The editorial board of the Washington Post examines the taxing and spending plans of Senators Clinton and Obama, to frightening results.

The Democratic presidential candidates have some big plans -- with big price tags attached. By our calculations, using figures supplied by the campaigns, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) has proposed new spending and tax breaks that would amount to almost $265 billion a year when fully implemented, while the initiatives proposed by Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) total nearly $333 billion. Those initiatives, which would be phased in over time and which the candidates say they have identified ways of funding, don't include billions of dollars more in one-time spending. ...

Altogether, then, they are talking about additional costs to the tune of a half-trillion dollars per year, more (Obama) or less (Clinton). The total federal budget this year is about $2.9 trillion. ...

Frugal wouldn't be a word we would use to describe either candidate. Mr. Obama, whose program would cost more primarily because of his large tax cut, relies more than Ms. Clinton does on expected savings from winding down the war in Iraq and on significant revenue from auctioning permits for a cap-and-trade system to curb carbon emissions in order to get to theoretical balance. Ms. Clinton has also been clearer about specifying costs and precise sources of funding.

Running up the deficit and adding to the debt through runaway spending while ignoring unsustainable long-term entitlements like Medicare and Social Security is not an equation for a healthy economy.  Politicians in Washington should let the American people decide how to spend their own money by lowering taxes and reducing the size of government.