Why I will vote against increasing the debt limit

Working hard and living within our means is something that, as a father, I tried very hard to instill in my children. But as a parent, I can't think of a worse role model than the federal government. One of the first votes the Senate will take this year will be to raise the $12.4 trillion debt limit -- the amount Washington can charge to the nation's credit card - just a month after they increased it by $290 billion. This shouldn't be how we start the new year.

Make no mistake, liberals in Congress are doing this to finance massive spending increases that we as a nation cannot afford. In fact, in last year's annual appropriations bills, Congress increased non-defense domestic discretionary spending by an astounding 12 percent over last year's levels. As American families struggle to make ends meet and live within their means, they are rightly angry that Washington cannot do the same -- and I don't blame them.

There's an old saying that Congress never solves a problem until it faces a crisis. And having debt that equals 60 percent of our total economic output is a crisis of tremendous magnitude. Ensuring the United States has a solid credit rating that instills confidence is critical. But we cannot continue on this unsustainable cycle of reckless spending and borrowing supported by foreign nations in places like the Middle East and China. We must get our fiscal house in order so that our children and grandchildren aren't buried under a mountain of debt, and we must start by cutting spending.

We should first revisit the recently passed appropriations bills and slash some of the massive double-digit increases that we simply cannot afford. Second, we should take the unspent money from the government bailout program, TARP, and from last February's so-called economic stimulus bill and use it to pay down the debt. Although the TARP funds are being paid back, the need for the program is over and the stimulus clearly has not worked as promised, so let's put that remaining money to good use to pare down the debt.

Finally, it's absolutely critical that we focus on bringing down the cost of health care, the primary concern of the people of Utah and America. That means hitting the reset button by scrapping the $2.5 trillion health care bill that raises taxes, cuts Medicare and increases costs. Instead, we should come together to reduce health care costs at a price tag our nation can afford. The lesson we should learn from Scott Brown's stunning victory in Massachusetts is that Americans are fed up. I hope everyone elected official is listening.

Let us stop pretending that our runaway federal spending and mind-boggling debt are not imminent, four-alarm crises and that business as usual is OK. It is time to come together, not as Democrats and Republicans, but as Americans with a sacred trust, and solve these problems. Until there is a commitment to do so, I say no to increasing the debt limit.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican, is a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee.