Indiana Lawmakers is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations.

Additional support is provided by the Indy Chamber, working to unite business and community to maintain a strong economy and quality of life.

Indiana Lawmakers from the statehouse to your house.

A new year, a new legislative session, and for the first time in eight years, a new governor, Mike Braun, was sworn in as Indiana's 52nd chief executive.

Braun was born and raised in Jasper, Indiana, which he still calls home.

He and his wife met there back when they were in grade school, and they raised their four children there.

That's also where he grew, a small truck body manufacturer once partly owned by his father, into a national auto parts supplier known as Meyer Distributing.

The businessman turned politician credits his financial success to hard work and entrepreneurial zeal.

Call it a mix of, well, brains and brawn.

After graduating from Jasper High School, where he was senior class president and a three sport letterman, Braun enrolled at Wabash College.

There he became student body president and eventually graduated summa cum laude with a degree in economics.

He then earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Braun's first foray into public service was a ten year stint on the local school board, was a member of the Indiana House of Representatives from 2014 to 2017, when he resigned to run for the U.S. Senate.

In that race, he upset two sitting congressmen in the primary before upending Democratic incumbent Joe Donnelly in the general election in November 2022.

Braun filed paperwork to run for governor.

In that race, he defeated five challengers for the Republican nomination and won November's general election by more than 13 percentage points.

Braun has a lengthy first term to do list as part of what he calls the freedom and opportunity agenda.

The new governor aims to deliver tax relief, boost government efficiency, promote workforce and economic development, expand health care accessibility and enhance public safety.

And I am pleased to welcome two Indiana lawmakers on the heels of his first state of the state address.

Governor Mike Braun, thank you for continuing a tradition that I think dates back to certainly Bob Orr if not, Otis Bowen.

So, I'm trying to get on the heels of their state of the state addresses.

So continuing the tradition, I am happy to be here.

And I very much appreciate that.

You know, you're a known commodity now in Indiana.

You've run a lot of racism, a lot of campaigns, opposition research folks have scoured, you know, looking for every nugget about you.

You've been your career has been chronicled, by media outlets in Indiana and Washington.

Every where in between.

We know you, right?

So start let's start by asking you to reveal to us something that Hoosiers don't know about their 52nd governor.

So I'll get to that.

But the whole idea of being chronicled and, I remember when I decided to run for U.S. Senate, of course, you were jumping from the peewee league to the major league.

If you'll use the Little League analog.

And, that whole issue came up and, they wanted to do a deep dive into your background and was funny.

I said, well, I grew up in Mayberry RFD.

Let's I've had a little amnesia.

I don't think you're going to find anything.

And I said, well, trust you and verify.

And of course, you had to do a vulnerability study, which was crazy.

You know, when you're coming from where I come from, but you do it.

And of course, it came back.

Nothing there.

And then the most naive thing I ever said in that whole journey was, thank goodness there won't be any negative advertising.

And there was kind of a moment of silence.

They said, oh no, there will be a narrative that you're a business owner, you're heartless.

you'll end up probably a liar, a hypocrite.

And that's when it hit me in terms of what I had just engaged in.

So get through all that and, that then gets kind of resurrected, even when you've run for governor and you've been around a while.

But I think the thing that most folks would be surprised at is that when I built my business, it was always under the radar.

remember, you've got competition there.

That is going to be a longer term in nature.

you don't want to tip them off.

you're trying to do things in a different way.

So you have to be competitive.

You got to work hard and then, when you look at the political side of it, it's similar.

It's compressed.

In my case, it was 15 months when I ran for Senate with two hard deadline ends and you're out of business if you miss either one of them.

But would have been that, when I did come in the politics, you had to pivot from being maybe understated to overstated to make your point, and then sometimes people wouldn't even buy it then.

And then they're going to want to see a little proof in the pudding.

So I would say, between what I did for 37 years and what I've been doing over the last, now, seven years, maybe the thing that might surprise people.

And I won't tell anybody in the Indiana House of Representatives that your old stomping ground, that you referred to them as peewee leagues and vis-a-vis the major baby.

Maybe they were.

Bored, since they're dealing with your, your budget.

Well, you did mention you've been in a lot of races.

You've been.

And, this caps your inauguration.

Caps, you know, almost 20 years in public service, ten years on the Jasper school board, three years representing Jasper and surrounding areas in the Indiana House of Representatives.

