It’s called “pay as you go,” or in abbreviated Washington parlance, “pay-go.”

Regardless of what you call it, “pay-go” clearly is the way to go if the fiscally reckless Congress and White House are ever to get serious about addressing federal budget deficits that aren’t nearly so benign as President Bush would have you believe.

Under the pay-go policy, proposals for spending increases or tax cuts would have to be offset by spending reductions or tax increases elsewhere in the budget, or by a combination of the two.

Millions of American households routinely operate on a pay-go concept. If Dick and Jane expect that their household income will drop this year because severe restrictions are being put on overtime pay at work, they might offset that income reduction by sharply curtailing spending on restaurant meals and movies. Or they might establish a part-time business to provide added income.

This type of common-sense money management has been increasingly rare in Washington in recent years under Bush and a Republican-dominated Congress. They simultaneously have embraced excessively large tax cuts and sharply increased federal spending with a blissful, shortsighted fervor. As a result, the government has gone from budget surpluses during the latter years of the Clinton administration to record budget deficits.

In 2003, Congress passed and Bush signed into law additional tax cuts while also creating an expensive new Medicare prescription drug program and launching a costly and unnecessary invasion of Iraq that ranks among the worst foreign policy blunders in U.S. history.

In contrast, the presidential administrations of the 1990s – those of Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton – were much more responsible. They thought much more like level-headed Dick and Jane, supporting tax increases and spending restraints that reined in deficit spending and contributed to eventual budget surpluses. Congress generally took a pay-go approach during much of the 1990s, a decade that featured strong growth in jobs and stock prices.

The new, Democratic-led 110th Congress that convenes in January must return to the 1990s pay-go approach – coupled with meaningful reform of Social Security and Medicare – lest we saddle our children and grandchildren with a monstrous debt burden.

The White House proudly notes that annual budget deficits, after hitting an all-time high of $412 billion in 2004, have declined two consecutive years, falling to $248 billion in 2006.

But the longer-term outlook is for the deficits to increase substantially in coming years if the Bush tax cuts are made permanent, spending isn’t reined in and Congress doesn’t deal with ominous funding shortfalls facing the Social Security and Medicare programs as tens of millions of baby boomers ease into their rockers. The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that the tax cuts are costing the government about $200 billion in annual revenues. Meanwhile, the federal government’s interest payments on debt are topping $200 billion annually.

The Congressional Budget Office, U.S. Comptroller General David Walker and the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan budget watchdog, are among the many issuing warnings against Washington continuing on its path of fiscal folly.

In 2006, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid consumed about 40 percent of the federal budget, notes Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition. Those three programs are expected to devour 51 percent of the budget a decade from now.

So what have Bush and Congress done? They’ve continued to raid surplus Social Security revenue and spend it on other programs, while also creating the expensive Medicare prescription drug program. Bush’s ill-conceived Social Security “reform” proposal was overwhelmingly rejected by the American public.

The shame of Washington’s fiscal shortsightedness is that a gargantuan debt burden is being foisted on our children and grandchildren, Bixby told me in a visit to Fort Worth this fall.

“It’s not just green-eyeshade stuff,” he said. “It’s a moral issue. We’re running up big bills and passing them on to our kids.”

I think those hard-working, common-sense Americans Dick and Jane would frown on that. I surely do.