Vote Explanation

Floor Speech

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Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, today I voted against amendment No. 1141. I would like to take an opportunity to explain my position.

In September 2019, the Treasury Department reported, in accordance with Federal laws, that the highway trust fund's mass transit account had an unfunded authorization of $27 billion but only estimated $26 billion in revenue to be collected over the next 4 years. In other words, the account was expected to take on more than $1 billion in obligations than it would be able to collect in revenue.

Instead of correcting the problem, the Jones amendment ignored it, preventing Treasury from implementing the law to bring the mass transit account back into balance.

Since I joined this body in January, I have repeatedly noted my concern for our nearly $1 trillion annual budget deficit and our more than $22 trillion Federal debt. Washington is broken. We do not have the money to finance even the most basic functions of our government: infrastructure and our national defense.

Today's vote was an example of the consequences we may face when Congress lets these serious financial issues languish. We cannot continue to ignore these problems. We cannot continue to pretend our fiscal problems are solved by waving away protections placed by prior Congresses.

I believe that Congress must fix this problem and bring our trust funds into long-term solvency. When the Environment and Public Works Committee approved our highway bill in July, I ensured the bill contained language stating our intent to do just that.

Today, Congress was lucky--we could push our spending problem off to another day. One day soon, we will not be so lucky.

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