It is rarely easy in handling our personal finances -- much less in government's handling of its finances -- to balance wants and needs with available money.
But it is disgusting that Congress seems to be throwing up its hands in collective dismay after the failure of a bipartisan committee to reach a deal on cutting federal deficits -- a failure brought on by Democrats' demand for remarkably unwise tax increases in the midst of an economic crisis.
OK, the committee failed. Other committees have failed. But the deficit cuts the panel considered weren't big enough to begin with, and neither are the allegedly "automatic" cuts that are now scheduled to kick in in 2013. So this isn't a time for Congress to surrender but to begin working on serious deficit reductions.
That means reform of runaway entitlements, as well as massive cuts to unconstitutional subsidies and other areas where federal spending is wasteful and misguided.
The problem is serious. The $15 trillion debt and the hundreds of billions of dollars in annual interest we pay on it are crippling our economy.
Congress has to quit playing around the edges and begin making real and difficult choices about how it will spend the already-excessive tax revenue that it takes in.