Dating back to 1917, Congress has set limits to how much money the U.S. government can borrow. Recently, excessive spending and rising federal deficits have led lawmakers to push the debt ceiling to new heights at an escalating and unprecedented rate. Today, Congress is poised to raise the national debt ceiling for the seventh time in five years, and it could now reach a staggering $14.3 trillion.

People in Mississippi and across the country are asking when will enough be enough? The unfortunate reality is that, under policies recently passed in Congress, the spending will not stop any time soon.

                               Record Spending and Deficits
In fiscal year (FY) 2009, government spending grew by a whopping $705 billion, a nearly 25 percent increase. The FY2009 deficit was a record-setting $1.4 trillion, which is three times more than any single year deficit in our nation’s history. Under the budget passed last spring, the deficit spending binge continues, setting the path for trillion-dollar annual deficits every year for the next decade. At that rate, debt limit increases would become common practice and our public debt could soar to $24.5 trillion by 2019.

A new report published by the highly respected National Research Council and the National Academy of Public Administration offered a striking analysis of the national debt. The economists and budget experts who authored the report suggested that a sustainable debt level should not exceed 60 percent of our nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), which is a common measure of fiscal strength. On our current track, by 2019, our debt would stand at an astounding 106 percent of the GDP.

                                Risks of Deepening Debt
The authors of the study also outlined the dangers of mounting U.S. debt. If allowed to grow unchecked, the debt would threaten the long-term prosperity of our nation and make America vulnerable to a financial crisis far more severe than our present recession. If the economy continues to falter, and investors lose faith in America’s ability to pay its loans, we could see our interest rates skyrocket and the value of the U.S. dollar fall. Further, the higher our public debt goes, the more federal revenue will have to be spent on interest payments. Even at today’s relatively low interest rates, the government spends more on interest payments than it does to fund many of our nation’s primary agencies, such as the Department of Transportation.

Economists warn that in order to curb our debt, Congress has two choices – either increase Americans’ tax burden during an economic downturn or rein in federal spending. President Obama promised during his campaign that he would not raise taxes on middle class Americans, and in the Senate, I will work to hold him to that pledge. The better approach is for Congress to exercise the same restraint that American families and small businesses must follow to keep expenses in line.
 
                                Renew Fiscal Restraint
One place to start would be to trim our annual budget back to the leaner levels of FY2008. The budget plan submitted to Congress that year by the Bush Administration projected deficit reductions each year and charted a path to a balanced budget by 2012. This modest tightening of the government’s belt would slow the growth of our national debt and still adequately fund federal agencies. 

Another way would be to shut off the spigot of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which was authorized in 2008 to bail out financial institutions. I voted against TARP then, and I recently cosponsored an amendment that would prevent the U.S. Treasury from tapping the roughly $319 billion in TARP funding that remains unspent. The amendment would also use TARP repayments to pay down the public debt.

Lastly, we must stop spending money we don’t have. In the last 18 months, Congress has spent without reservation. The 2008 bailout cost taxpayers $700 billion, and the “stimulus” bill cost taxpayers another $1 trillion. The Democrats’ massive health care bill, which the majority of Americans oppose, would set the record by costing taxpayers as much as $3 trillion. 

Even if some in Congress don’t know when to say when, the American people do. The recent upset election of Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts showed the depth of voters’ discontent with the administration and Congress. With the American people behind us, we can return to the important work of legislating fiscally-responsible, forward-thinking policies that meet our needs today and preserve our stability into the future.

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