Washington ? Under the shadow of war with Iraq, the House and Senate last week fought a series of skirmishes over the federal budget for next year. One big, overriding question was at stake: Would President Bush and the Republican majorities in Congress step up to the costs of battle, of homeland defense and of national obligations at home, or would they pass the costs on to future generations?

The answer, sadly, is that youngsters yet unborn will see their choices limited and their prospects blighted by the decision of today’s politicians to press ahead with an unaffordable tax cut even while the costs of war and reconstruction make earlier spending estimates wildly unrealistic.

The possible doubling of the national debt in the next decade will drive up interest costs that must be paid every year — billions of dollars that will not be available for Social Security, Medicare or any of the myriad responsibilities of the government here and abroad.

But the squeeze is not all prospective. Some dangerous economies are being forced this year — cutbacks that will have long-term damaging consequences for American society.

This was brought home to me from an unexpected source in a group interview last week with six state attorneys general — four Democrats and two Republicans — who were in Washington for a professional conference.

Their theme was one I have heard before, not just from social workers, academics and supposed bleeding-heart liberals, but from police chiefs, prosecutors and other hard-nosed denizens of the criminal justice system.

It is the irrefutable evidence that the most effective anticrime strategies — and the least expensive — are early childhood education, after-school programs and serious mentoring of youngsters who otherwise are almost certainly fated to be dropouts, delinquents and, yes, prison inmates.

Larry Long, the South Dakota attorney general and a 30-year career prosecutor, put it this way: “I can tell you that by the time kids of 12 or 14 are brought into the juvenile justice system, they are lost. All I can do is warehouse them — at huge expense. The sooner and faster we reach kids, the better the chance of their being saved.”

Long and his counterparts from Colorado, Delaware, Maine, Montana and New Mexico described what they are doing to reach vulnerable youngsters — especially those being raised by single mothers still in their teens — and to help those parents stabilize lives often blighted by drugs or other addictions. But they also confirmed that many of their initiatives are on the chopping block, as states struggle with declining revenues and runaway health care costs for the elderly.

“These are proven programs that work,” said Montana’s Attorney General Mike McGrath, “but our budget crisis is so severe we may not be able to meet the federal matching requirement” — the dollars a state must put up in order to qualify for a grant from Washington.

That is why they express such dismay at what they are hearing out of the Washington budget proceedings. The briefing paper all the state law enforcement officials were given by the advocacy group, Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, spelled out some of the cuts included in the Bush budget.

Funds for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers after-school program would be cut from $1 billion to $600 million. The memo to the attorneys general says that cutback would take a half-million children each year out of those centers, even though unsupervised youngsters make the hours from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. the peak time for serious and violent juvenile crime.

The Bush budget increases Head Start funding by $148 million, just about enough to keep pace with inflation, but the program now serves only six out of 10 preschoolers who are eligible. Several other early childhood block grants and programs are ticketed either for reductions or elimination.

The picture is similar for other Justice Department and Education Department programs aimed at preventing juvenile delinquency.

“This is so short-sighted,” said Maine Attorney General Steven Rowe. “For $300 billion, one-fifth the (10-year) cost of the new tax cut, we could fully fund all of these programs” for the next decade.

That kind of investment would not only save lives, the attorneys general said. It would save money. “We are spending $75,000 a year every time we incarcerate someone under 18,” said Delaware Attorney General Jane Brady. “We have to jail them, educate them, counsel them and try to rehabilitate them. It would be so much better to help them while they are young.”

It’s another example of the long-term costs being incurred by today’s budget decisions.

— David Broder is a syndicated columnist with Washington Post Writers Group.