Earlier this month, the liberal weekly The Nation published a column by Katrina vanden Heuvel entitled “Food Stamps or Teachers.” The article criticized moderate Republican Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine for agreeing to break the Republican filibuster of a $26 billion program to help states avoid teacher layoffs only after Democrats agreed to offset the costs of the bill by cutting food stamps.

The implication was that Republicans were heartlessly forcing Democrats to choose between cutting food stamps or helping teachers keep their jobs. The column struck me because of its sheer superficiality.

The choice between food stamps and teachers is obviously not a glamorous tradeoff politically. However, these are the types of choices our policymakers are going to have to make if they want to get federal spending under control.

We do not live in a world of limitless resources. If the government continues to budget as if we do, another financial crisis far worse than the one we just survived will come in the near future.

Besides, the cuts in food stamps Snowe and Collins agreed to do not take effect until 2014. Even then, benefits will be reduced only to their pre-stimulus level.

The Obama administration, while selling its stimulus program to the public and Congress, insisted the spending would be temporary. Now, liberals are labeling any attempt to curb that spending back as a “cut,” proving their intention all along was to permanently increase the federal spending baseline.

Vanden Heuvel went on to criticize Republicans for supporting the extension of the Bush tax cuts while simultaneously opposing spending on social programs for the sake of deficit reduction. Democrats are clamoring that permanently extending the Bush tax cuts for all taxpayers would be “fiscally irresponsible.”

Really, now?

President Obama has proposed extending the Bush tax cuts for all but the top 3 percent of income earners. The Treasury Department recently estimated such a policy would cost $3 trillion over 10 years. Republicans want to extend the tax cuts for everyone, which would add an additional $700 billion to the tab.

That means the additional cost of maintaining tax cuts for all tax payers would be $162 billion less than the stimulus bill and $240 billion less than health care reform. After recklessly adding to the budget deficit with bill after bill over the past year, Democrats are now calling Republicans fiscally irresponsible for trying to shield taxpayers from the financial consequences of the Obama-Pelosi spending spree.

Only in the Democratic Party could passing the costs of huge new government programs onto taxpayers be considered fiscally responsible.

But middle- and upper-income families alike work hard for their money and, regardless of their economic status, those families should not have to sacrifice more in this time of economic hardship to finance President Obama’s agenda.

Instead, lawmakers should begin making tough choices on how to bring spending and entitlement obligations in line over the long-term. That is the only way to reduce our debt and keep our economy competitive.

Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, for instance, has proposed reducing all non-defense discretionary spending to pre-Obama (FY2008) levels. That would save over $900 billion over the next 10 years.

Congresswoman Cynthia Lumis of Wyoming has proposed hiring one person for every two who leave government service until the number of federal employees is equal to what it was when Barack Obama took office, which would save $35 billion.

Congressman Tom Price of Georgia has proposed canceling all unspent stimulus funds, which would save an extra $266 billion.

There are numerous other ideas that offer equally great potential for reducing our debt.

Unfortunately, these ideas are unlikely to receive serious consideration because the Democratic majority in Washington is responsible for several of these very programs.

In 1964, when campaigning for Barry Goldwater, a former Democrat and actor by the name of Ronald Reagan traveled the country giving a speech entitled “A Time for Choosing.” This election year is also a time for choosing. A time for either making the difficult decisions that will put this nation on a path to remain the greatest, most dynamic country on earth, or allowing the government to control more and more of our economy.

Some of these decisions may be even more difficult than choosing between food stamps and teachers. Hopefully, however, we will elect people to office who are up for the task.