It’s hard to dispute the Congressional Budget Office warning that eliminating the Bush tax cuts at year’s end and making the spending cuts in last year’s deficit package would probably produce another recession early next year.

That’s why Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned that the economy could fall off a “fiscal cliff.”

So proposals by some Republican leaders to act now to keep lower tax rates for all and prevent planned defense spending cuts has short-term economic and political appeal. Among other things, Texas Sen. John Cornyn said last week, it would save 91,000 jobs in Texas.

But Cornyn conceded in talking to reporters that the chances of acting now aren’t great, adding he hopes “we’ll be in a better position” after the election. That means the election of a Republican president and Congress that would enact the familiar GOP program of making the Bush tax cuts permanent and increasing defense spending.

Such action would ignore the rest of the CBO’s warning, that failure to make such action temporary and enact long-term tax and spending measures reducing the deficit would keep the national debt rising faster than the economy is growing.

It would also reject the conclusion by the co-chairs of President Barack Obama’s bipartisan deficit control commission, former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson and Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, who stressed any solution to the deficit needs to be a balanced one, including domestic and defense spending cuts, tax increases and reductions in entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Ironically, Republicans such as Cornyn criticize Obama’s refusal to endorse the Simpson-Bowles recommendations, even though the president has repeatedly said he favors their general approach and GOP budgets continue to reject their underlying premise.

But the current gridlock ensures these issues won’t be resolved until the “lame duck” congressional session after the November election.

Just recently, the Republican-controlled House voted to scrap last year’s painfully negotiated bipartisan agreement by reducing the defense cuts and increasing the domestic reductions. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made clear the Democratic-controlled Senate won’t consider that.

Obama, meanwhile, is reiterating he won’t agree to extend any Bush tax cuts without restoring higher taxes for the wealthy, while hoping the election result will maintains his leverage with Congress.

On the surface, compromise seems further away than ever. In March, only 38 members voted for a bipartisan budget plan like the Simpson-Bowles proposal.

And House Speaker John Boehner is vowing to precipitate yet another fiscal power struggle by blocking the next increase in the legal debt ceiling unless it’s accompanied by more spending cuts, presumably again aimed at the diminishing domestic share of the budget.

Hopefully, once the election takes place, enough members of both parties will recognize the underlying truth, that any significant deficit reduction plan requires a compromise on substance and some support from both parties.

There are some signs it is possible. All three Senate GOP members of the Simpson-Bowles Commission supported a balanced plan, as did two of its three Senate Democrats and one of three House Democrats. All three House Republicans opposed it, notably Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, whose ideas are reflected in the GOP’s budgets and have the support of presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Still, Bowles said Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” that, based on their meetings with 47 senators from both parties and an equal number of House members, support for some sort of “balanced plan” will emerge during the “lame duck” session.

“Now, I don’t think the plan itself will be implemented during the lame duck, but I think there will be an agreement that we have to do some kind of balanced plan,” said Bowles, a North Carolina businessman before joining the Clinton administration.

Almost certainly, a split election verdict would improve chances of achieving a bipartisan compromise. And even if the Republicans win the White House, keep the House and narrowly regain the Senate, the requirement for 60 senators on most issues may enable the Democrats to keep enough clout to influence the result.

In recent years, Congress has shown an inability to act unless it has to. As the prospect of a Dec. 31 “fiscal cliff” gets closer, it will have to.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.