Governments routinely increase spending by a percentage point or two. Shouldn’t they be able to trim a little when necessary?

The Saskatchewan government is projecting operational deficits this year and next year before getting back to balance. But time and again we see deficits get bigger and last longer than promised. Alberta and Manitoba are both running deficits that they once called modest and temporary and years later their debts have soared by billions. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promised deficits of less than $10 billion, but that commitment is crumbling as borrowing projections are skyrocketing.

First, it’s worth remembering where we’re at. Saskatchewan’s current operational deficit is projected to be $262 million. The province is borrowing another $700 million for infrastructure. So Saskatchewan is likely to add about a billion to the provincial debt this year. After two decades of debt reduction, Saskatchewan is still getting top marks from bond rating agencies, but Standard and Poor’s recently issued a warning about future credit rating downgrades.

Now, it’s also good to get some context. Alberta’s debt is more than $17 billion, it’s running a deficit of $8.9 billion and it’s gotten it’s own credit rating warning. Manitoba’s debt is nearly $36 billion, its operational deficit is $550 million and it has already received a credit rating downgrade.

So that’s where we are, but the bigger question is where we’re going now that we’re running a deficit this year and next?

To his credit, Premier Brad Wall started cutting spending as soon as the operational deficit appeared and trimmed the budget by about $100 million. That’s about 0.75 per cent of the budget. Unfortunately, he also says “there isn’t much room left” to trim the remaining 99.25 per cent of provincial spending. And he’s speculating about raising the education portion of property taxes at some point in the future.

If we act now, we can trim the budget with a scalpel rather than a chainsaw. Reducing spending by about 1.8 per cent would eliminate Saskatchewan’s operational deficit.

Once again, context is helpful. Former Alberta Premier Ralph Klein cut spending by about 18 per cent over the span of his first four budgets. Former Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow cut spending by more than 8 per cent in the 1992-93 budget and former federal finance minister Paul Martin cut nearly as much from Ottawa’s books in 1996-97.

It’s not hard to find a place to start trimming in Saskatchewan.

Saskatchewan has to shut down its Crown bus line – the Saskatchewan Transportation Company (STC). The provincial government gave STC a subsidy of $13.6 million in 2014. The year before, it was $14 million. Some customers will be inconvenienced when it’s gone, but we can’t afford it any more. As long as the bus company is burning through more than a million dollars a month it’s impossible to believe there is no room left to cut.

Further, if there’s no room left to cut, how are we going to pay for increasing interest costs? Alberta is projected to spend $778 million to cover the interest on its debt this year. For Manitoba, the number is $842 million. In Saskatchewan, we’re already paying $305 million to cover interest charges on existing debt. Those are hundreds of millions of dollars that leave the province instead of going to roads or hospitals or tax cuts.

Maybe Saskatchewan will be different than all of those other provinces and get out of deficit quickly, but that’s not usually how it goes.

“Deficits are a lot like potato chips … they’re not very good for your long-term health and bet you can’t stop at just one,” said Premier Wall in 2009.

We don’t yet need deep cuts like those made by Klein, Martin and Romanow. We only need to trim a few per cent. But we need to do it now.