Editorial: Debt a threat, too

President Obama is in a tight spot. Economists tell him spending is necessary to grow the economy, but that just deepens already huge deficits that also threaten the country's future.

So, what to do? Obama's new budget tells the tale. His proposed $3.8 trillion in spending puts the nation on course for deficits totaling more than $5 trillion over the next five years.

That's staggering. Recession or not, the country can't afford that level of spending. The federal government now borrows one-third of all the money it spends.

No household could survive very long like that. On this pace, interest payments on the national debt alone will reach $840 billion in 2020. That sum is more than the government is projected to spend in the same year on all discretionary domestic programs not related to security.

The president is correct in pointing out that he faced enormous deficits when he walked in the door. Republican lawmakers now aghast at these deficits were largely silent while they were running up the red ink themselves.

But Obama's short-term answer to fixing the economy is to borrow more money, and that increases deficits. As the national debt soars, it threatens economic recovery, putting pressure on interest rates to rise and tamping down job creation.

Regardless of what came before him, this complicated job is now Obama's. The president and Congress need to do more to hold down spending, by taking a closer look at every department.

The administration has pledged to freeze some domestic spending, and that's a start, but even within that spending cap, some programs are slated for increases much greater than the rate of inflation. Education spending would grow by 7.5 percent; the Energy Department's budget would grow 6.8 percent.

And then there's the cost of fighting two wars, a burden that shows no sign of diminishing. The financial price tag is now at about $160 billion per year, only slightly less than it was at the height of the Bush administration. There's little indication yet that these costs can be reduced as much as Obama is projecting.

Obama says he won't cut military funding while troops are in the field. But this enormous cost should be prompting more debate about what is truly best for our national security. A poor nation is a vulnerable nation.

There's always a risk in raising taxes in a weak economy, even for those who can most afford it. But balancing the federal budget cannot be done responsibly through spending reductions alone. Bush-era tax cuts for couples earning more than $250,000 per year would expire on Dec. 31. Some families will end up paying more, but it's hard to see how that can be avoided.

Just as necessary is for the administration to go back into its budget and make some hard choices on further cuts. It also needs to stop relying on some overly optimistic assumptions. For example, the budget counts on saving nearly $300 billion over 10 years by limiting income-tax deductions for wealthy taxpayers. That proposal went nowhere in Congress last year.

Obama is trying to push the worst budget decisions further down the road. That won't do.