The passage of President Bush's budget by the Congress, including a $477 billion deficit for 2004, has put once again the question of the enormous, rising U.S. government debt load in front of Americans.

This year's budget deficit is bad enough. Projections down the road indicate even worse coming. The U.S. government debt now stands at $7 trillion -- an almost unimaginable figure -- with another $2 trillion to $5 trillion projected over the next 10 years.

It seems like a real trip into the past to remember when, only three years ago, Americans were moving toward the day when they could begin to pay down the national debt with surpluses. Another long-gone option was putting money in the Social Security account to cover the upcoming retirement of the baby boomers.

Where did it go? Some of what happened was reduced tax revenues from the pop of the 1990s economic bubble. That was probably unavoidable. The part that wasn't inevitable was Mr. Bush's tax cuts, of which he promises more.

Those were, and are, a naked attempt to buy the voters. Almost anyone who says he doesn't like to have his taxes reduced -- property taxes, income taxes, even sales taxes -- is a hypocrite. But the national long-term impact of the phenomenon is catastrophic.

Tax-cutting, in the hands of a conservative, can be seen as a way to reduce the size and scope of government, in other words "to starve the beast." But what it comes down to in Bush administration practice is parallel to dogs in a kennel. There is one well-tended poodle, and 20 stray mutts. The poodle gets groomed, fed Eukanuba premium dog food and sleeps in a warm bed; the other dogs get put on thin rations.

The administration runs up the debt and spends what money there is on an unnecessary military operation in Iraq, so Mr. Bush will be re-elected as a wartime president in the name of assuring America's security. Money to meet domestic needs such as schools, infrastructure, social services and help for state and local governments gets cut to the bone.

This approach wouldn't work in the average household. Lenders would eventually stop extending credit, monthly interest would eat up all discretionary spending and the family enterprise would finally collapse under the weight of debt.

We could argue whether the analogy holds up between household microcosm and national macrocosm. But consider this: If the CEO of a company plunged it into debt by trillions of dollars and kept spending what income it did have in pursuit of a chancy enterprise halfway across the globe, the stockholders would probably get rid of him at the earliest opportunity. Or send him to Mars.