America would have been better off if Congress gave President Obama a clean debt ceiling increase.

I know that’s an astounding statement, but take a look at what we are getting instead. It appears worse to me.

What we have is a deal that targets America’s defense and allows Congress to pretend it is getting serious about the nation’s long-term fiscal crisis. It also makes it likely that the pretending will continue for the rest of the year.

Raising the debt ceiling is vitally important. We should take seriously the warnings that ratings agencies could downgrade our triple-A status. Of course, those who discount the gravity of not raising the debt ceiling could possibly be right — in the same way that a man playing Russian roulette with five bullets in a revolver could possibly not die.

But just as foolish as not avoiding default is not instituting a plan to get our long-term fiscal problems under control. If we don’t do that, ratings agencies have warned they will downgrade us anyway.

The compromise bill that is making its way through Congress seems to ensure that for the next six months the most Congress will be debating is how to cut another $1.5 trillion over 10 years. That’s peanuts. While Congress pretends it is serious, we will move further down the road to fiscal ruin.

The second problem with this bill is the possibility that a tremendous hammer will fall on defense budgets. Defense spending is not the cause of our long-term fiscal problems; entitlements are at their root. Without drastically reconfiguring our entitlement programs, we can never get out from under our crushing debt. It is that simple.

Cutting defense spending does not just ignore the real issues and problem. It is, as Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman said Monday on the Senate floor, “the beginning of the end of America as a great national power.” It is the signal to the rest of the world that America is retreating, that we no longer seek to lead.

Syndicated commentator Charles Krauthammer declared in a 2009 essay that “decline is a choice.” He was right. American decline is not inevitable. We can choose to slouch toward irrelevance by relinquishing our hard-earned place in the world. Or we can take steps to fix our finances so that we can make the 21st century another American century.

I am afraid the budget compromise may be the first signal that America is choosing to decline. I hope not.

I don’t think it is irreversible. But time is running out.

To avoid a permanent weakening if this budget deal becomes law, Republicans must fight further defense cuts. This is no easy task, considering the triggers in this new deal that would automatically cut defense by about another $600 billion over 10 years if a Joint Committee of Congress can’t agree on where to slash another $1.5 trillion.

Republicans must also make clear that the next six months can’t be wasted by talking only about the steps we’ve already agreed to take. The discussion must be broader. It must be about a fundamental restructuring of our entitlement programs to put them on a sustainable base.

If instead our legislators are allowed to go on pretending that they are serious about our budget crisis, if they continue to refuse to tackle entitlement programs because they fear political ramifications, America’s last chance to right its course may come in 2012. And right now, the leaders competing to occupy the White House next are far from inspiring. If we are lucky, this crisis will spur other candidates to enter the race — even those who, like Chris Christie and Paul Ryan, have said they would not. Perhaps even, as the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol has suggested, Marco Rubio.

America’s future is at stake. The debt compromise on which Congress appears near agreement is pathetic. Worse, it has the dangerous potential to take any hope of cutting America’s debt by more than $1.5 trillion off the table.

That is why it would have been preferable for Congress to have given the president a clean increase of the of the debt ceiling, no matter how unpalatable that sounds. At least a blank check would have done away with the fiction that our legislators are actually tackling America’s debt problem.