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SALT LAKE CITY -- Both Utah Senators and a congressman are part of a pact to oppose a debt ceiling increase, unless their terms are met.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Jason Chaffetz have all signed on to the Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge. They're part of a growing group of lawmakers, which numbered just below two dozen Wednesday morning.
Lee told KSL there are going to have to be "strings attached" if an increase in the debt limit is approved.
"We do need an agreement that we can't continue perpetually to incur $1.5 trillion annual deficits and expect this country to remain on sound fiscal footing," Lee said via satellite from Washington, D.C.
Primarily, Lee is talking about a balanced budget amendment. The members of Congress are also calling for significant budget cuts and spending caps in the pact unveiled Wednesday.
Under the plan endorsed by all Republicans in the Senate, that would involve squaring the nation's budget in 10 years' time.
"It's not an ideal thing to allow the debt limit to expire and it would cause a lot of complications. I don't think that there are many people on the right or on the left that want to see that happen," Lee said. "The question is, what's it going to take for us to get there."
Tuesday, Hatch and Chaffetz expressed concerns about raising the debt limit without conditions.
"I'm signing this pledge to make clear that I'm not going to stop until we right our fiscal ship," Hatch said Tuesday via email to the Deseret News. "Our spending-fueled debt crisis isn't just the crisis of this year — it's the crisis of this generation. And I will not allow our children and grandchildren's futures be mortgaged off, because we failed to step up and take the action that is so desperately needed."
"We're in such a crisis that we've got to do something dramatic," Chaffetz told the paper by phone. "This is straightforward and it does what this country needs to do to retain fiscal sanity. For far too long the debt ceiling has just been routinely increased, and we can't do that. These are perilous fiscal times, and so we're going to have to do something dramatic in this fashion."
Lee expects the number of supporters in Congress will grow over the next couple weeks. Treasury Secretary Tim Geither has recently expressed optimism that a deal will be made and the nation will avoid a debt limit crisis this summer.
Wednesday, Geithner said failure to raise the ceiling has already hurt small business lending. Geithner also said increasing the debt limit would boost confidence across the board.
E-mail: aadams@ksl.com