Six years in the US Senate.

Is this the is this the job you are going to like?

Well, it's a job that I knew I had a good chance of actually winning it with much, without much doubt.

But I knew it was going to be difficult and expensive and, I got on the school board when my wife said nicely, after ten minutes, she couldn't do it.

She was too busy and she offered me up.

I had no intention of doing it.

We were one living in the rural township.

That was one of the three townships that fed in the Jasper schools, and then then state rep Mark Messmer in 13 called me when he wanted to run for state Senate.

And of course, he's now the eighth district.

Congressional representative.

in that to give.

Him your old apartment in DC.

And, you know, I made it anymore.

So that's.

True.

and so those two were kind of where you were volunteered.

And then I was going to go back to the business.

I.

But I got an infrastructure bill passed in the, second year of my second term, and that's when I started thinking, do I want to go back to the business?

It was doing well.

Three of my four kids running it.

And that's where you realize most people thought that was a fool's errand because it hadn't happened.

I don't know before in Indiana, hardly anywhere else, because most people that become a senator or a governor come from the farm system of politics.

We were.

Taking an atypical path.

A typical path.

So it's not lost on me that the other jobs that you've run for and positions you've held were legislative in nature.

They were you were part of a deliberative body.

This time you're the CEO.

and of course, that's your background, as you mentioned, with Meyer Distributing, which is an item.

That probably dovetails with what I had done for 37.

Years.

Was this more to you or.

I guess the question is, were those is this the one that really fits your your approach and your mindset?

Well, I would say, as we spoke before the show about adapting to change, if you're an entrepreneur, you're going to get all kinds of things that may not be exactly, in your comfort zone, in your wheelhouse, in you adapt to it.

So this just gets me back to what I did 37 years.

And half of that was in a scrappy small business that, wasn't really my dream because I wanted to scale a business.

And it took 17 years to get out of a using single wide mobile home as the office.

And we had 20 employees, over that span.

And it grew to like ten locations in ten states to about 300 employees in oh eight.

And then from oh eight to the time when I stepped away, when I got sworn in in January of 19, you know, it's a national company.

Three of my four kids.

Right.

So that was always, kind of what I was used to.

Did it without a board of directors, because it was so small.

So you got used to doing a lot of things on that.

How to run, set the agenda, compete.

And that, I think, put me in a place of ease.

And I had basically nine years of tutorial on the legislative side, three at the state, six at the big House.

Well, now the big house.

Now that you are in the CEO's job, you don't have to, you know, be part of a deliberative body.

You've made, you know, good use of your pen in terms of issuing executive orders 30 so far.

And I went back 30.

And I should point out that one of those, I think the 11th or 12th was about reorganizing and revamping the packaging and distribution and dissemination of executive orders.

So you even have executive orders on executive orders.

And the reason is you say a lot of them are invalid, some there's just no record.

And by July 1st you want to see them all, in some place, public facing website or page that people can see, which I will appreciate because I did the research and it is hard to find, but you've issued 30.

So going backward, your three Republican predecessors, Eric Holcomb, he issued 13 executive orders in his first month, 11 on day one, Mike pence issued 16 executive orders in his first month, all on day one.

And Mitch Daniels issued 19 executive orders in his first month, including 30 on day one.

So you're more than twice, the league leader, the prior league leader.

What can we read into that?

is this intentional?

Is this sending a signal?

Is it, the CEO coming through?

What?

What's at work here?

Well, of the three that you mentioned, none of them had signed the front side of a paycheck before.

Goes back to my point.

And no disrespect for that.

Mitch was a a guy that was a risk taker, you know, came in after 16 years, I think, of Democrats running the state.

And we were probably a purple red state politically.

I think in the red financially.

So he had some real fix up stuff to do.

And I think, executive orders then weren't quite as prevalent as you see now, especially on the national scene.

And the thing about them is, if they're controversial, they're probably not going to hit paydirt.

They're kind of a guiding light.

you have to get, cozy with your legislature and get along with them.

And of course, that's what I learned in DC.

I was always surprised there wasn't more attention to the great office we put together.

And that's because I had the best legislative director, and that was kind of a, stroke of luck.

Tom Coburn, a senator from Oklahoma, could see me as a guy that was going to take on health care.

That was his big deal.

He learned the rules.

