Kelly Carlson's Feb. 24 letter to the Tribune's editor was wrong on several counts. Carlson's claim that President Bush has no responsibility for the fiscal mess being passed on to the next administration was absurd. Bush's deficit-financed tax cuts and deficit-financed war spending have exploded the federal debt. He has opposed every effort by Congress to pay for his policies and has instead insisted that it all be thrown on the nation's charge card. Republicans in Congress contributed to the problem by largely rubber-stamping the president's proposals, but it is the president who bears ultimate responsibility for what happens on his watch.

Carlson also was wrong about the 1995 balanced budget amendment. The constitutional amendment proposed in 1995 was deeply flawed and deserved to be defeated. The amendment would have required Congress to balance the budget by raiding the Social Security trust funds year after year. We should be protecting Social Security, not raiding it to spend on other things. And history has proven that we don't need to change the Constitution to balance the budget. After defeat of the 1995 balanced budget amendment, the budget was balanced from 1998 through 2001. The surpluses were the result of tough decisions made in strong deficit reduction packages passed by Congress in 1993 and 1997.

President Bush's chief fiscal failure is that he allowed deficits and debt to explode at the worst possible time, just before the baby boom generation began to retire. The next president will have to do what this administration has never done, which is reach across the aisle to find a bipartisan solution to our long-term fiscal imbalance. This imbalance represents one of the toughest fiscal challenges our nation has ever faced. But it can and must be addressed.

(Conrad is a U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. - Editor)