Jeff Bingaman United States Senator from New Mexico

Even as we make the necessary investments in our country to spur job creation, we must be looking at ways to solve the nation's serious deficit problem.

Last year, President Obama created the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to address the nation's budget challenges; at the same time, the Bipartisan Policy Center convened their Debt Reduction Task Force, led by my former Senate colleague Pete Domenici. Both commissions recognized the need to increase revenue and cut spending in order to solve the nation's serious deficit problem. The challenge is doing so equitably, in a way that will encourage growth in promising sectors while maintaining crucial safety nets like unemployment insurance.

This approach has worked before. In 1990, Congress passed and President George H.W. Bush signed a bill which both restrained spending and raised taxes. Again, in 1993 and 1997 Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed budget plans which did even more—both to restrain spending and to raise revenue. As a result, we enjoyed both a strong economy and an unprecedented surplus—we were taking in more money than we were spending.

I believe Congress must do everything it can do help stimulate economic recovery now, must address our national deficit by making spending cuts that are equitable, and must find additional ways to raise revenue.  We are all in this economic downfall together, and we will never recover if we expect recovery to come completely on the backs of those Americans struggling the most.