He would have been Mitch McConnell's nemesis in terms of process.

And so I had that team together and know that executive orders only go so far.

Then you're going to have to collaborate.

I had the Ways and Means Committee of the residents last night when I ran a business.

we would hang out together with my first lieutenants, gave him a lot of latitude.

So, being heavy handed with egos, only go so far, because you're generally going to have to get legislative action to really get stuff done.

And obviously, we can't go through all 30 of those executive orders.

But as you pointed out, some of them are more controversial than others and have gotten more headlines.

And I do want to save time about your letter to talk about your legislative agenda, too.

But just a couple of points.

The first batch of executive orders had to do with the creation of a new leadership structure within the executive branch, new eight secretaries that would answer to you.

you say it helps run more like a business capital Chronicle this week, came out with an analysis that says that adds $1 million, at least in salary costs at that top echelon, at a time when you've said repeatedly including, sort of a couple times during the state of the state address, time for us to tighten our belt, we've got to do more with less.

How to reconcile.

It Will save immensely.

And that's the thing that's confusing in business.

I drag my feet on technology because it was always changing.

It was always more money.

so you had to invest in it and probably doubled that tripled the bottom line of a mundane business of logistics and distribution over those 37 years here.

It was a sloppy, broad organizational structure where nothing can make it to the top.

So unless.

Well, this will facilitate this.

This will facilitate that.

And I put entrepreneurial people in charge of each one of those new silos.

So you're spending a little bit more there.

But I've got eight folks running the operating side.

You know, when you look at the the tag and superintendent, the police, they report directly to me, but the others, we're going to take the, business of our state government, 22 billion a year, and we're going to make it run more efficiently.

And most people have praised that as something that needed to be done.

And I think prior governors had thought about it.

It was easy for me to pull the trigger on it because it made so much sense.

Let me ask another one.

I got a lot of attention, and in fact, most of the members of the Indiana Black Legislative Caucus boycotted your state of the state address.

And by the way, I'm meeting with them today.

Meeting with them.

All right.

I know you're all about diversity.

You're about equality.

We had the lieutenant governor on last week talk about some of those things.

I know some of the specifics need to be worked out.

And there's Senate bills that would deal with k-through-12 education and higher ed.

What about contracts?

I mean, does that, because it is in the Indiana Code and under Bob words administration in 1983 was the structure that is now the diversity supply, division.

Yeah.

is that going to take legislative action to be undone or is it just going to be dormant?

So this, I think, was to take it off.

Is that kind of, amorphous idea of what that even means?

Does it make sense?

And had a meeting, this Monday where the large contingent of, black pastors, educators, Martin University came up as a discussion and we're going.

To which is an organization predominantly black that has, yes, zeroed out in funding at least a year.

Progress.

Hey, that just I'm zeroing out everything and want to find out if it's working.

so I'm going to visit there university next week and, or not next week, the week after.

So contracts are still sort of up for me.

I'm not trying to rush.

It, but that would be stuff that I just don't want to.

And there was, someone that asked, well, what's the definition of merit?

I thought that was valid because, they want to make sure that there's not ground loss from where you've got more people involved in the system.

It just that, you know, we now have a Supreme Court ruling.

We can see that there have been some unintended consequences, affirmative action.

And of course, I've stressed freedom and opportunity and don't want any vestige of discrimination and bigotry.

And there's still some of that that hangs around.

So we had those kinds of discussions, and we spent an hour and 45 minutes instead of an hour and a half.

And I think I've come out with a working relationship and discussion, and you're going to find that I'm going to do that even in the most uncomfortable subjects.

And that's not an uncomfortable subject.

It's just one we needed to flesh out.

So minority contracts for women business, which has been in place since the administration, still a work in progress.

Veterans, I presume, all set aside the same thing, all of that.

And as far as celebrations, people have asked, what about MLK Day and Juneteenth?

I mean, there's the.

Live would be why would I not be for that?

I mean, to me.

That's something.

To celebrate those things.

Okay, one more executive order before we and I can't believe we're clicking through the time here pretty quickly.

Might have to do it again.

Hey, be careful what you offer.

immigration.

You've said.

Hey, state of Indiana law enforcement say local.

You need to, comply with federal law and help Ice and the federal government identify and remove undocumented workers.

is that I mean, is that, a potential harm to.

So I kind of.

