Seven Tough Choices We Will Not Make

· Increase the top tax rate on dividends and capital gains (profits on stocks and other assets) from today's 15 percent to at least 25 percent.

· Require Congress to cut $1 of spending for each dollar of tax increase until the budget balances. After that, tax and spending changes would have to offset each other. Higher spending would require higher taxes -- and vice versa with exceptions for recessions.

· Require the Congressional Budget Office to confirm spending cuts -- and if they're not made, mandate automatic cuts to all non-defense programs, including Social Security and Medicare (Social Security checks would shrink, Medicare premiums would rise).

· Raise the eligibility ages for Social Security and Medicare gradually to 70 by 2029. At 65, people would have to buy into Medicare (that is, pay for coverage) until they reached eligibility for subsidized benefits.

A package like this would eliminate the budget deficit, probably within two or three years. It would temper our dependence on foreign oil (gasoline accounts for almost half of U.S. oil use) and let us begin to adapt to an older, healthier society (since 1970, life expectancy has increased seven years). Although it would be controversial, the package would be balanced. Budget measures would be split between tax increases and spending cuts; energy measures would be split between more production and more conservation. Finally, this approach would compel legislators to debate openly the value of higher spending vs. higher taxes.

That something like this won't soon be proposed -- let alone passed -- speaks volumes about our politics. Both parties have marketed government as a source of aid and comfort. Benefits are to be pursued, burdens shifted and choices avoided. Problems are to be blamed on scapegoats ("the liberals," "the rich"). There is little sense of common interests and shared obligations. Politicians resort to symbolic acts that seem more meaningful than they actually are: the minimum wage, for instance.

What results is a politically expedient world of make-believe that takes many sensible compromises off the table. Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for example, wouldn't ravage the environment. But for many Democrats, it's a cause celebre. Voting to open ANWR would be politically unpardonable. Similarly, some tax increases wouldn't destroy the economy; it has operated satisfactorily at higher levels of taxation. But for many Republicans, voting for any tax increase would also be a political death sentence. We are condemned to rituals that usually get us nowhere.