When the Globe asked me to write a column on “progress,” I must admit I had to stop and think about what I could report on that front.

If you’re sitting in Southwest Kansas listening to all the chatter about a government shutdown (narrowly adverted at the cliched “eleventh hour”), a still painfully high unemployment rate, the battle to come over the 2012 budget and the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling and continued concerns about what the Obama health care law will mean for all of us, you might not think there is much progress being made in Washington on your behalf.

But at the same time, all the attention on this topic has focused Americans to pay more attention to the future – and what kind of future we want to pass on to our kids and grandkids. It’s an important debate for our country to have at this juncture.

I’d also like to think that the precarious economic situation has forced all of us to look closely at our own budgets and plan even more carefully for the future. We’re now asking the federal government to operate just like most Kansas families and businesses operate – within our means.

That’s why I viewed President’s Obama’s recent budget outline as “progress.”

Think about it this way: For the first two years of the Obama Administration, the president and his allies in Congress tried to spend and borrow our way out of the trouble. The failed stimulus bill added $814 billion to our debt. Likewise, Obamacare added another trillion dollars in entitlement spending to the debt while increasing health care costs and limiting health care choices for many Americans. The president ignored his own deficit commission’s recommendations to address entitlement spending to prevent our nation from going bankrupt, and originally submitted a budget for Fiscal Year 2012 that would grow our national debt to $20 trillion in five years.

Today, it’s a different story. No doubt, the elections of 2010 helped bring about that change. Those who argued for less government spending like our own Rep. Tim Huelskamp have a louder voice, especially in the House with Republicans now controlling the majority. In the Senate, we added seven new Republican members whose more fiscally conservative views make out-of-sight spending bills tougher to pass.

And now, just last week, the president finally joined the debate. He has suggested new budget cuts for Fiscal Year 2012 for the good of future generations. Now, I strongly disagree with the $1.5 trillion in tax hikes he has proposed, and his plans for addressing entitlement spending are short on details, but he has come around in recognizing that runaway spending will no longer be business as usual in Washington. The votes aren’t there for it. It’s my hope we won’t see anymore stimulus bills or bailouts in the near future. I hope that President Obama’s speech will turn into action in the future.

Okay, it might be small, but it is “progress.”

The time to act on this pending fiscal crisis, our greatest threat to national security, is now. And thanks to the American people whose voices are being heard coast to coast, we just may have the ability to make real progress for our children and grandchildren so that they may be free to realize their own definitions of progress.