The presidential candidates aren't serious about the budget.

I wish presidential candidates were as honest as they tell us they're going to be. For one thing, it would make campaign events more entertaining. I'd like to thank Bill Wilson for that generous introduction if I had any idea who Bill Wilson was. A little honesty would also inject a note of reality—and also panic—into the current debate about the economy. Instead of sticking to the supposed panacea of new programs or tax cuts to lure voters, the presidential candidates would admit that the federal budget is such a mess that voters are likely to face substantial trade-offs and sacrifice in the coming years.

You laugh. This kind of wish is fulfilled only at earnest symposia held in windowless rooms attended by men in droopy socks and women in tennis shoes.

Lord knows, I'm easily distracted by the horse race, too, but since the candidates keep telling me how honest they are, I figure it might be worth holding them to their boasts. John McCain promises "straight talk" on the side of his bus, and Barack Obama declares at almost every speech that he's going to tell voters what they need to hear and not simply what they want to hear. In Troy, Mich., the day before clinching the nomination, he promised "a politics that is about telling the truth. Honesty and straight talk, not spin and P.R."

Hello Cleveland! I'd rather be anywhere else.

If the candidates talked straight about the fiscal situation, they would note that much of the budget they will inherit is on autopilot. Entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid take up 42 percent of the federal pie and will mushroom to nearly 70 percent over the next two decades as baby boomers retire. That means less discretionary money for all those programs from national parks and homeland security to defense and education.

The 2009 deficit will be in excess of $400 billion, which means it's not enough for a candidate to say that his new programs are paid for. McCain and Obama also have to tell us how they're going to tackle the deficit beast that George Bush failed to tame. Even if the next president scrapped Bush's tax cuts, ended the popular Medicare prescription-drug benefit, and returned defense spending to prewar levels, he would still have to pay off hundreds of billions from the interest on the Bush debt. That will (or at least should) put a cramp in any administration's style.

How great is the state of denial on the campaign trail? When the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget put out its 12-step program to encourage candidates to talk about fiscal responsibility, the first item was to admit that the problem exists. If you listen to former Comptroller of Currency Dave Walker outline what he calls the super subprime crisis of unaddressed problems in the budget and then read an Obama or McCain economic speech, the disparity becomes fantastical. It's as if the candidates are promising everyone free facials and lake-front timeshares.