Tommy Denton

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Patriotic members of Congress have, at long, painful last, proposed to initiate impeachment proceedings -- against the fiscal tooth fairy.

After six years of radical irresponsibility under the influence of that wily temptress, new leadership in the 110th Congress has taken the first steps to restore a semblance of competence and integrity to the federal government's frightening propensity to run up unconscionable debt while giving away the store in the form of tax "relief" for those least in need of further enrichment.

Among the first initiatives introduced in the Senate last week was the Restoring Fiscal Discipline Act of 2007, proposed on Thursday, the opening day of the new session, by incoming Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D. House Democrats also offered similar legislation.

In effect, the Democrats exhort the nation to return to the prudent, pay-as-you-go policies that require the federal government to actually pay for any new expenditures or tax cuts with new revenue sources or budget reductions elsewhere to balance the ledger.

As a consequence of lock-step governance from a Republican administration and GOP enablers in both houses of Congress unwilling to practice such discipline, America has been slowly sinking into a quagmire of suffocating debt that threatens the nation's future.

This is hardly news. Last September, I had the good fortune to attend a National Conference of Editorial Writers convention in Pittsburgh at which U.S. Comptroller David Walker presented a sobering wake-up call on the plight of U.S. fiscal irresponsibility.

As the chief of the U.S. General Accountability Office noted, "Absent policy changes on the spending and/or revenue sides of the budget, a growing imbalance between expected federal spending and tax revenues will mean escalating and ultimately unsustainable federal deficits and debt that serve to threaten our future national security as well as the standard of living for the American people."

How soon we forget that President Bush entered office in 2001 with a budget surplus. Bush promptly repudiated Bill Clinton's policy of devoting a hefty portion of those surpluses to begin paying down the national debt, then a relatively modest $5.8 trillion.

Instead, Bush preferred the path of radical spending financed by debt, and Congress obliged. Indeed, the damage inflicted by this administration has imposed a dangerous burden on the U.S. economy. Outstanding federal debt held by the public has climbed as a ratio of the nation's gross domestic product from 26 percent when Bush took office to the current 38 percent.

Now, after six years, the administration boasts that the budget deficit has narrowed to a mere $248 billion. True, but what Americans should be heeding is the administration's sleight-of-hand, abetted by congressional approval of a higher ceiling, to escalate long-term debt that future generations will have to retire.

So while the deficit may be nearing manageable proportions, the interest-soaking debt actually increased by $546 billion last year -- almost $300 billion more than the stated deficit -- to an astounding $8.6 trillion, an increase nearly 70 percent greater than the level that Bush inherited from Clinton.

That, in effect, is burning the next generation's candle at both ends.

If Congress allows existing Bush spending and tax-cut proposals to persist, the debt in the next five years would soar to $11.6 trillion, according to the Government Accountability Office. That frightening consequence would happen at the worst possible time: just as the wave of baby boom retirees begins overwhelming the already-strained Social Security and Medicare programs.

To some extent, the public gets confused between "deficit" and "debt," a useful confusion for purveyors of propaganda. The current accounts deficit measures only a short-term imbalance of the year-to-year federal budget. Debt refers to the interest-accumulating load that has to be repaid to lenders, which in 2006 cost U.S. taxpayers a stunning $406 billion in interest payments alone.

As Conrad said on the Senate floor last week, "In the last five years, foreign holdings of our debt have doubled. In other words, it took 42 presidents 224 years to run up $1 trillion of U.S. debt held abroad. That amount has more than doubled in just the last five years. This is a course that cannot be sustained."

Impeach the fiscal tooth fairy.

Denton's column appears in the Sunday and Tuesday editions of The Roanoke Times.