Player, anyone that's come in illegally and then broken the law, especially in an egregious way, we're going to do everything we can to help them, because I think that worst first.

Now you extrapolate that into what many are fearful of, or you have mass roundups of, you can see where some if, that individual was associated with just illegal immigrants.

It's already begging the question, well, how do you do that?

I think I'm going to go with the spirit of ferreting out those that almost all of us would say, we don't want the country.

And man, I can tell you from being on the national scene, that rose to be the most important issue in November, where economy normally would be.

Here it was at and I think until there's a secure border, you're not going to get to comprehensive immigration reform, which then starts just maybe putting the brakes on something that is probably logistically impossible anyway, if that makes sense.

But out of the gate, I think the strong majority of Americans are going to want to make sure that we don't have individuals that have come in illegally and then committed on, you know, significant crime.

We should find them.

You cited one during the state of the state as an example.

You know, those orders also cast a bright light on your relationship with Donald Trump.

Now, he's somebody who endorsed you.

You were somebody who endorsed him.

you've been very supportive of his policies.

A is he you agree with his performance over the past few weeks?

And can you tell me how Indiana and Hoosiers are going to be better off having, the person you endorsed for president in that office?

Jon this has always been so simple for me.

And I would look at this as both sides of the aisle think since the Reagan years.

And actually, we've started borrowing and spending when Ronald Reagan cut taxes and didn't look at spending, that was chump change.

They had tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions won't go into that.

Been that.

And health care have been my two passions in DC.

But when you look at Trump coming along, I would ask everyone else, are you proud of the fact that from, even when Dubya came on the scene in 2000, we've gone from 5 trillion in debt to 36.

Both sides of the aisle have given us a mountain of debt in name.

One thing they've knocked out of the park.

That is what I think got Donald Trump elected in the first place.

When I was in the state legislature and had some legislators saying, hey, I think he's going to clear the field.

I said, well, there's no way, because I still thought the farm system is how you became president.

Clearly, the farm system wasn't what Republicans wanted.

I mean, Democrats still believe in it because government there, I describe it as their growth business and their cathedral wrapped into one.

And I think they got to find a different way of looking.

Isn't it Donald Trump, though, that wants to permanently eliminate the debt ceiling?

But I guess that's a discussion for those.

Are all the contradictions.

Because is he a fiscal conservative?

Probably not like me.

Is he a disruptor?

Obviously I'm a disruptor with humility and a different approach.

Final question.

Look at that.

That's kind of the way I'd explain Trump.

Sure.

And you're not your brother's keeper.

You can endorse people and not agree with everything.

But one topic before we do get a promise to your legislative agenda, you're a fan of law enforcement.

You've been a champion of law enforcement.

You were endorsed by the State Police Alliance, by the National Troopers Coalition.

that's.

And in fact, that was a priority you outlined in the state of the state in terms of, more funding for law enforcement, for training, personal safety, safety, silo.

And you want to have a safety center within the school system to pay school.

So we'll stipulate that one of the bills you're advocating, and you mentioned during the state of the state was a bill that would enhance penalties for individuals who assault, police officers.

Before we move on to another topic, was Donald Trump right to, pardon the January 6th?

That's an inherent contradiction when you talk about that.

and I was, of course, there that day for me.

Ironic.

I was just coming to the chamber, and then all of a sudden things blew up that day.

So, what unfolded, I don't think was intended or orchestrated, but you'd have to say I listened to Mitch McConnell the next day, and that was a day.

I said, I want to get in the rearview mirror.

Because you were going to vote against certification.

Then by the end of the year to get it.

Back to that election.

But that's water under the bridge.

It's safe to say you would not have done it if you were president.

Pardon these individuals, but that's the.

So I think there it was a mass pardon and he aired on the side of doing them all.

And that's fairly typical.

And you're you watch how Trump kind of operates.

You're not going to agree with everything.

But again, I'm not going to isolate that one issue to say that I'm not happy that we've got a disrupter back in DC.

For what I said earlier, Schumer and McConnell have not led the nation very well.

And collectively, Democrats and Republicans have given us a mountain of debt.

Whether Trump will fix that, whether he's a fiscal conservative, let's see how that all works out.

All right.

We look back at what you've done thus far, and it is substantial for, as we pointed out, with the assistance that was promised.

Let's look forward to your agenda.

Yeah.

budget.

