I can remember the days of a budget surplus.

I can remember a time when Members of Congress spoke proudly of $200 billion surpluses we worked with the Clinton administration to create. I can remember a time when the federal government’s top three spending priorities did not include paying the interest from the national debt.

I can remember these things, quite frankly, because they weren’t so long ago.

More vividly, I remember when President Bush took over and the surpluses disappeared; transforming into a $109 billion budget deficit. Just last week the President’s economic credibility became more fallible as he announced a deficit that will be a mind-numbing $615 billion. And that staggering figure doesn’t even include the cost of occupying Iraq – which is far from over - and Afghanistan, which are currently priced at about $5 billion a month.

A $615 billion debt runs a significant amount of interest – and that interest has to be paid every year. In fact, the interest on a $615 billion deficit is so high that paying it will become the third largest expenditure in the entire federal budget, after Social Security and defense spending.

This deficit is so massive, if we stop funding all of the discretionary spending for the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Labor, Energy, Interior, Commerce, Justice, The Defense Department, and The State Department we would still be more than $23 billion short of balancing the budget. 

When Congress is forced to dedicate billions of dollars to paying the interest on the debt other priorities suffer the consequences. For instance, today our own military lives in homes that are part of a renovation backlog of over 160,000 units worldwide. The federal government only pays the surviving family members of those who have paid the ultimate price in defense of our country 35 percent of their original salary. A salary that is significantly lower than what private sector employees are paid for doing the same job in a significantly safer working environment.

We ask the men and women of our armed forces to protect our way of life, to work a job for fair pay and to have a home that can be fixed when it needs to be. Then we deny them those very fundamentals they sacrifice their lives to ensure, and simultaneously pass a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts that limit our ability as the federal government to help our service men and women receive needs as basic as shelter.

Unfortunately, this massive deficit and impending financial disaster still isn’t convincing Republicans to reexamine their economic strategy. Corporations are paying 30% less taxes on their profits then they did 20 years ago. Meanwhile, state budgets are in complete disarray and local officials are being forced to cut necessary services like Medicaid, increase taxes or both.

The apathy of the Republicans, including the President, has been clearly relayed and continually disturbing. Earlier this year, when Democrats called Bush administration budget estimates impractical because they omitted the cost of occupying Iraq, the President turned a deaf ear. When Democrats spoke up about the dangers of a long-term deficit, the President remained disinterested.

As President Bush continually “re-assesses” his own economic predictions and the deficit totals grow larger and larger, the future of Americans grows more and more bleak.  Fiscal responsibility is a model we must continually strive to achieve. It is a model that promotes the balanced growth of the country. It is a model that ensures the future economic strength of the nation. And it is unfortunately a model that is clearly being ignored.

We owe the founding fathers better. We owe our men and women in uniform better. We owe our children and grandchildren better. We can do better. Now is the time to start.