[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 126 (Thursday, July 25, 2019)]
[Senate]
[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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