Beware of congressional bread and circuses — they are attempts to divert your eyes from the real work of the Republican leadership.

We watch million-dollar athletes denying steroid use and the crass exploitation of Terri Schiavo. If all else fails, the gay-marriage amendment will be revived.

Meanwhile, they're picking our pockets and giving the cash to the wealthy. Billions upon billions of deficit spending will be paid for by our children and grandchildren and financed by the friendly bankers of Japan and China.

Forty years ago, as I set out to cover my first legislative session, my wise old editor, a former Republican governor of Oregon, told me to follow the money — cover taxes and spending.

Over the next 20 years, I came to respect the fiscal conservatives, Republican and Democrat alike, who still believed that you paid for what you bought, and you didn't put it on your credit card.

The current administration and Congress are out of control, and no amount of dog-and-pony shows can make it otherwise. While we wonder about Mark McGwire and agonize for Terri Schiavo, Republican leaders are putting more debt on our credit card.

The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the federal budget deficit (debt) will be $2.58 trillion by 2015 if President Bush's fiscal policies prevail. This does not include his Social Security privatization, which could add another $1 trillion.

Some 45 percent of that debt is held by two countries, Japan and China. We are in hock to foreign banks and politicians — we pay them $3 billion daily.

Congress quietly passed an $81 billion appropriation for the war in Iraq, with no sign that our troop or financial commitment is ending. That pushed four-year spending on military and anti-terrorism to $300 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service, nearly half what we spent (in 2005 dollars) on World War II or on Vietnam.

The Pentagon is pushing a $120 billion "Future Combat Systems" that brings more high-tech stuff to the battlefield, a plan no other country wants or can afford. The Pentagon 2006 budget is 4.8 percent above its 2005 budget, but 41 percent above the 2001 budget of Bill Clinton.

The president continues to demand tax cuts — primarily benefiting the richest Americans — at an estimated cost of $1.3 trillion by 2015.

Primarily as a result of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, federal tax revenues are only 16.3 percent of the nation's economic output amount, the lowest since 1959 — before Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, the space program or the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

Federal spending, meanwhile, is at 19.8 percent of the economy, thus the record deficit of the current fiscal year.

That deficit, $412 billion this year, compares with an $86 billion surplus Bush inherited from Clinton.

Medicare is estimated to increase by $55 billion this year, to $380 billion; and Social Security to $540 billion, from $527 billion. The Medicare prescription-drug program, yet to be implemented, will cost $500 billion a year more.

Privatization of Social Security, the president's top priority, is estimated variously to cost between $754 billion and $1 trillion between 2009 and 2015, and even more after that because as younger workers elect private accounts, the government must borrow money to pay benefits to retirees.

The American dollar has fallen against all currencies, including the euro, which began in 2002 at par with the dollar and is now worth $1.30. OPEC oil money, once deposited almost exclusively in dollars, is now only 61 percent in dollars.

The president and Congress are serving up bread and circuses and the American public is having a good time on our credit card. But the enormous gap between our spending habits and our revenues threatens our financial standing in the world and pushes the payments onto our children and grandchildren.

If Americans want to play the role of the world's enforcer, and provide at least modest benefits to the aged, the halt and the lame, we must reach for our wallets and purses. We are in deep denial — there really is no free lunch.

We can begin by repealing Bush's tax giveaways to the rich, but the rest of us must also share the costs of an aging population and our military-industrial empire.

Someone will need the courage to say the "T" word — taxes — and risk being trashed by negative campaign ads. But at least he or she will be honest, something in short supply at the White House and in Congress.

Floyd J. McKay, a journalism professor emeritus at Western Washington University, is a regular contributor to Times editorial pages. E-mail him at floydmckay@yahoo.com