It's budgeted to increase by more than 40 percent and keep climbing. This is the cold reality that confronts all the warm bipartisan talk about balancing the budget. It's the result of a lack of discipline, occasioned by a politics without backbone. It's discipline and principle, not cozy feelings and accommodation, that bring the best public policy, both for a party and a country. Investors with the willpower to stay with the stock market over the past six years know the lesson of discipline well.
Politicians ignore it at the nation's peril.
Let's look quickly at what they did to the budget while you weren't watching. As the election approached this fall, both Democrats and Republicans loosened the reins on spending. Hardly anyone noticed, and neither side wanted to raise a ruckus. That compares with a rise of 3.8 percent in fiscal 1996 and 3.7 percent in 1995. The press is repulsed by political conflict.