It's an understatement to say the bloom has gone off Bill Clinton's budget-surplus rose. The entire rose garden has gone to seed.

As Mr. Clinton prepared to move out of the White House less than two years ago, the United States was on track to generate budget surpluses for each of the next 10 years, totalling a stunning $5.6-trillion (U.S.). Talk of that glut emboldened the incoming president, George W. Bush, to forge ahead with a $1.3-trillion tax cut upon taking office, secure in the belief that the government would still be in the black even with the reduced revenue.

That outlook has been turned on its head. Mr. Bush's massive tax cuts, combined with falling revenues attributable to the economic slowdown and sharp increases in military and security spending, have fast turned the Clinton surpluses into Bush deficits: $157-billion for the current fiscal year ending Sept. 30, according to forecasts released last week by the Congressional Budget Office.

While Mr. Bush is confident the deficit will shrink in 2003 and disappear by 2004, the Congressional Budget Office expressed a considerably dimmer view: big deficits until 2006, and essentially flat budgets through 2010. The situation would be even worse if the U.S. economy slipped into the dreaded double-dip recession, or launched an expensive war in Iraq.

Even if you're one of the few diehards still clinging to the out-of-vogue principles of Keynesian economic theory (that governments should spend during downturns to stimulate demand, and save during upturns to temper expansion), the prospect of a return to rising government debt loads is an ugly one. As most countries learned in the 1970s and 80s, governments that consistently spend beyond their means end up paying a steep economic price. The costs of servicing ever-growing debts can fuel higher interest rates, a weaker currency, low productivity and slumping investment. They force governments to boost taxes and cut services simply to keep up. They are, quite simply, economic poison.

Given the influence the U.S. economy has not just on Canada but on the entire world, we sincerely hope President Bush acts responsibly to ensure that his deficits are merely a detour from fiscal stability, not a dangerous change of course. He can start by dropping his plans for further tax cuts until he can get his fiscal house in order.