The budget outlook could be even grimmer. Congress has made little progress on the 12 appropriations bills it is supposed to pass before Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.  And what they have done isn’t much to the president’s liking. He has already promised to veto up to 10 of them. It appears that once again -- for the 22nd time in 25 years -- Congress will fail to finish its basic budget work on time.

The result will likely be a bloated omnibus spending bill that encompasses everything. This approach invites special-interest pork-barrel projects to be slipped into the legislation, boosting government spending to levels much higher than the president proposed. (The Democratic majority’s spending proposals already come in at $945 billion, about $81 billion -- 9 percent -- higher than last year.)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may well take a page from Gingrich’s playbook and tempt the president to temporarily shut down government offices. That would certainly make for political drama, but it wouldn’t bring fiscal responsibility to Washington.

To deter that kind of drama, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) last week introduced a bill to prevent a government shutdown. Their legislation, supported by the White House, would automatically maintain spending at the current year’s level if Congress fails to enact appropriations bills on time. The bill authors hope this approach will appeal to Democrats who want to get something done and Republicans who are content to maintain current spending levels.

Bush and Congress will have to navigate a rocky road this fall to reach a settlement of their differences over tax and spending issues. But what’s even more troubling is that the disagreements over SCHIP and appropriations bill pale in comparison to the problems facing entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Congress seems content to avoid those problems, leaving them for a future generation to solve. By then it might be too late.