Families all across the country are tightening their belts during this recession, and they are looking for Washington to do the same. The bottom line is that current levels of federal spending are unsustainable. We saw this firsthand as President Obama put forth his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year. It included some tough cuts for worthy programs. But it also aims to bring down our ballooning deficit after nearly a decade of out of control spending by the previous Administration.

Congress worked with the Clinton Administration to bring an end to our deficit. I was proud to join with President Clinton and members of both parties to put in place measures that balanced the budget and turned deficits into three consecutive years of surpluses by the end of his term. It wasn’t easy, and it required making some tough decisions about where federal dollars were spent.

I was hopeful that we could build on that success as President George W. Bush took office. Deficits, however, ran rampant during his eight years in office, with the debt rising from $5.7 trillion when he began his term to $10.6 trillion when he left office. Two wars, the Medicare prescription drug bill, and tax cuts primarily directed toward the wealthy all went unpaid for. Those initiatives added tremendous amounts to our bottom line, and our children and grandchildren will be paying for these policies for decades to come. 

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 The recent economic crisis has necessitated several infusions of taxpayer funds to keep our economy from collapsing. Following these extraordinary measures that necessitated government investment, President Obama is now trying to rein in our spending and put us on a path toward fiscal restraint. At a time of the worst recession since the Great Depression, this is no easy task and will require a bipartisan commitment.

 That’s why I recently supported a bipartisan commission to recommend ways to address the nation’s deficits and cut spending. I’m pleased to see President Obama include it in his budget outline. I also recently voted to reinstate Pay-Go rules to help return our nation to a period of balanced federal budgets.  Short for pay-as-you-go, this requires any spending increase be offset by either a corresponding spending cut or revenue increase so that the end result is budget neutral.  Any tax cut proposal must follow the same rules.

 I take the funding process very seriously. Earmarks make up approximately one percent of federal spending, but they are important to our state. I will continue fighting for worthy projects from Lewis and Clark to construction projects at Ellsworth that improve our local communities, but we must root out and eliminate the wasteful spending from our spending bills.

 The President’s budget request is a starting point, not the finished product. Congress will make changes as the process moves forward. But, at the end of the day, we cannot afford to stray from the goal of deficit reduction that President Obama has outlined. Congress came together in the past to turn around a ballooning deficit and we can do so again. Now that the economy appears to be stabilizing, returning to measures like Pay-Go is not only common-sense, it’s necessary

Tim Johnson is a U.S. Senator for the state of South Dakota and is a member of the Democratic party.