As Congress heads back to session next week after its summer recess it has a full plate that it needs to and may want to address, from solving the growing mortgage default crisis and the nation's crumbling infrastructure to how to continue funding the war in Iraq and that on terror.

With a laundry list of priorities, Congress will go back to Washington on Wednesday, long on ideas and short on money. That should worry the public, especially if members decide to address all of these issues, which are imperative on their own and they look to taxpayers to foot the bill with increased taxes or, worse yet, increasing the national debt by not paying as they go.

As Congress finishes its spending bills so as to keep the government running after Oct. 1, the first day of Washington's new fiscal year, there should be worries that instead of deciding on spending priorities, Congress will try to do a little or a lot of everything and, based on poor fiscal management for more than a half decade, that just isn't possible. Something has to give financially.

For opponents of the war in Iraq, unless they are willing to vote for a massive de-escalation, the reality is that the war is going to be a drain on the federal government for some time. At the same time Washington may have to intervene in the current mortgage crisis if it wants to keep the economy moving forward - that could be a very big ticket item and will likely not wait for a new president and Congress in 2009, let alone for a war to end overseas.

There is also no question that there will be calls, after the Minnesota bridge collapse, for more money to be put into infrastructure, from airports and bridges to mass transit and roads - all items that have been severely neglected for years by administrations and congresses, both Democratic and Republican.

Making matters worse, Congress will tout that the days of old are over where they will not have those unknown “bridge to nowhere” type projects as famously exposed in Alaska with “earmark” reform. Yet such disclosure reform isn't as real as first touted, according to a New York Times story several weeks ago. The result is that on top of the need to deal with the mortgage crisis and the nation's crumbling infrastructure, there will be pork projects galore this year - just in time to be unveiled over the next six months as members of Congress announce their re-election campaigns.

So the bottom line is that taxpayers may want to hold on to their wallets - it is going to be a bumpy ride.

Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be contacted at cozguytho@aol.com