Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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Mr. BRAUN. Madam President, I was asked to bat cleanup on National Small Business Week for our conference. I have been a Main Street entrepreneur my entire life.

My wife and I moved back to our hometown in 1978. She will celebrate her 41st anniversary this September with her only job--a business in our downtown selling home accessories and gifts.

I am very proud of you, Maureen.

Three years later, I had my opportunity to stake out my attempt at being an entrepreneur. As Senator Scott mentioned, it is fraught with pitfalls. There is no guarantee, when you stick your neck out and want to do some enterprise--no guarantee it is going to turn out. What a thrill it is, though, when it does, and it is what drives our great country.

Enterprise in this country, from its foundation, was built upon small businesses. We have over 500,000 of them in Indiana. Those businesses created over 38,000 new jobs in the last year, but things aren't as good as they could be because as much as the tax reform did for securing the future of small business, it is not permanent. We need to make sure that is done sometime before 2025.

Manufacturing--the biggest business in Indiana since the Trump economy has created the hottest context for business, small, medium or large. Six times more jobs in President Trump's 2 years have been created in manufacturing than the last 2 years of the prior administration.

Sometimes a little business can get lucky and become a medium-size business and a large business. Mine followed that pathway. I will give you a little detail on that in a moment.

McDonald's started with one location. This summer they will add, in the State of Indiana, 11,000 summer jobs. International companies even come to the State of Indiana because our door is open and what a great place to have a small, medium, or large business.

Saab will add a $25 million investment in West Lafayette that will create 200 great-paying jobs.

Now back to my story. We raised a family, and I had the chance to start my business. In 17 years, it never got beyond 15 employees. That is the number of employees I started with in 1981 and that is what I had in 1998.

Perseverance, patience, reinvesting, keeping a low overhead so you can get through the scrapes that inevitably will come in an economy, and someday your day of opportunity will arise.

In the darkest hours of the great recession, when our industry shrunk by over 50 percent literally overnight, every asset I owned was a piece of commercial real estate--a warehouse. Everything I sold was an unnecessary want, not a need--auto and truck accessories. I wondered, what did the future hold?

Well, the future held the greatest opportunity I could have ever imagined because I lived my life in a way that set the stage for opportunity. I make that point because we are not doing it in this institution.

We have set ourselves up to ruin a lot of the good things that are occurring from decades and decades ago to the present if we don't get our house in order. The institution of the Federal Government should be the pride of our country. Running $850 billion deficits and $22 trillion in debt, that doesn't bode well for any of us. But the good news is, if we keep this economy going, I think it can go decades into the future, where we keep creating jobs and raising wages like have never been done before. But I mentioned earlier that some of us turn them into medium-size businesses and larger businesses, and so often, what got you there, you forget about.

I tell folks all the time: It doesn't matter what size business you have, if you are successful, share those benefits with your employees. Raise benefits through your 401(k) plan. Lower healthcare costs if you can, and certainly raise wages.

Make sure people look to the real world for what means the most and not to government. If you look to government, especially the Federal Government, you are going to be disappointed. The action in our country is on Main Streets in towns and cities across the country in our States.

My parting comments: The biggest companies in this country sometimes, in my opinion, behave most poorly. I am going to talk about two--Big Ag and Big Healthcare.

I took on the healthcare issue 10 years ago in my own company. Nobody should go broke because they get sick or have a bad accident. All small businesses want to offer good healthcare to their employees but can't. Why? Because the industry has gotten concentrated with huge corporations, from pharma to hospitals across the board and health insurance companies, which I had to tangle with.

I ask you to get with it, be transparent, and be competitive so you don't have a business partner that may only be the Federal Government down the road.

Big Agriculture--I want to end with this because in Joni's State, a high percentage of small businesses are farmers. Farmers take on the most difficult task of any business in our country--the weather, a high amount of assets for the income they generate. They have regulations like waters of the United States--great intentions but overbearing. There are farmers who now worry about ditch maintenance because ditches that don't have water in them most of the year are now considered waters of the United States. We have to get a better balance to where we have good regulations and not overbearing regulations.

I am asking folks in this Chamber, in this Congress, to look to get this house in order, and I am asking Big Industry--big companies in the agricultural arena and in the healthcare arena--to get their act in order so the doctors who participate within healthcare and the farmers who participate within agriculture can make an honest living. They are all small businesses, and small businesses drive this country.

Thank you.

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