Ten years ago, America found itself in the middle of deepening partisan divides out-of-control pork-barrel spending, entitlement addiction, and looming budget deficits.

In response, a small bipartisan group of independent-minded senators, governors, and congressmen met to issue a road map toward fiscal responsibility called the Road to Generational Equity. Their assertion of a new political center in America that was fiscally conservative but moderate on social issues helped bring the president and Congress to agreement on a course of reduced spending and deficit reduction. As a result, aided by increased government revenues from the Internet boom, by 1998, the nation had reversed course. President Clinton could claim that “the era of big government is over,” and we briefly entered four years of balanced budgets and surpluses.

Today, we are back where we started. Despite all the tough choices forced on government by deficit hawks in both parties in the past, the surpluses have disappeared under an avalanche of increased spending and reduced revenues. We have gone from a hard-won $236 billion dollar surplus in 2000 to a $412 billion dollar deficit in 2004. Republicans in Congress have surrendered their traditional claim to be the party of fiscal conservatism as pork-barrel spending has quintupled under their watch President Bush’s new budget attempts to belatedly recapture the spirit of fiscal responsibility by suggesting cuts in more than 150 programs while advancing a politically ambitious agenda of Social Security reform. But Democrats have so far responded by retreating to resistance mode, denying the need to address the impact of an aging population while threatening retaliation against party members who work with the White House to find common ground.

In this environment, simple civility has broken down in the halls of Congress. Since 1997, a Republican congressman from Illinois, Ray LaHood, has hosted a bipartisan retreat for members of Congress and their families – an event that drew 200 participants in the first year. The annual event was scheduled for next month, but canceled for lack of interest “There are just a lot of hard feelings right now,” Mr. LaHood explained to Time Magazine. “The well has been poisoned.”

In the face of increasingly bitter partisan divides and an untamed addiction to government spending whose cost is passed off to the next generation, it is time for a 10th anniversary conference on The Road to Generational Equity.

In 1995, the report issued by the conference participants – Governors Lamm and Weicker Senators Hart and Tsongas, and Rep. Tim Penny and John Anderson – took a responsible long-term look at the mess we had created and offered advice that remains relevant. “America cannot balance its budget without making a series of hard choices that are beyond the current political dialogue. Social Security must be on the table. When baby boomers start to retire early next century, the current Medicare system is unsustainable. America must adopt a generational contract where every generation pays its own way, and does not create a burden for the coming generations.”

Even 10 years ago, responsible voices from both parties were acknowledging the importance of dealing with the spiraling entitlement costs that remain unrestrained. The report supported legislation that would have put a percentage point of payroll taxes into “self-directed savings accounts.” The fact that a public-private response to Social Security was discussed even then displays the intellectual bankruptcy of the Democrats’ stonewall response to the president’s proposal.

Given that the Congressional Budget Office now estimates that spending for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid costs will account for nearly 52% of government spending in 2015, future presidential aspirants from both parties have an interest in dealing with these issues and participating in such a conference as cameras roll. Republicans such as Mayor Giuliani and Senator McCain, as well as Democrats such as Senator Bayh and the former senator from Nebraska, Robert Kerrey, have been consistent in their stand for greater fiscal responsibility. Addressing a bipartisan group dedicated to these principles may further help their credibility on this issue going forward.

The City University of New York has agreed to host such a conference in response to my inquiry. Their Graduate Center across the street from the Empire State Building would offer a perfect location for such a conference in the summer or fall. Grassroots citizen groups such as The Centrist Coalition have expressed interest in participating, while a bipartisan budget group such as the Concord Coalition might be inclined to help make such a conference a reality given the key support from their founding chairman, the late Senator Tsongas, in the creation of the first conference. Groups such as the Democratic Leadership Council, the Third Way, and the Republican Main Street Partner ship might be other logical participants.

So consider this column a challenge to citizen groups and political leaders to come together across party lines at a New York conference this year. Digesting the aging baby-boom generation will determine the shape of our politics for the next quarter century. Participants at the first conference endorsed goals that included school choice and tort reform This conference offers an opportunity to update their debate, setting a solutions-driven agenda that pushes politics not left or right but forward. In the process, the conference can offer an alternative to the bitter partisanship that dominates Washington and helps restore fiscal discipline in the name of generational responsibility.