On the recordSeptember 28, 2016
I thank Senator Perdue for his leadership. What an honor it is to be down here on the Senate floor surrounded by freshmen--the freshmen Republican class. We have the Presiding Officer, Freshman Cory Gardner from Colorado; Lt. Col. Dan Sullivan, U.S. Marines, from Alaska; and David Perdue, who was the CEO of a company before he came to the Senate. We have LTC Joni Ernst from Iowa. I am proud to serve with Joni here and thankful for her service to the country, both in the military and now in the Senate. There are others. Mike Rounds is a former Governor from South Dakota who had to balance his budget there or he would lose his job. As Senator Perdue mentioned, when I first came to Washington, I did come equipped with a skill that was familiar to Montanans, like hunting and fishing are, and that is how to balance a budget. Before I came here, I spent 28 years in the private sector, 13 years with Proctor & Gamble and then 12 years with a startup company, and in between that, 3 years in our family construction business. I know what it takes to make a payroll. I know what it takes to make a family's household budget work. Yet balancing the budget is a skill this body has not embraced for nearly 20 years. As Senator Perdue mentioned, four times out of 42 years has this process worked. That is broken. Think about this. It is September 28. On Saturday, it is October 1, the beginning of the next fiscal year of the U.S.…
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