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[Pages S5097-S5098]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DEBT CEILING
Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I have the good fortune every Thursday of
sitting here anywhere from 3 to 6, depending on what the workload is.
Since I have gotten here, as a Senator from Indiana, as a Main Street
entrepreneur, almost everything I talk about is stuff that I have
learned back in the real world.
Now and then, there will be a speaker here that breaks up the
monotony of sitting there for that amount of time. My friend and fellow
Senator, Mr. Lee, couldn't have said it more eloquently. You have a
beautiful graph here to show the issue. I am going to take just a few
minutes to reinforce what he said.
When I ran for Senate, I did it out of the frustration that it seems
like only here in DC do we hear the same things year after year and
nothing ever seems to change. I know the responsibility of leadership
and trying to navigate through the system. But sooner or later, we have
to simply say enough is enough.
This year, the President, I really think, wanted to shake the system
up, I was hoping, like back in March of 2018, when there was a
continuing resolution agreed to, to re-enable defense, which, in my
opinion, is probably the most important thing the Federal Government
should do. That might be the last time. As Senator Lee said: Look at
the chart.
There was always a good reason in the past, and it was generally
along the lines of defending our country. But the ethic back then
should be what the ethic is now--like it is for every household, every
State government, every school board, and especially every business--
that you borrow money not to consume. That is called putting it on a
credit card. In almost everything we do in the Federal Government,
there is not a tangible asset to show for it. We are actually spending
it and consuming it.
When you borrow money in any business, there is a difference between
expenses and supplies and capital expenditures. We do not even talk
about that.
I am going to accept the reality of the system today. I don't like
it. I am going to vote against the bill as well. I have talked to my
fellow Members that we need to, sooner or later, quit saying the same
things. We need to, sooner or later, reform the system, to actually do
things that are going to be different from everything we have done in
the past that has led us to this.
How is it going to happen? We are going to need to have more Senators
like Senator Lee, like myself, who get involved and make the case. But
the only way this is really going to happen is if Hoosiers and
Americans know you could never get by with this in your own household.
[[Page S5098]]
I know I could have never built a national business by doing this
over 37 years. It is like in business. People always ask you: How did
you get there? I will tell you how I got there: patience, perseverance,
hard work, reinvesting every penny I made, borrowing money only when it
made sense. And it wasn't for a nicer corporate headquarters. My office
was in a mobile home for 17 years. I appreciated low overhead.
When you do things like that, great opportunities come your way. To
all the people who come here from Indiana every week somehow connected
with the Federal Government wanting more, my advice to them is hedge
your bets. If you are dependent on an institution like this that just
is so stubborn and will not correct itself, this trajectory will lead
to a bad day somewhere down the road that our kids and grandkids will
deal with.
I think the other side of the aisle does drive a lot of this
mentality that the Federal Government should do more regardless of what
it costs.
The income tax occurred about right back in here. That became a
source of revenue for the Federal Government that we pretty well
disciplined ourselves with, until we got to right here, when
entitlements and the mandated spending took over the dynamic of our
Federal Government.
We have everything on auto pilot here where you can't even discuss
it. From Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and interest on our debt
to about another 10 to 15 percent that we have moved from discretionary
to mandatory--another gimmick here--it is only 30 percent of the budget
that we can deal with. Senator Lee talked about it.
All of that we know, and all I am asking leadership and the
President, when we do win in 2020--because I think we will, because
anybody that is proposing ideas like the Green New Deal, Medicare for
All, free college tuition, and getting rid of college debt is only
going to add fuel to the fire--is that we as fiscal conservatives are
going to have to be heard, and leadership and the President are going
to have to hear us.
Even though it is not going to happen this time, we shouldn't be
afraid to talk about it, because everyone else in our country--
households, school boards, businesses, and State governments--does.
That is because they have the common sense to live within their means,
not loot the bank in the present and shovel all these troubles onto
future generations.
I yield the floor.
(At the request of Mr. Schumer, the following statement was ordered
to be printed in the Record.)
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