President Obama's announcement that he'll support so-called "pay as you go" legislation is getting most of the coverage today, but if you care about the federal deficit and national debt, David Leonhardt's big-picture piece in The New York Times is the one to read.

Why? Well, for one thing, the Washington debate on paygo quickly became a fight over who's to blame for the government's fiscal problems. If you step back and look at the problem, the answer is actually pretty simple: everyone.

That answer is also not limited to the past eight years or so. The fact is the federal government has run deficits for 35 of the last 39 years, in good times and bad, under Republicans and Democrats. That would be bad enough, but in addition, the combination of skyrocketing health care costs and the retirement of the baby boomers is going to cause Medicare and Social Security spending to skyrocket. We're reaching the point where if we don't act soon, the government's own projections say the situation will be "destructive and destabilizing" for the country. After a certain point, we won't be able to get out from under the debts the government faces.

The second point that's critical is, taken one by one, nearly everything that's being proposed can be summed up this way: "important, but not enough." Paygo, with all its past usefulness and potential flaws, is important, but not enough. Health care reform that cuts costs is important, but not enough. Cutting discretionary spending is important, but not enough, and so is increasing revenue.

Or as Leonhardt puts it:

The solution, though, is no mystery. It will involve some combination of tax increases and spending cuts. And it won’t be limited to pay-as-you-go rules, tax increases on somebody else, or a crackdown on waste, fraud and abuse. Your taxes will probably go up, and some government programs you favor will become less generous.

And this goes to something that's fundamental to our Facing Up to the Nation's Finances initiative: the public has to be part of this process. None of the options will work unless the public buys into them. And the American people are not going to go along unless they're convinced of how serious the problem is and that the government has a real plan to deal with it.