The federal government's announcement that the deficit for the fiscal year that ended in September is $1.4 trillion, the highest since 1945, is very unwelcome news.

For one thing, the benchmark of comparison was scary. Near the end of World War II the United States was going all-out to bring campaigns in the European and Asian theaters to a successful close. In 2009 America is waist-deep in long, costly and unsuccessful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It also isn't fair to blame the Bush administration for the giant deficit, even though it is partly true, because of its tax cuts for the rich and its decision to fight two wars on America's credit card, issued by the Chinese, Japanese, Europeans and oil rich Arabs.

Then came the $700 billion bank bailout requested by President George W. Bush, to be followed by the $787 billion economic stimulus package signed by President Barack Obama during his first week in office. Taxpayers were left with a bitter taste in their mouths when some of the bailout went to banks and financial houses -- Goldman Sachs, AIG, JPMorgan and other mammoths -- that paid mega-bonuses to their executives, even though they were the ones who got America into this crisis in the first place.

To cover the deficit in the short run, the United States will have to continue borrowing from foreign and domestic creditors. To pay back the $12 trillion national debt in the long run will present two unsatisfactory alternatives -- saddling young Americans with mountains of debt and taxes and letting inflation blossom so that the real size of the debt diminishes over time. Neither is fair, and the problem with inflation is it hits the working person, the one whose wages lag and whose expenses don't.

Another option, though, is to cut back, starting with the two wars, congressional earmarks and other spending. That's the one that makes sense.

Cartoonist Rob Rogers does "Rob's Rough," an early look at his work and his creative process, exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.