What’s the quickest way to get the party out of power to stop talking about budget deficits? Put it back in power.

In the debate over whether to pass another extension of unemployment benefits, some Republicans said, “Fine, as long as Congress finds a way to cover the $35 billion price tag.” But in pushing for an extension of the tax cuts that were enacted under President George W. Bush and are set to expire, Republicans aren’t interested in paying for it.

The Obama administration wants the tax cuts to expire for individual filers making $200,000 or more per year and for joint filers making $250,000 or more per year. This would net an additional $678 billion in revenue in the first 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office and Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation have said that extending all of the Bush-era tax cuts would increase budget deficits by $2.56 trillion by 2020.

As a reminder, the expiration date was added out of concern for future deficits.

When the choice is between tax cuts and deficit reduction, it’s clear that Republicans in Congress will choose tax cuts. However, tea party devotees are always complaining about the deficit, so maybe their inroads into the GOP will produce a different result. Or not.

The New York Times did extensive polling of self-described members and supporters in April. Here is the relevant question:

“If you had to choose, would you prefer reducing the budget deficit or cutting taxes?” A total of 49 percent chose tax cuts; 42 percent chose deficit reduction.

So if there were a Republican takeover in Congress, one of the first moves would be an attempt to heap a gargantuan sum onto the projected deficit – a sum that dwarfs the extension of unemployment benefits. It’s like intentionally expanding the BP gusher before cleaning up the Gulf.

Flipping control in Congress won’t lower the deficit, but it will change who talks about it.

Big Three Deficit Makers. The only way to tame the federal deficit is to raise taxes and curb spending on the Big Three: Social Security, Medicare and Defense. Actually, there is a fourth huge spending item: interest payments on the debt.

We need to raise taxes to pay for things we already bought. As it turns out, you cannot launch two far-flung wars, continue to finance a military and foreign policy designed for another time and add an expensive prescription drug benefit to Medicare while cutting taxes. You actually do have to pay for all that.

There are myriad fixes for Social Security. In relative terms, that’s the easy one. The frightening thing is that we’ve made no effort to solve it. That doesn’t bode well for the tougher savings, especially in Medicare. We cannot solve that one without reining in health care costs. We’ve just witnessed how messy that can be.

As for defense, we need to bust out of Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as possible. I’m sympathetic to the Pottery Barn analogy: “You break it. You fix it.” But some things can’t be fixed, and we shouldn’t go broke trying. Then we need to heed the call for a modern military that is smaller but more responsive to the challenges of particular threats, rather than entire nations. Plus, Congress needs to stop thinking of defense contracts as jobs programs and tickets to re-election.

None of this can get done if one of the major political parties is determined to pounce at the first opportunity for short-term gain. Democrats cannot demagogue entitlement reform. Republicans cannot demagogue tax increases.

And this, more than the daunting budgetary numbers, provides the biggest challenge. Do we have the leaders who can pull it off when working together is vilified?

Elementary, dear voters. We’re in the middle of endorsement interviews at the newspaper, and yet another crop of candidates is going to take a closer look at budgets to find savings. You’d think the incumbents would’ve thought of this, what with all of the painful cuts they’ve had to make.

Anyway, I blame this on accountants who insist on hiding the savings by not providing a simple line item called “Waste.” Or, “Not a Priority.”

Instead, these candidates must don deerstalker caps and wield magnifying glasses as they intensify the forensic search for hidden dollars. I should say they will eventually do this – at the moment, they’re too busy trying to get elected.