Andrew Taylor at the Associated Press earned his pay today with this story, "Costly Campaign Vows Face Reality Chec [1]k." It's today's must-read budget story, for the simple reason that it states the facts the candidates won't tell you: the budget realities facing the next president are going to hamper what can be done, no matter who wins. And none of the candidates is really facing up to this -- or at least, they're not going to admit it. This is, after all, the promising season in politics, and nobody ever promises the voters a dose of grim financial reality.

Everybody in Washington knows about the "unsustainable [2]" fiscal future [2] the country faces. So I'm assuming the candidates don't buy into their own talk and that it's only the American people who need to be brought into the loop [3]. Because otherwise, the day after the election is going to feel a lot like the bleak last scene of The Candidate [4], when newly elected senator Robert Redford turns to his campaign manager and asks "what do we do now?"