A “Code Green” cartoon published in the November edition of Funny Times depicts a man in a suit and hard hat telling a father, holding his child’s hand: “You have a choice — a job that will feed your kids for three years, building something that will kill them later … or starve now.”

The father replies: “How much later?”

Political cartoons rely upon satire to convey their message. By definition, they’re extreme.

But in December 2011, this scene somehow doesn’t seem so extreme. In fact, it frames much of the policy debate that occurs in Washington.

A turgid economy makes any job — even a short-term, potentially destructive one — essential for millions of American families who straddle the abyss of desperation.

Immediate survival needs prompt government, business and personal decisions that ignore starkly ominous longterm implications. In the name of creating a better present for our children — and fortifying their power bases — political leaders sacrifice fiscal stability, play Russian roulette with the environment and accept “incomplete” as a passing grade for funding public education.

This month’s hot topic in Washington involves extending the temporary payroll tax holiday into 2012 and perhaps beyond. On the stump, President Obama argues that allowing the cut to lapse will reduce disposable income for millions of American families. Democrats and Republicans in Congress generally agree that they want to extend the benefit, but they differ on how.

Lost amid the debate is the fact that this short-term benefit results from siphoning revenue that should be dedicated to an established, successful, longterm benefit program: Social Security.

Reducing workers’ payroll deductions for Social Security this year will deprive the fund of $105 billion, according to a report by David Welna of National Public Radio. Administrators of the Social Security Trust project that 2011 will be the first year in the earned benefit program’s 75-year history that Social Security pays out more than it takes in.

The payroll tax cuts feeds American families now, at the risk of starving them later.

As stewards of Earth’s natural resources, we act like an alcoholic who stumbles upon an unattended open bar. Environmental risk assessment in 2011 focuses more on investors’ financial exposure and natural disaster avoidance than it does on safeguarding the planet for future generations. The Republicans’ demonic regulatory bogey man actually stands guard over the air, water and land that future generations will need for survival.

We continue to let our once proud public education system lag behind other nations. Candidates cavalierly rewrite history to their ideological purposes. Politics contaminates the scientific method, and critical thinking rarely is rewarded in a society that frames its approach to problem-solving in partisan terms.

The cartoon also reflects the dangerous perception that jobs are gifts from employers. Rather than acknowledging that workplaces function best as collaborations, Americans content to accept the characterization of employers as “job creators” thereby dismiss employees as beneficiaries of bosses’ largess rather than the people whose labors make business succeed.

On all these fronts and more, the debate about quick fixes now should be framed by honest recognition of how they might imperil generations to come.

As we lurch into a new presidential campaign, Americans must ask candidates who claim to believe in the future why they treat it as make-believe.