If the federal government asked you to cough up an extra $1,700 this year, where would you find the money — a second job, perhaps the illicit sale of an organ or two?

That figure represents this year’s federal budget deficit for every man, woman and child in America alone. Now say that number was closer to $25,000 — almost as much as the average American makes in one year. This represents the federal deficit as it stands now — the 800-pound gorilla looming in the corner that no one wants to talk about.

Granted, such examples are somewhat misleading — no reasonable person expects the national debt in its entirety to suddenly come due. Yet what is frequently ignored here is the inevitability of the fact that the piper must eventually be paid — and when such a day of reckoning comes, it will be an ugly one indeed.

Some Republican loyalists will glibly point out how the deficit as a proportion to the national GDP (a measure of America’s productive output) is at a historic low — yet this blatantly sweeps away the inconvenient fact that federal spending has increased from 18.4 percent to 19.9 percent of the national income under Mr. Bush’s watch, all under the supposed watch of the “fiscal conservatives” in both Congress and the White House.

More so, the fact that the deficit’s size is at a historic low compared to the GDP does nothing to reconcile with the fact that ultimately the deficit will be repaid on the backs of every working American, especially on the eve of the largest exodus from the workforce in history with the retirement of the baby boomer generation.

Even still, however, Republicans have found a way to exonerate themselves from blame, first by citing the economic slowdown brought about by September 11 followed by the ramp-up in spending on homeland security and the war on terror that followed. Yet as a recent issue of The Economist noted, only half of the new spending Mr. Bush has proposed is in any way relevant to either of these two ends — the other half is simply new government spending.

Totaling together all of Mr. Bush’s new non-military discretionary outlays, they add up to a shocking 20.8 percent for the first three years of his term — far outspending Bill Clinton, the object of conservative loathing, even in his most profligate years, where his non-discretionary outlays increased only 8.2 percent in comparison.

Indeed, conservatives that are eager to compare Mr. Bush to Ronald Reagan would take heed that even during Reagan’s 19.2 percent increase in military spending during his second term, his total outlays increased by a scant 3.5 percent, namely by cutting non-defense discretionary spending by a whopping 13.5 percent.

One need not list off the litany of bad bills Mr. Bush has signed — the simple fact that he has not used his veto power once during his entire term sets him up for a feat accomplished only by John Quincy Adams. For reference, Ronald Reagan had exercised his veto power a total of 22 times by this time in his first term in order to tame the reckless spending of a hostile Congress, something Mr. Bush has not even had to contend with. Clearly Mr. Bush is no Reagan.

Yet other conservatives, desperate to believe that their party has not been hijacked by lavish spenders hell-bent on outspending their liberal counterparts, claim that this is all an ingenious plan by Mr. Bush to create a ticking time bomb in the budget.

By draining the treasury through tax cuts while ramping up federal spending, Mr. Bush has supposedly shown the prescience to bring the federal government to a point of fiscal crisis, thus forcing a dramatic rollback of the government which would otherwise be politically unachievable.

Nothing could require a greater suspension of disbelief however — to borrow an analogy from same Economist article, to support such a strategy would be like “praising an alcoholic for his ingenious plan to quit the bottle by drinking himself into bankruptcy.”

Lovers of liberty and small government, you have been duped! By focusing on the supposed barbarians at the gate, poised to unleash a new brand of government intrusion, you have failed to recognize the very same looters you have welcomed into the city under the pretenses of allies.

The Republicans you have devoted your time, money and energy to electing have proven to be nothing but wolves in sheeps’ clothing, more dangerous foes than the Democrats you so despise.

Conservatives, wake up to the deception — you’ve been had. If you want smaller government, the answer does not lie in the Republican party — rather, the answer lies with the true advocates of liberty, the Libertarian Party.

Until loyal conservatives make this realization, they will only be further abetting the creation of that which they most abhor.