Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I have been here about 4\1/2\ years and come from that world where you could never do what we do here. When you run a business, you are competing. You are earning your revenues. They are not given to you like in government. Here, we just have to be smart enough not to spend more than we take in.

Sadly, when you look--all the data is there historically--we haven't balanced the budget since the late 1990s. Over 50 years, there are some things that are just criteria you need to take into consideration and maybe view as a given.

Our system is built on enterprise, sound regulation, not overbearing, taxes that you can pay without being a wet blanket on the economy. Over 50 years, other than 2 or 3 years that happened to coincide in the Clinton years when we balanced the budget, we have never generated more than 18 percent of our GDP in revenue through the Federal Government.

It is this simple: When you have high rates, you flush more into the Treasury the first couple years. You go from whatever the economic growth rate was to something a half to a percent and a half lower. When you cut taxes--and it was getting close; it wasn't quite there pre- COVID, the Trump tax cuts--you are going to deplete revenues the first couple years, but then you benefit from an economy that is growing more robustly.

We know all of that. The missing link here is that anywhere else, you have the rigor of the marketplace. When you are running something, it is not merciful. If you behave there like we do here, you are on the ash heap of enterprises that just don't survive in the long run. Nowhere else can you borrow up to 30 cents on every dollar you spend and expect that to be a good long-term business plan.

I am one--in the time I have been here, I have gotten along with a lot of Democrats on passing legislation that is practical. We can still do it. But when it comes to the big agenda items in terms of how much you spend, are you going to have the fortitude to do a real budget, we haven't done that. Whenever we have had moments of discipline with budget caps, sequestrations, they seem to unravel soon after we put them in place.

Again, look at the numbers. We, from the time we were founded until the year 2000, had very little debt. Most of that came after World War II. The ``greatest generation'' was the deepest in debt we had ever been historically as a country. They were savers. They were investors. They were hard workers. They paid it off and built the Interstate Highway System, the most capital-intensive thing we have ever done as a country.

When you morph into being consumers and spenders--that is what Greece did. That is what Italy did. That is what Spain did. That is what Portugal was doing until they had to get back on the wagon. Otherwise, the second largest economy in the world was going to be in trouble. They put basic discipline into their system. They spend more through the federal government there than we do, but they pay for it generally. They are not borrowing it from future generations.

We have to find a way as Democrats and Republicans to take the priorities that are important to this country. And I haven't mentioned so far the real drivers of our structural deficits. That is Social Security; that is Medicare; that is Medicaid--all programs we want to be there, but we want them to be solid.

Until we get the backbone, the political discipline, we are going to keep skirting the rigor that it takes to make this thing work long term, and you can expect more of the same. What you are seeing here today is no different; it is just punctuated with a little more drama than normal.

We know we have debt ceilings. If we didn't have those, we would probably even plow further into debt. But the numbers always win in the long run. We are running trillion-dollar deficits--both sides of the aisle generating them--from the Bush years. We had COVID come along. We politically enterprised, I think, through 2 years, not recognizing what the real capability of our economy would be, and we are in a pickle.

I am going to do a little math quiz here. I did it with a bunch of reporters 3 months ago. I said: What is 1 percent of 30 trillion?

Would the Presiding Officer venture to make a guess on that?

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Mr. BRAUN. So 1 percent of 30 trillion is 300 billion.

After 30 seconds of silence, one reporter offered 300 million. I said: You are off by a power of a thousand.

That is how abstract these numbers become, but they become real over time when you take interest rates that have gone up 4 to 5 percent. Now that you know what 1 percent of 30 trillion is, try 5 percent. That is 1.5 trillion. That is what we are going to be pricing into our debt that we are incurring.

The only blueprint out there has been from the Biden administration-- puts us $20 trillion further in debt in just 10 years. And all this is going to do is knock it back to just $18 trillion more. That is shameful for future generations.

This institution needs to be healthy, and it needs to live within its means like households do, like local and State governments do, like all businesses do. Try talking to your banker, running a 30-percent loss, wanting them to lend you the money. They would laugh you out of the office before you got into the details of really what you need. It is a bad business plan.

I could go on about that, but it has been happening for now over two decades, both sides of the aisle. The deal is generally made by some on our side of the aisle who hold defense sacrosanct, don't want to budge at all. The other side views domestic spending as more important. But we generally work out this same deal. But do you know what the net result is? We are deeper in debt.

I did take finance 101. I spent 37 years running a business with full competition, the rigor of it, was on a school board, and was on ways and means in our State government. It can be done.

We have the printing press in the basement; that is the Fed. When they take all this fiscal stimulus that we did and put it on their balance sheet, that is how you print money. That is a bad business plan for future generations.

I am going to introduce an amendment called the no-default amendment. We should not be flirting with this year after year when we know it is going to happen anyway, and until we put real reforms into the system, expect the same.

The next time we hit the debt ceiling, when the Treasury says you are entering into extraordinary measures, that is when the clock starts. My amendment--if you can't get a real deal done with reforms addressing the things I have talked about, we are going to start paring back this place, and it is going to be across the board, defense and domestic spending--every 30 days, a 1-percent cut. If you are so thickheaded that you can't get it done then, in another 30 days, you do it again. That would put some rigor into the process.

But if we are not honest with the public and really address the programs that are dearest to most Americans--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid--and quit doing mandatory spending on things that aren't important, we are going to run this place into the ditch.

I fear for what my kids and grandkids are going to have to deal with, and I think all Americans should be worried about that. This would be at least a start of putting a little bit of discipline into an undisciplined system.

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