If you're concerned about kids and youth, consider this partial list of programs that are eliminated in the president's budget proposal: Early Start family literacy programs, community development block grants, community cops programs, juvenile delinquency and drop-out prevention programs, funding to help larger high schools divide into smaller learning communities, rural housing and economic development funding and Education Department parent information and resource centers.

But these cuts, while painful, don't do much to address the growing federal deficit. Child advocates are eager to see a strong support system for families, but they also know that the most effective support for working families is a healthy economy.

Economists from all across the spectrum warn that growing deficits are bad for the economy. Most say that cutting discretionary spending will do little to restore fiscal health. Like a household's fixed expenses, much of the federal budget is obligated before Congress even gets a chance to decide where to spend.

Social Security, Medicare, interest payments on the national debt—these are all obligations that come due "automatically," they are mandatory spending beyond what Congress can control in the discretionary budget.

Most of the budget is therefore "off the table" in the form of program entitlements and tax entitlements—tax breaks and tax credits—that reduce how much money the government receives from individuals and corporations.

In fact, domestic discretionary spending (which does not include defense and homeland security, budget areas that are not likely to be trimmed) is only a small share (17 percent or so) of the federal budget. Controlling deficits by cutting such spending is like trying to balance your family budget by cancelling your cable subscription and taking lunch to the office after the landlord doubles your rent.

Walker, along with many other economists, says we can't have it all—permanent tax cuts, increased spending for military and homeland security, increased entitlement spending for Medicare and Social Security—without incurring enormous debt that will burden our economy and our children's generation.

He calculates that the federal government's gross debt, when you figure in the government's Social Security and Medicare obligations, amounts to a debt burden of well over $100,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. He warns: "Young Americans especially need to become active in this discussion—because they and their children will bear the heaviest burden if today's leaders fail to act."

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