WASHINGTON — A balanced budget proposal authored by Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) came up short in a vote in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, but not before Braun shook his colleagues down with reasons why he believes the government is in serious trouble financially.
The bill would have enacted sweeping changes to how the government spends your tax dollars, all geared toward lowering the country’s debt and reining in what he says is out-of-control government spending.
“World War II. That is the deepest we’ve ever been in debt until we just eclipsed it recently,” said Braun on the Senate floor. “That’s generally measured by how much debt you have as a percentage of your GDP.”
Braun stated that post-WWII was a prime example of what the country can do with less. He said the country paid off it’s debts from the war over the next 40 years leading up to the Great Recession. When the pandemic hit as well as having “two wars on the credit card,” as he put it, Braun said a mentality was adopted of continued government spending leading to the country borrowing even more money.
“We need to just quit digging the hole deeper,” Braun said. “Let’s get out of it. Let’s go back to what we know was working, at least financially, pre-COVID. We had no inflation. Wages rising in the toughest places.”
But, inflation is something Braun said will be a new challenge. He contends that country has spent itself into a hole so deep that with high inflation it will take a long time to not only lower inflation but also lower the debt.
“If we want to get to a real balanced budget, that covers your interest, you actually have to find ways to do things with less money,” Braun said. “The big difference between now and then is that we’ve got a lot more debt, so it’s going to be trickier.”
Braun’s balanced budget proposal was voted down on a bipartisan basis 34-65.
