Jesse Jackson has a good editorial on the African American children being left behind by federal policy. One passage I thought needed playing up: We need longer school years and far better teachers, and teacher education. We need less discrimination in spending, in discipline, in advanced placement. Some of this costs money. But, Williams says, we're not spending the money we currently have well. For example, our broken health-care system is killing school budgets. Health-care costs are going up 10 to 15 percent a year, far outstripping normal increases in public funding. The most persuasive reason to address the long-term budget imbalance, which is being driven by rising health care costs, is not that we should be afraid of what's going to happen in 2050. It's what these rising costs are doing to ordinary people right now -both through crowded-out social spending and squeezed personal finances. The only way to begin getting at the root cause of both these issues -the governmental and the personal- is to reform the health care system. Reform is both possible and inevitable. All other industrialized countries have successfully contained health care costs at the same time that they've universalized access and maintained quality. Demand for a better health care system will only get stronger, if the predictions are right that health care is only going to get more expensive. And at a Center for American Progress health care forum last weekend, all of the Democratic presidential candidates went on record promising to deliver universal health care insurance and lower costs if they get elected. All easier said than done, of course. Addressing health care and long-term budget issues will require political courage, sacrifice and persistence. Budget advocates should show some of this resolve by calling for fundamental change, not tax and budget tweaks that give no immediate benefit to a public that's suffering under a broken health care system.