If you're gonna cut, spread the pain around. Or so the Brits would advise you.

I have a piece out today in National Journal magazine looking at the early lessons for American lawmakers from the United Kingdom's recently enacted austerity programs. It's a good time to check in on the British experience, given the still-raging debate on the House floor over budget cuts for the current fiscal year. The U.K. just began implementing a dramatic package of steep spending cuts and tax reform - including some hikes - designed to curb the British budget deficit and reduce soaring national debt.

The evidence so far is nowhere near conclusive on how the austerity measures will affect the U.K.'s growth and employment, though the Conservative-led coalition government estimated last year the measures will result in the elimination of about a half-million public sector jobs. But there may be a political lesson coming across the pond for U.S. lawmakers if they hope to find bipartisan agreement with President Obama on plans to tackle long-term questions of taxes, spending (especially entitlements) and reducing U.S. debt levels. That lesson would be, don't just cut the things your opponents like.

In the U.K., notes Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a research fellow at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, "they kept absolutely no one safe. Every single individual in the UK is going to feel the impact of these cuts." It's a deliberate strategy: "If you start exempting one (group), the next special interest group is going to pop their head up and say, what about me? What about me?"

Contrast that to House Republicans, who have so far reveled in votes to cut some of liberals' most cherished spending - including major reductions in environmental protection, defunding of Obama's signature health care and financial regulation laws. (Some of those programs - such as Environmental Protection Agency authority to regulate greenhouse gases, poll well with voters broadly, not just the left.) Perhaps National Journal's Kelsey Snell summed it up best when she tweeted today that the House voted to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, but to keep Pentagon sponsorship of NASCAR races.

Here's the problem: Cutting liberal-loved programs alone won't go nearly far enough to reduce the national debt or even stabilize it. For that, you'll likely need major changes in programs that wide majorities of Americans like, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and likely some unpopular tax increases, too. A lift like that needs coalition support. Which is to say, everybody must hurt.