That's the big the big kahuna, that's tied into property taxes, Medicaid.

Give us, give us the real quick thumbnail, and we're almost out of time and, time, unfortunately.

What do you want to see happen with the budget and fiscal policy this session?

So cash flow management is going to be easy for me.

It's what I did for 37 years.

we have had none of that at the federal level.

So we're going to minimally preserve it, because if we don't do that, we're not going to have the wherewithal to invest in a lot of the policy Some of them, you know, when you talk about health care, that's generally been the other side of the aisles.

And first you can see that is culminated in a broad array of interest with many bills.

So lot.

Of Republican authored bills.

I think I will be more.

Than Democrat.

Exactly.

And, Republicans have generally been standoffish.

There because they considered a free market.

To me, it's like an unregulated utility.

So it better get in motion or Bernie Sanders will be their business partner.

So you talked about the entrenched special interests you mentioned during the state of the state when you were first, you know, a freshman lawmaker and you thought, hey, I can tackle this.

And you talked about who are we?

Who are we supposed to blame?

I've always said, who is that in this Western?

Who is the wearing the black hat?

Is it the hospitals?

I mean, do we can we say who the best to blame?

I call insurance the Darth Vader because in all other forms of insurance, you don't indemnify minor incidents.

That's within your deductible.

That's taken the skin out of the game to where it's not consumer driven.

When I fixed it in my own business 17 years ago on minor health care, I made it consumer driven.

It unleashed that, ability.

I mean, you look at a grocery store, they'll use a smartphone to save a dollar on a $5 item.

Obviously, health care is not that way.

We've evolved to where hospitals and insurance, through opaqueness have taken advantage of.

No capitalism, no consumer involvement.

And this is the most important thing.

It's based on expansive remediation rather than wellness and prevention.

You know who educated me on all that?

The insurance companies, when I tell them I'm not going to renew the plan?

Back in oh eight, a man they told me I was big enough to self-insure we put all those tools in there, no increases for my employees.

Is now 17 years, right?

Ten years.

So if you do for that, for the state, you might.

I'm going to try.

To I can't I mean how do you you're you're talking about various strategies.

Yeah.

Primarily transparency based but other thing as well.

And yet your budget proposes a $50 million cut in what was a recent last biennium, $225 million investment, the first of its kind in, you know, decades in public health and these are those two it conflict.

And you've talked to several times.

More than that of if you're wanting to reset.

But I think public health is important.

So whatever we're taking down just remember that's the government's always, never, never been about zero based budgeting where you just say, what do you need?

Even if you've gotten this much, don't expect to necessarily get more automatically.

I want you to prove that we need more.

Public health is important.

So when we're done with the budget, I'll look at the entirety of it.

It's going to still have a strong surplus.

We're going to invest in a lot of places that might be different.

and I wouldn't take that as something we're going to end up with, necessarily.

And we can't leave any discussion of fiscal policy without property tax relief.

This is something you've promised.

Historic relief roll back to pre-COVID levels.

a cap, increases.

Some people say that's going to kill local government schools.

There's room for just with the counties yesterday.

And I could see a big sigh of relief because rolling it back still is going to take into consideration inflation.

Everybody's costs went up due to the federal government that was in leased by bad policies there that we borrowed and spent too much when we weren't even required to do it.

So I'm going to be reasonable.

But if you raised revenues beyond what you needed to to cover your costs, you're going to have to realize that you can't use that as your new baseline.

So conceptually, I think that's where we'll end up on SB one.

It's SB one because the Senate has said that's what I campaigned on tax relief.

That's what they've had.

Their ears bent on.

So we're going to end up with something I think that makes sense.

Just a.

Couple seconds.

what's the measure of success Hoosier should hold you to, let's say, your shareholders, your customers to use the corporation by the end of the session or the end of your first term.

What's your measure of success this week?

Well, they know what I campaigned on and we're not going to get everything in one session.

but I did campaign on accessibility and I am going to be entrepreneurial politically.

And I think they can see that already is a promise kept.

Well, I'll tell you what, we appreciate your accessibility that you displayed here today.

hope it's the first of many visits in this studio again.

My guest has been Indiana's 52nd governor, Mike Braun.

Indiana Lawmakers is produced by WFYI in association with Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations.

Additional support is provided by the Indy Chamber, working to unite business and community to maintain a strong economy and quality of life.