By Jennifer Stefano

A total of 190 words. That's all it took Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey (and California Congressman Tom McClintock, who is sponsoring companion legislation in the House) to write his Fiscal Integrity bill. If passed, the bill would legislate what our government should do if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling.

In a word: prioritize. Or as Toomey writes in the bill: "... that the government prioritize all obligations on the debt held by the public in the event that the debt limit is reach."

Sen. Toomey is finally legislating what the tea party has been telling the government since its inception: Get your financial house in order. Those of us running households have been (rightly) forced to, so why shouldn't Uncle Sam? Whether you're facing unemployment and mountains of debt or just feeling a financial pinch (and who isn't?), deciding what bills get paid has become derigueur for most of us.

What's confounding is that this legislation has to be passed at all. First, it's breathtakingly obvious. Prioritize what gets paid and what doesn't when you just don't have enough money? It would make a kindergartner just learning the difference between a nickel and dime roll his eyes in disbelief. But this bill does more than just state the obvious. In fact, it states what already is written into U.S. code: that the U.S. Treasury has the authority to pay the principal and interest of our debt if we slam up against the debt ceiling.

So why write a bill that's part common sense, part reiteration? Because the Democrats, playing progressive Chicken Littles, are hysterically clucking that if the debt ceiling isn't raised, the sky is falling. There's just a small problem with that: It's not. President Obama and the Democrats making dire predictions about a looming crisis and America's defaulting on its debt if we don't borrow more is just patently false. Worse, it's this hyperbole that's creating instability and worry in global markets.

The Fiscal Integrity Act would signal to our debtors that America will make good on all its debts. The United States collects more than two-thirds of its operating expenses from taxes. America can and will fulfill its constitutional duties and its obligation to its debtors even if the debt ceiling is not raised. As Toomey wrote in The Wall Street Journal: "About 6.5 percent of all projected federal government expenditures will go to interest on our debt, and tax revenue is projected to cover about 67 percent of all government expenditures. With roughly 10 times more income than needed to honor our debt obligations, why would we ever default?"

The Congressional Research Service estimates that if the debt ceiling isn't raised this year, Congress would need to cut spending by $738 billion in the next six months. Considering the Republican leadership opened its spending reduction salvo with only $100 billion in (discretionary) cuts and has been heading south since, the Fiscal Integrity Act would give our country the blue print it needs to proceed if the debt ceiling increase is voted down.

This is not merely a matter of spending but of leadership, as another freshman senator once told us:

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."

That was then-Sen. Barack Obama on March 16, 2006, when he refused to vote for an increase in the debt ceiling under President Bush. America does deserve better, but until 2013, President Obama is what America has.

It's time for the Republicans to not just demand even deeper spending cuts from the Democrats and to hold them accountable; it's time to hold them to their own words.

Jennifer Stefano is the director of communications for Americans for Prosperity-Pennsylvania.