The good news is that the US House of Representatives passed a transportation bill that allocates $2 million for the reconfiguration of the region’s single most accident-prone intersection: Route 6 at Edmond Road and Exit 10. The bad news is that $4.4 million is needed to complete the project. And the news is likely to go from bad to worse as time goes on.

The budget crises of our federal and state governments are an abstraction to most of us, especially when accumulating debt is measured in the billions and trillions of dollars. Intellectually we know it is real money, but given the overall lack of fiscal responsibility in Hartford and Washington, DC, we are led to believe the debt is only a problem on paper, not in real life.

Four years ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was urging Congress to cut taxes and warning of the dangers of surplus. Earlier this month he was back telling Congress that the revenue-starved government would be unable to “grow out of the deficit.” He urged cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, warning of the dangers of unsustainable deficits.

Next week there will be a public hearing in Newtown on Monday night to solicit local proposals for federal Small Cities Development Block Grant projects. It is likely to be an exercise in futility since the Bush Administration’s Strengthening America’s Communities Initiative will reduce community development funding and channel the remaining funds to “Opportunity Zones,” which are places in decline in urban and rural areas. That does not sound like Newtown. Not yet, anyway.

This week we learn from The Sunday Republican in Waterbury that the state government has borrowed more than $2 billion in the past five years to pay for routine operating expenses, including salaries, office equipment and furniture, and ongoing programs. Every rookie board of finance member in every small town and hamlet across the state knows that you do not borrow to pay for operating expenses, yet this axiom of public financing has slipped the minds of the experienced budget pros in Hartford. Gov M. Jodi Rell’s office put out a statement saying the governor opposes the use of state bonds for salaries and current expenses and wants the practice to stop. Her own proposed budget, however, includes borrowed money for salaries and credit purchases of equipment as a way to “cut” $15.6 million from agency budgets. Meanwhile, the state will pay $1.7 billion to finance its existing debt this year. That is 12 percent of the state budget.

Whether it is a deliberate attempt the “starve the beast” of New Deal entitlements as we are seeing on the federal level, or mere political expediency and fiscal lassitude as we are seeing at the state level, the stark consequences trickle down to towns and cities and ultimately to every individual. Governments at the federal and state level, either by design or default, are set on a course to deliver fewer and fewer services and to transfer to individuals the risks we have traditionally looked to government to protect us from. Ultimately, it will be our cars and bodies that will continue to get mangled in collisions on Route 6 at Exit 10, our schools that will decline with fewer resources, and our Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare benefits that will slowly but surely fade away.

Whether we like it or not, we are returning to an era of rugged individualism in this country, which we suppose is great news for everyone who manages to stay healthy, wealthy, and safe. Everyone else will have to look for refuge elsewhere. If we are lucky, they will not look to crime, violence, or substance abuse, but to the ballot box.