With President George W. Bush in his final year in office and the country increasingly fixated on his possible successors, Congress might pay little heed to his latest budget proposal, or stall until the next president arrives in January. That offers some hope to Floridians worried about inadequate funding in the president's proposal for the new veterans hospital in Orlando, NASA and Everglades restoration.

But even if lawmakers disregard the president's last budget, they will still find themselves stuck in the fiscal hole they've dug with Mr. Bush. The only way out is through tough decisions on taxes and spending that Congress and the president have avoided.

After deficits of $410 billion this year and $407 billion next year, the president's budget projects a return to a surplus by 2012. That projection is based on so many unrealistic assumptions that it can't be taken seriously.

The president's budget assumes Congress will make permanent the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, yet let the Alternative Minimum Tax -- a levy originally intended to prevent the very rich from evading taxes -- ensnare 38 million taxpayers by 2012. It projects spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will fall from nearly $200 billion this year to $70 billion next year and drop to zero thereafter.

The proposal also counts on deep cuts in Medicare payments to physicians and overall reductions in non-defense spending. And it continues to draw on an annual surplus in Social Security payroll taxes to hold down the deficit -- a surplus that will decline before disappearing by 2017.

The budget watchdogs at the nonpartisan Concord Coalition have projected that instead of a budget surplus by 2012, the federal government is more likely headed for a deficit topping $400 billion that year. The shortfalls would keep growing from there, approaching $1 trillion by 2018.

Extended deficits of that magnitude would hurt the U.S. economy, increase the burden on future generations and make the country even more dependent on foreign creditors such as China.

All of the budgetary choices facing Congress need to be viewed in this grim context. If lawmakers are responsible, they can't go along with the president's call for $863 billion in new or extended tax cuts over the next five years without finding ways to offset the dollars lost to the Treasury. They can't dismiss Mr. Bush's call to reduce spending on Medicaid and Medicare by $178 billion over five years unless they have other ideas to save money or boost revenues by comparable amounts. They can't embrace new tax cuts or spending from the next president without covering the costs.

Another year of avoiding these difficult but essential trade-offs means another year of weakening the country and weighing down future generations.