Brecheen says spending needs cut

Brecheen says spending needs cut

By DAVID SEELEY

The Poteau Daily News

Newly-elected Congressional District 2 Rep. Josh Brecheen had a town meeting Monday afternoon at the Donald W. Reynolds Community Center.

The biggest concern he stared with the nearly 200 people in attendance was about the need to cut spending.

One big concern about spending is what is being done by the current administration along the border. Brecheen said that at the El Paso, Texas, “gate” that $68 million alone has been spent, and he honestly could not put a total cost that has been spent on the border which has seen approximately 4.5 billion immigrants come across with about one-third of those doing so illegally.

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“My assignment in Washington, D.C., has been about spending restraint,” Brecheen said.

Brecheen also said that so far the United States has spent $113 billion on helping Ukraine out with its border war against Russia. He said that the need for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to step up to help out because “I don’t want (the U.S.) to spend any more money (on the Ukraine-Russia War).”

Brecheen also touched on how America got to this point.

“How we got to this place right now is we stopped listening to the wisdom of our founding fathers and we have started substituting our dependence on God, which is on our money, for a dependence on government,” he said. “It’s led us to a debt-miswealth mentality. We keep electing people who have this debt-miswealth mentality, and it’s kicking our tails. The Bible says if you borrow, you’re a slave unto the lender.”

Brecheen said the U.S. is showing signs of being more of republic than a democracy.

“There has not been a democracy that has committed suicide yet,” he said. “If we will start acting like a republic, informed based on the information and not let populism to drive us, we have a chance in this nation. It’s going to take a miracle because of the amount of debt load we have on us ($32 billion).”

Brecheen also shared his concern about the recent banks going under, like Silicon Valley Bank in California over the weekend.

“I had to look this up (Sunday) night,” he said. “You’re insured in your deposits up to $250,000 by FDIC. It’s been that way since the 1939 Banking Act. After that, I’m uninsured. There was an article that came out two years ago in ‘Forbes’ magazine that said there’s a way to insure yourself — we’ll take your money and diversify it in this bank and that bank. For everything up to $250,000, you’ll be insured. Because of somebody that got into high mortgage back security, that bank was 80 to 90 percent uninsured. They were looking at these 30-year low interest rates, and all the sudden the interest rates started going up. People were saying I can do a lot better things with my money with the interest rates where they’re at. This is caused by inflation, overspending and people pulling their money out. This is a self-inflicted wound.”

Brecheen also said that it’s important that the federal government gets out of education and leaves that to the states and local leaders.

“The federal government can’t get involved in education,” Brecheen said.