Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Gov. Mike Braun delivered a State of the State address Wednesday night that focused on his administration’s efforts to address pocketbook issues, including health care, housing, utility rates and taxes.
Braun highlighted the work his team did during his first year as governor to boost the state’s economy, cut property taxes and reduce government spending and what he planned to do as he headed into year two.
“Project after project, industry after industry, the story is the same: Indiana is the Midwest’s growth engine for more jobs and bigger paychecks,” Braun said.
Braun emphasized economic development—and even said his team was “working hard” to bring the Chicago Bears to northwest Indiana. But he did not mention the failed attempt to redraw Indiana’s congressional lines that saw a majority of GOP senators break with Braun and President Donald Trump.
The governor also called out a 9-year-old student from the southern Indiana town of Shoals, who he said “asked me if I could delay school on Tuesday morning so he can stay up late and watch the Hoosiers win on Monday.”
“I like the sound of that,” Braun said about IU playing in the College Football Playoff title game on Monday night.
“I’ll leave it up to each school district to decide,” he said to a cheering House chamber. “But I think that sounds like a good idea.”
And he told lawmakers that he expects all of them—whether they’re fans of Butler University, Purdue University, the University of Notre Dame or some other school—to be wearing cream and crimson on Monday night.
“Go Hoosiers,” he said. “Let’s get it across the finish line.”
Affordability
Braun spent much of his time talking about the ways he’s trying to reduce costs for Hoosiers.
Braun made energy costs a platform point, likening rising utility bills to property taxes as a needed area of relief for Hoosiers.
During his first year in office, Braun installed a new utility consumer counselor and appointed three new members to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission.
The IURC oversees the state’s investor-owned utilities. Braun said Wednesday he expects the new commissioners to “make decisions in the public interest to ensure utilities provide service at just and reasonable rates.”
Braun added his support for House Bill 1002, which restructures utility providers’ assistance programs for low-income customers and moves Indiana to a performance-based framework for rates.
The governor has been conscious of electricity bills at the same time he’s signaled Indiana is open to hyperscale data center developments.
While celebrating news of Amazon announcing plans for a $15 billion data center campus in Hobart, Braun said he would like tech companies to pay for 100% of their power needs.
“AI is going to be the key to the jobs and wages of the future, but data centers can’t stick Hoosiers with the power bill,” he said in remarks prepared for delivery.
Braun’s first year in office was marked by efforts to bring down health care costs, and he worked with the lawmakers to pass legislation targeting costs at large nonprofit hospitals.
Braun praised bills designed to help Hoosiers with the medical debt system but didn’t offer specifics in his speech about his plans to try to reduce health care costs.
“We need creative solutions to make health care affordable and protect families from predatory collections,” he said.
And Braun said he supports reducing regulations to help bring down the cost of housing. “Home prices have surged because we aren’t building enough, and unnecessary regulations are driving up costs,” he said in prepared remarks.
Tightening the belt
A leaner government also featured large in Braun’s speech, with the governor touting his mandate for agencies to cut 10% of their budgets.
The governor also highlighted $465 million in expected savings for Medicaid and a series of executive orders to increase work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
“For Medicaid recipients who can work, work requirements foster self-sufficiency and build a foundation for a better life,” he said.
Priority legislation in the Senate is expected to codify eligibility requirements for SNAP and Medicaid, which Braun said he supports.
Braun’s executive orders on SNAP coincided with April visits by top Trump administration health officials Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz and reflected Braun’s allegiance to Trump’s policy goals.
Like Trump, Braun eliminated state programs that included references to diversity, equity and inclusion and banned environmental justice considerations in permitting.
Braun also promised state law enforcement agencies would cooperate with Immigration Customs and Enforcement personnel and said Indiana State Police have seen positive results from an increased focus on drug trafficking in recent months.
Legislative response
Following Braun’s speech, Democrats said the governor’s pledges about affordability reflect the concerns of HOosiers, but they questioned his commitment to bringing the cost of living down.
“If [Republicans] really wanted to lower costs, they would have already done it,” said House Minority Leader Phil GiaQuinta, D-Fort Wayne, noting the GOP supermajority in both chambers.
GiaQuinta and Senate Minority Leader Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington, hammered on child care costs and the lack of available slots, attributing them to major cuts to child care vouchers made last fall by the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration.
“Under this administration, child care funding was cut. Reimbursement rates were slashed,” Yoder said. “Workers are leaving jobs they want because care does not exist.”
House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, called child care shortages a “challenge.” But he and Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray, R-Martinsville, said they agreed with Braun’s comments during the speech that the 2027 budget session is the time to address child care.
“The best thing we can do is to help support more supply,” Huston said. “And the government’s not going to be the best avenue to do that. The best way to do that is decrease regulation and let folks … provide child care without having the burden of all these government regulations.”
Despite the Senate’s refusal to go along with redistricting, Bray said he meets weekly with Braun’s staff and has worked with the governor on several priority bills.
“There’s lots of hard things that happen in this place and we’re going to continue to do work for Hoosiers and we look forward to looking with the governor on that and the House as well,” Bray said.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.