[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 49 (Wednesday, March 20, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2459-S2460]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     RECOGNIZING THE NATIONAL DEBT AS A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY

  Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, I come to the floor this evening to talk 
about our national debt, and I will be introducing a resolution here in 
a moment.
  Our national debt, to put it in perspective, had never been much 
before the year 2000. Cumulatively, it was $5 trillion. That is a lot 
of zeroes behind a 5. That is a lot. But that is what it took from the 
beginning of the country--most of it did occur from the 1960s to 1980. 
That is when we started doing deficits, but it really started to get to 
where they became entrenched in standard operating procedure in the 
year 2000.
  We did put two wars on the credit card. In 2000 to 2008, we went up 
to $10 trillion--all of a sudden, a lot more zeroes, with an extra zero 
and a 1. From 2008 to 2016, we went from $10 trillion to $16 trillion.
  Now it gets to be a little more repetitive. I got here--elected--in 
2018. By 2018, we are adding $1 trillion a year. Stick with me here. 
That is $16 trillion, 17, 18. So I get here as a Senator, alarmed by 
that when you come from a place like Indiana and you ran a business for 
37 years, and if you even did anything close to that, I guarantee you 
your line of credit wasn't going to get renewed.
  Since then--and we had a pandemic in there--it has gotten to where we 
have put a burden on future generations that I never imagined. I didn't 
think we would see it in this short a period. Well, we did roughly put 
$4 trillion more on the books through the worst pandemic we ever had. I 
think many of us question whether that was necessary or not. We 
probably could have done better. But we had already gotten into the 
routine of maybe erring on the side of doing more rather than less.

  Well, since then, we have gone into enterprising through government. 
When we were borrowing just a few years ago $1 trillion annually, now 
we are doing it every 6 months. If you are good at math out there, try 
taking interest rates, which now are around 5, 6, 7 percent, depending 
on how the government is borrowing it, start applying that to $34 
trillion or $35 trillion, and the only blueprint we have for us would 
be from the Biden administration that puts us $52 trillion in debt in 
10 years.
  That is a burden on our kids and grandkids. They will have to figure 
out how to pay it off. All of us here seem to be unconcerned about it. 
I think it would be a little different if we were knocking things out 
of the park.
  So those numbers never go away. Sooner or later, interest is going 
to--well, it is going to be sooner. I think next year, we are going to 
spend as much on our entire defense industry and budget as we will on 
interest. It doesn't take long to where that is going to amount to--in 
3 to 4 years, 5--what we spend on all discretionary spending here, 
domestic and defense.
  The government has grown from never being more than 20 percent of our 
GDP to now the new baseline is 25 percent of our GDP. Our economy has 
only grown maybe a couple percent a year. That is digging a hole deeper 
and deeper that--anyone who is in the category of being kids and 
grandkids out there, look out.
  It is not going to be easy to get back to where you are actually 
paying your bills as you accumulate them. If we don't, it will be the 
same thing Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain had to go through when 
they fell off the wagon as small economies. We are the largest economy 
in the world. There is no good ending to it.
  It is no more difficult than just not spending more than we take in. 
Any good manager would figure out really quickly how to get back in 
line. Your banker would never allow you to renew a line of credit if 
you didn't. Here, we have the printing press in the basement, and the 
credit card gets renewed each year. That is no excuse that you should 
keep performing poorly when you know what the end result is going to 
be.
  It is even a threat to our national security. For instance, we spend 
$850 billion, roughly, on defense. China, our

[[Page S2460]]

main geopolitical foe, spends less than a third of that. Russia, which 
causes all that trouble around the world, spends about $90 billion. It 
begs the question, why can't we do better when we are spending all that 
money? It is because we don't have any of the safeguards. We are not 
running it like the biggest business in the world; we are running it 
like kids with their hands in the cookie jar, and that is not a good 
business plan. It is unsustainable.
  I am not going to repeat the numbers, but if you take this out 10 
years, that is going to be a mountain that is so high to climb and so 
hard to tear down that it will be tough to do. We could do it easily by 
just not digging the hole any deeper, meaning freezing our spending and 
allocating our resources better, just like all States do. We choose not 
to do it. We need to start.
  I am on the Budget Committee. We haven't done a budget in the Federal 
Government that we have adhered to in over two decades. Finally, we are 
going to have to start knuckling down and having discipline like 
everyone else does or it will end up like a chapter 11 does in the real 
world when you have not paid attention to the details, you borrow too 
much money, and you have a couple years to work it out with your 
creditors. Hopefully, we will never get to that.
  I am introducing this resolution called Recognizing the National Debt 
as a Threat to National Security.
  As in legislative session, and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask 
unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. 
Res. 600, which is at the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the resolution by title.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A resolution (S. Res. 600) recognizing the national debt as 
     a threat to national security.

  There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the 
resolution.
  Mr. BRAUN. I know of no further debate on the measure.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. If there is no further debate, the question is 
on adoption of the resolution.
  The resolution was agreed to.
  The resolution (S. Res. 600) was agreed to.
  Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the preamble 
be agreed to and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and 
laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The preamble was agreed to.
  (The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in today's Record 
under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
  Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
permitted to complete my remarks, which I have done, followed by 
Senator Padilla, for up to 5 minutes prior to the scheduled rollcall 
vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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