in their pockets to stimulate the economy. But by the end of 2012, the recovery should be sturdier and, with mounting debt, the imperative to balance the federal books will be even more pressing. Different conditions call for different actions.

Of course taxpayers shouldn't send all that money to Washington without strings as stout as bridge cables. Any deal to raise the federal debt ceiling should include an agreement to cut trillions of dollars in spending over the next decade. And it should obligate Washington to simplify the income tax code and recapture some of the $1.1 trillion a year doled out in popular tax deductions, as well as popularly vilified ones.

The best hope for a workable, bipartisan deficit-reduction plan is likely to come from the group of congressional lawmakers known as "the gang of six." Their long-awaited proposal is due to be unveiled any day now. One key to success is shared sacrifice. If we're going to ask the elderly on Medicare, college students on financial aid and the poor relying on food stamps to make do with less, then we should also ask those with more to do their part by paying more.