In the darkest days of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine wrote: "These are the times that try men's souls." In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, to which must now be added the costs of Hurricane Rita, he could well write: "These are the times that try men's wallets."

There is no question of America's resolve. We witnessed the destruction. We see the need. We know what has to be done. We are determined to rebuild the Gulf Coast and the great city of New Orleans. We will do what is necessary, stay as long as it takes and pay any price.

The $64,000 question is: How are we going to pay for it? And with Katrina alone, that's a big ticket. Congress has already shelled out $62 billion. That's just for starters. The total reconstruction tag will easily surpass $200 billion. And this, of course, is in addition to: more than $200 billion for the war in Iraq; a $700 billion Medicare prescription drug program; a bloated $268 billion highway bill; $105 billion for NASA's new shot at the moon. And it's on top of an existing $330 billion budget deficit.

As the legendary Sen. Everett Dirksen might say, adjusting his original numbers for inflation: "A hundred billion here, a hundred billion there, and pretty soon we're talking real money." At some point, even the seemingly bottomless federal money well runs dry. Looking to pay for Katrina, there are four options: cutting spending, adding to the deficit, suspending the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, or freezing the new Bush tax cuts for the rich. Only one of them makes sense.

In a rare departure from conservative orthodoxy, House Majority Leader Tom Delay recently declared that spending cuts were impossible because there was "simply no fat left in the budget." Clearly, he forgot about all the pork in the highway bill, like the $50 million indoor rainforest in Iowa, or Alaska's $300 million bridge to an island with only 50 inhabitants. Still, budget cuts alone will not pay for Katrina. On to bigger pots of dough.

Borrowing more money by adding to the federal debt is the easy way out - and the most irresponsible. We've already saddled our children and grandchildren with an $8 trillion national debt. It would be unfair to stick them with still more debt. Unfair and dangerous. Foreigners now own $2.3 trillion of U.S. government debt, meaning that every American man, woman and child owes foreign investors $6,846. Sell any more debt overseas and we will soon be little more than a major subsidiary of Japan or China.

That narrows it down to two real options: cutting Medicare or cutting the Bush tax cuts. And there is no doubt which is the better policy. Seeing the human suffering in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, only the cold-hearted would say: I refuse to cancel or delay another tax cut for the rich. I'd rather steal prescription drugs from needy seniors.

Asked if he's willing to put his tax cuts on the table, President Bush sounds like a broken record: "We're not going to raise taxes." Who does he think he's kidding? No matter how many times he says it, or no matter how often you hear it on Fox News, nobody's talking about raising taxes. What some members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, have proposed is rolling back those Bush tax cuts for the rich that have not yet kicked in.

According to the nonpartisan Citizens for Tax Justice, suspending income-tax cuts that benefit only the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans would yield $336 billion between 2006 and 2010; leaving the estate tax in place would yield another $80 billion. These combined are more than enough to bring back the whole Gulf Coast. Without raising taxes.

Maybe the Bush tax cuts made sense at one time, when we enjoyed a huge, Clinton-era surplus. But no longer. There's now a crying public need, and a far greater public good.

In the recovery efforts along the Gulf, there have been reports of many miracles. Now we can only pray for one more - the miracle that even George W. Bush will wake up one morning and say: Helping people and communities rebuild their lives is more important than rewarding my fat-cat friends with one more tax cut.

But don't hold your breath.
Bill Press writes for Tribune Media Services.

Commentary:
It's time to assign blame for the record deficits and debt and our inability to fund necessary programs. Bush and the GOP passed tax cuts based on projections of surpluses that never materialized. Even after seeing there were no surpluses they cut taxes again and again (called pandering).

Simply put there isn't a single person in the republican congress who's fit to serve. Cutting taxes is easy. Any fool can put max out a credit card.. Paying for what we spend is the hard part and neither the GOP nor Bush has what it takes to make the hard choices. They (the GOP) created the record deficits--they are 100% responsible. If you vote for the GOP you're also responsible for passing this massive debt to our children (almost $8 trillion and rising fast).

Putting it in perspective, prior to the Reagan tax cut of 1981, we had less than one trillion of debt. This generation has created almost 8x more debt than all previous generations combined. It's called conservatism.

The author says raising taxes on the rich is the only solution. Wrong. The Rx plan was passed without a mechanism to pay for it. This was irresponsible. Taxes pay the bill and the GOP is unwilling or unable to be responsible. Eliminating the GOP must be our primary goal. It's really that simple.