After watching weeks of brinkmanship in Washington and a chaotic weekend of negotiations to avoid a U.S. default, most Americans felt relief when Congress finally passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling and trim spending.

But any relief will be short-lived, once the facts are known.

The spending-reduction plan signed by President Barack Obama this week does not cut federal spending; it merely slows it — and by just a little. The decade of spending restraints outlined in what is called the “Budget Control Act of 2011” will end that 10-year period with the government’s debt being much larger than it is today.

Despite the doomsday talk from some in Congress about drastic spending cuts and radical changes to federal programs, very little progress was made to address the country’s long-term debt. This is especially true when it comes to unsustainable spending trends in entitlements and health care.

Writing about the default-averting deal, Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson, the co-chairs of Obama’s commission on deficit reduction, said the plan signed by Obama merely delays the deficit crisis. They say it’s a step forward, but nothing close to a solution.

Columnist Glenn Garvin of the Miami News writes that one blogger said the deficit-reduction deal that cuts $22 billion out of this year’s $3.8 trillion spending plan is “akin to having a $50,000 credit card bill and celebrating because your telephone bill is going down from $40 a month to $30 a month.”

A real debt solution will require serious spending reductions of about $4 trillion over 10 years, more than twice the size of cuts spelled out in last weekend’s deal. Bowles and Simpson argue that a real solution also would make changes to entitlements, reform the tax code by eliminating most deductions and loopholes, and possibly raising tax rates. A real solution would also address health care spending, which continues to rise faster than inflation and remains on an unsustainable path, despite the controversial health care reform law of 2010, which was named the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”

Most Americans were disgusted by the partisan fighting and hyperbole surrounding the debt-ceiling standoff. By failing to honestly address the problems facing the country, most politicians in Washington continue to demonstrate a lack of leadership, statesmanship and willingness to put the good of the country above party interests or ideology.

People on both extremes of the issue are not being honest. Those who refuse to consider any tax increases are not being realistic, if they really want to cut the long-term deficit. And those who warn that any changes or reductions to entitlements will destroy America are not being honest about the unsustainable trendlines in Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.

Once again, we see America’s political leaders lurch from one crisis to another, waging epic battles and engaging in frantic deal-making only to pass legislation that fails to solve the problem. Yet they act like they’ve accomplished something.

The health care reform legislation, called the “Affordable Care Act,” does next to nothing to make health care more affordable. And this week’s budget and debt-ceiling deal, called a “Budget Control Act,” clearly fails to control federal spending or reduce the long-term federal deficit.

After the chaotic weekend in which millions of Americans wondered if the nation would default and stock market investments would plummet, politicians in Washington are patting themselves on the back for averting a crisis. They did avert the debt-limit crisis, but that was an artificial crisis created by politicians. They did very little to address the long-term deficit crisis; they just punted the job to a “super committee” of Congress to deal with later this year — and for other politicians (and all Americans) to deal with for years to come.

It’s shameful. But one good thing to come out of the recent mess in Washington is that more people see that now.