Rep. Broun: ‘We’ve Got to Stop the Spending'

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, who publicly broke ranks with fellow Republicans this week over Paul Ryan’s budget proposal, tells Newsmax TV that the chairman of the House Budget Committee simply hasn’t gone far enough to cut Washington’s out-of-control spending.

“It’s time that we’ve just got to stop the spending that both parties have been engaged in up here in Washington,” said Broun in an exclusive interview on Wednesday after drafting an alternative budget to Ryan’s proposal.

Broun argues the budget offered by Ryan, also a Republican, encourages spending by only slowing the rate to 3.4 percent each year, compared to the president’s path of 5 percent per year. It would spend $41 trillion over 10 years compared with the president’s $46 trillion.

“Both parties, and our leadership is just denying we have an economic crisis. The reality is the federal government is broke,” said Broun. “We’ve got to take it back and start dealing with it and the only way we’re going to deal with it is to stop this preposterous spending that both parties have been doing.”

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Broun, who is currently running to succeed Sen. Saxby Chambliss in his home state of Georgia, penned an op-ed in Monday’s New York Times in which he publicly challenged Ryan’s approach.

“It fails to seriously address runaway government spending, the most pressing problem facing our nation,” he opined. “I cannot vote for something that would trick the American people into thinking that Congress is fixing Washington’s spending problem, when in actuality we’d just be allowing it to continue without end.”

A member of the House Tea Party Caucus, Broun is proud of his record as a fiscal conservative.

“Our economy is sputtering along just barely because of this uncontrolled spending,” he said. “The debt and the spending levels already right now today are killing jobs, so that’s the thing that we need to be focusing on.”

Broun, a medical doctor, hopes to eliminate federal agencies with his budget such as the Department of Energy and the Department of Education, as well as phasing out the federal highway financing system and repealing President Obama’s signature healthcare law.

“The budgets don’t repeal anything. It just assumes that Obamacare is repealed. I want to repeal Obamacare. I have got a bill to do just that,” he said. “The president will never sign a repeal bill but we’ve got to show the American people that we want to repeal this atrocity.”

Broun is also pushing for a Balanced Budget Amendment, which failed to reach the two-thirds necessary for passage in the last Congress.

“Well we’ve got to stop the spending policy because it’s going to lead us to an economic meltdown as a nation. We’re saddling future generations with crippling debt,” he told Newsmax. “