After weeks of negotiation, Senate Republican leadership is moving forward with their budget resolution. And they’ve apparently resolved to avoid making any tough budgetary decisions. Instead of recognizing that our nation’s perilously high debt demands tough decisions, lawmakers are playing hide the fiscal ball on taxpayers. It’s reckless and a bad omen for anyone serious about tackling our nation’s finances.

Our country has a debt problem, and it’s getting worse. The national debt is over $36 trillion and growing. That’s greater than 120 percent of the country’s annual economic output, and the highest it has been since the end of World War II. When the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) took effect in 2018, the national debt stood at $20 trillion. So, in less than a decade’s time, $16 trillion has been added to the debt. To put that in perspective, the debt at the turn of the century was $5.7 trillion; it took nearly two decades to add nearly $15 trillion to the debt and only seven more years to add another $16 trillion. The national debt is out of control.

But instead of using budget reconciliation as a tool to rein in deficits, the Senate Budget resolution marks the most recent egregious chapter in fiscal recklessness. The resolution calls for $500 billion in increased spending for President Trump’s priorities on the Pentagon and border security. It makes room for $1.5 trillion in new tax cuts from the president’s campaign promises—no tax on tips, overtime, or Social Security payments, among other promises. But most notoriously, the Senate Republicans also simply wave the current policy baseline magic wand and ignore the $4.5 trillion cost of extending the TCJA for the next ten years. They do include instructions for four committees to find savings, for a whopping total of $4 billion. Savings—billion, with a “b”; deficit increases—trillion, with a “t.”

Using the current policy baseline is a dereliction of duty. Tax legislation is continually evaluated on a current law baseline. Whatever the law states, that’s what the budget scorers assume will happen. And we use that estimated cost to influence investment and spending decisions throughout the economy, unless and until the law is changed. If Congress is good at anything, it’s inaction. Current law bakes that inertia into projected costs. Congress can change its mind—and tax laws, and future baselines will reflect that. In the meantime, taxpayers and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)—Congress’s official scorekeeper—can’t predict the future, so replacing projections based on what the law is with projections based on what we think the law might be is reckless in the extreme. Furthermore, the expiration of many of the TCJA provisions at the end of 2025 was a feature of the law, not a bug. Early expiration kept the price tag down under current law scoring, the same approach to scoring they are trying to jettison now.

As written, this budget resolution sets a precedent for lawmakers to ignore reality and replace it with a fiscal fantasy to avoid tough decisions beyond the Tax Code. Agriculture committee members want to double the cost of farm subsidies but can’t agree on cuts to other programs. So they’ve proposed “paying for” the increase by “cutting” spending that future Secretaries of Agriculture might choose to spend over the next ten years. Lawmakers want to expand drilling in the Arctic National Wildfire Refuge even though it will raise relative pennies (if that) while potentially imposing significant future liabilities? No worries, policymakers can always rely on unjustified revenue projections as they did in 2017 (actual revenue from mandated lease sales amounted to less than one percent of what was counted in the offset). The 99 percent of economists that agree drastically increasing tariffs will shift consumer spending, depress imports and exports, and possibly tip the country into a costly recession? Nah, raising import taxes could generate $6 trillion and replace the Tax Code!

It’s important to acknowledge that this debt isn’t the result of one action but a bipartisan affliction of inaction. Debt rising in times of economic trouble and crises is understandable. Social safety net programs, like unemployment or nutrition assistance, are stabilizers designed to automatically increase when recessions occur (and decrease as the economy recovers). However, the national debt has risen in bad times and good, especially over the last 25 years.

Our present debt problem exists because lawmakers have a spending appetite that exceeds the level of revenue they can stomach. Lawmakers have repeatedly pushed the false notion that you can cut taxes and increase spending without consequences. Our country’s fiscal predicament necessitates that lawmakers take a more responsible approach to their constitutional duty to manage our nation’s finances. Lawmakers must be held accountable for their spending and tax decisions. The Senate Budget Resolution shirks that responsibility by spinning a fantasy that is not grounded in economic, fiscal, or common sense reality.

Lawmakers must now make tough decisions to right the nation’s fiscal ship. Any effort to rein in deficits and pare down debt will require lawmakers to reevaluate every corner of the budget, from entitlements, to the Pentagon, to domestic programs. It also requires an honest assessment of the inadequacy of current revenue levels to cover these program costs. The Budget Resolution before the Senate does none of that.