From Sen. Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, president pro tempore of the N.C. Senate:

To weather a struggling economy, N.C. families have cut costs, done more with less and stretched every dollar to balance the checkbook.

But they've watched their state government do the opposite - increase spending, raise taxes to spend even more, max out the state's debt limit, and rack up a multi-billion-dollar deficit.

North Carolinians want elected officials to spend tax dollars wisely. They expect government to live within its means - not spend money it doesn't have and tax a hurting public more.

For the first time in years, lawmakers are listening, and state government is charting a responsible course.

The state Senate will release a $19.3 billion budget this week that closes a multi-billion-dollar deficit, slashes taxes, reforms education, and secures vital public services - such as courts and public safety agencies.

Our budget will begin building a path to better graduation rates and higher classroom achievement. It will not blindly throw money at a system ranked 43rd in the nation in graduation rates. Instead, we're reforming education by reducing class sizes, funding over 1,000 more teachers in grades 1 through 3, ensuring students can read and finding better ways to hold teachers to high standards.

The budget consolidates duplicative government jobs and cut thousands of vacant positions.

It will cut taxes and return more than $1 billion to the private sector, where the resolve and creativity of North Carolina's workforce will turn that money into lasting new jobs.

It's a budget that makes tough but long-overdue changes to the way state government operates - changes that will position North Carolina to thrive for decades, not just squeeze by for another two years.

The state constitution requires a balanced budget. Under past leadership, though, balancing the budget has been more political than business-like. The governor and the politicians who ran the General Assembly rejected the responsible spending habits so many families apply to their personal finances.

Instead, they chose a process steeped in secrecy and special interests, and crafted backroom budgets with political smoke and mirrors.

They chose to raise your taxes and borrow federal dollars to fund a bloated government instead of balancing the books with the money they had. And instead of cutting bureaucracy and putting more money in your pockets - the best way to revive a wounded economy - they inflated government to unsustainable levels.

The result: a budget hole of more than $2 billion, thousands of new burdensome regulations, unemployment rates near 10 percent, and the highest taxes in the Southeast.

Year after year of irresponsible choices kept us near the bottom in national education rankings, and caused our economy to shed more than 100,000 jobs since 2009. It sent businesses to other states, along with some of the best and brightest leaders.

With new Republican majorities in both chambers, all of that changes this year.

And though it will take time to correct the failed policies of the past, our budget is a bold step in the right direction.