Political freedom is what the United States is all about — and is what our Declaration of Independence is all about — but, with every proposal to balance the federal government’s budget within 10 years, we deprive ourselves and future Americans of the same rights the Patriots of the American Revolution fought for.

That denial of political rights is exactly what the current proposals do. The budget proposal of Republicans in the House of Representatives “would cut spending by $4.6 trillion through 2023” and thereby balance the budget, according to The New York Times. The budget resolution passed by the Senate would raise $975 billion in tax revenue over the next decade, trim spending so that the federal deficit in fiscal year 2024 amounts to $566 billion, and continue deficit spending over the next decade to the tune of $5.2 trillion.

Of the Senate’s plan, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said: “The first priority of the Senate budget is creating jobs and economic growth from the middle out, not the top down. With an unemployment rate that remains stubbornly high, and a middle class that has seen their wages stagnate for far too long, we simply cannot afford any threats to the fragile recovery.”

How far we have fallen. The first citizens of the United States counted as no higher honor the privilege of forsaking their own private welfare for the benefit of their new country. President George Washington, for example, initially refused his presidential salary and had served as commander in chief of the Continental Army without pay.

Austerity might have negative material consequences, but preferring it to a comprehensive, swift resolution of out-of-control spending is to value our lives more than the lives of future Americans and our own later lives. It is unfair to saddle ourselves and our successors with obligations they may not want and, indeed, that they might deem imprudent or unwise. We should not force future Americans and our future selves to suffer when the blame for the problem lies more with the present than the future.

To do so is to go against the whole reason the 13 original colonies declared their independence. Although the American Revolution is often thought of as the epitome of a “Don’t Tread On Me” rebellion, the justifications given for it by the Second Continental Congress, at least, are inherently political.

In 1776 the revolutionaries fought to redress many grievances. These are a few: that King George III “has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” Further, they said, “He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.” In addition, “He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people” and “He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected.” You get the idea.

Of course, if we want to repudiate the Declaration of Independence and the legacy of the American Revolution, we are free to do so. In the interest of honesty, however, we ought to say so.