In Wayland this year, it looks like the town is going to be able to fund a budget increase for the school system, and cuts like the ones that had to be imposed last year won’t be necessary.

In Washington, the nation might not be so lucky.

If the newly elected Congress has promised to do one thing, it is to cut government spending. The Pledge to America that Republicans put out before the November election called for at least $100 billion in spending cuts, and many commentators are calling for more drastic reductions.

The philosophy behind this policy is the idea of “cut and grow,” as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor put it. This conservative economic policy – erroneously, I believe – states that cutting the government across the board can actually help to grow the economy.

For evidence that this policy almost always fails abysmally at creating growth, let us look to the United Kingdom.

Britain, which voted David Cameron of the Conservative Party into power in a May election last year, is engaging in the most drastic budget cuts of any of the world’s richest countries. Services are being cut, public servants are being laid off, and taxes are being raised – the whole shebang.

When explaining this austerity program to the British public last year, Cameron and other UK conservatives preached that reducing the size of the state (getting those meddling bureaucratic hands out of the people’s affairs) would spark economic growth.

The preliminary verdict is in: in the final three months of 2010, the British economy actually shrunk. Even our anemic recovery hasn’t seen the total size of the American economy shrink.

(To be fair, the Wall Street Journal reports that intense snowstorms hurt the British economy, but it notes that even without the snow, the economy would have still shrunk or remained constant. If economic growth doesn’t pick up speed in the first three months of this year, the United Kingdom will be back in a recession.)

Leading Republicans are planning to import this economy-killing austerity to the United States. On February 14, budget cutters have scheduled a vote on slashing spending. If this plan is approved, barring some outside economic miracle, you and I will be able to empathize with the economic pain of the British people.

Now, is sovereign debt a very serious issue that needs to be dealt with? Undoubtedly. However, the time for deficit-cutting is not now. Coming out of a financial crisis like we are, the government needs to step in and power the economy until growth is sustainable enough for consumers and corporations to create new wealth and new jobs.

Washington needs to learn from the failures of London. Until the economy is back on track, government spending should not be reduced. If there are reductions and the economy consequently becomes damaged, like Britain’s is today, Wayland may not be as fortunate in the future when it comes to trying to pay for the school budget.