Two recent Post editorials ["Budget Walls," March 20, and "No Budget in the House," May 7] criticized budget-makers on Capitol Hill for losing sight of national needs and goals as they jerry-build policy from windfalls (the tobacco settlement) and pork (the highway bill). But both these welcome calls by The Post for a less ideological debate ignore fundamental forces that for decades beyond this election year could determine whether, as The Post puts it, "there will be precious little money for any initiative."

"Budget walls" — whether to protect Social Security, as the president wants, or to defer additional spending, as Republicans prefer — aren't temporary structures that can be pulled down the day after the election. Nor are they strictly partisan. Rather, they represent attempts to control the budgetary consequences of decades of promises by past Congresses. These promises for continually growing benefits put in place commitments that eventually could not be met but that politicians have lacked the courage to reconsider.

Much has been written about the looming Social Security crisis and the runaway costs of health care entitlements. As the baby boomers retire between about 2010 and 2030, and the number of beneficiaries relative to taxpayers swells, an unreformed system is likely to crash or suck other social programs dry. But as disturbing as this scenario is, the emphasis on how we will pay for these programs has overshadowed an equally important question: how government's role already is changing because of the ever-increasing percentage of the national budget that is being used to cover permanent spending commitments.

Federal spending on retirement, health and disability programs has ballooned from about 10 percent of the budget in the early 1950s to more than 50 percent today, and no end is in sight. For a while, dramatic cuts in the defense budget hid the problem. But now the "peace dividend" nearly has been exhausted, and any further cuts in defense spending couldn't possibly be big enough to offset automatic growth in these entitlements.

There are two real dangers in this trend. First, more decisions will be removed from the hands of policymakers and voters, thus deepening alienation from government and the sense that past elected officials got to call all the shots. Second, because past law determines current and future expenditures, directing new funds to old problems robs government of the resources and agility needed to address new ones.

Is guaranteeing everyone an 18th or 19th year of retirement benefits really a higher national priority than reducing crime, helping at-risk youth and investing in better schools?

The old saw about how academic politics can be so nasty because the stakes are so low now applies in an odd way to this year's budget fight. The sums involved are fairly trivial. After a few years, less than one-third of one percent of our national income would be shifted to new initiatives. Meanwhile current commitments would grow by at least 10 times or 20 times as much, depending on how far into the future one traces these promises. With maneuvering room small and shrinking, is it any wonder that American politics has come to look small-minded, that most voters find most politicians lacking vision, or that a growing number of Americans believe the federal government is either a black box or a black hole?

It's pointless to blame one political party or the other for this predicament. Most of the biggest-spending presidents in this century (as defined by growth in domestic spending as a percentage of national income) were Republicans — but they were working with Democratic Congresses. Over time, both sides of the aisle have made plenty of unkeepable commitments.

To break the national habit of overpromising and to restore citizens' sense that they own government, we ought to start by paring back the automatic growth in programs, thus leaving more discretion to each new Congress. At the same time, we need to begin, finally, to tackle serious current problems. First would be our youth, whom we in older generations have neglected as we pursue our own eternal youthfulness. And we should direct programs for the "old" more at those who are truly old or poor by today's standards, rather than worrying about whether we can all spend more than one-third of our adult lives in retirement.