Excerpt
SUMMARY: Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., speaks with Judy Woodruff about his plan to tackle the nation's escalating fiscal crisis, as outlined in his new book "The Debt Bomb." Coburn says "everyone," from both the right and the left, must sacrifice to fix the country's mounting debt problems.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): And to another kind of crisis, a fiscal one.
Last week, we talked with congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein about their book, "It's Even Worse That It Looks." (my blog link) They put the blame for Congress' inability to resolve budgets and other problems primarily on Republicans.
For a different perspective, I sat down earlier today with another author, Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.
Other significant excerpts
SEN. TOM COBURN: Well, both parties have caused it. Careerism has caused it.
And you're seeing it played out today in Washington before this election. Nobody wants to make the hard choices. Nobody wants to be totally honest with the American people when, in fact, we can get reelected without doing so.
And so what has happened over the years is we have built programs, well-intentioned, compassionate hearts, and haven't put the revenues to pay for them, and haven't done the oversight on the things we have done with good intentions to clean them up and make sure they're not wasteful.
So what we have created is a situation where the next generation is really at risk. This generation is at risk. If you have an IRA, for example, and you are planning on retiring in five or six years, with the inflation that's coming, it's not going to be adequate.
And so what we've done is we have actually lived the last 30 years in this country off the next 30. And the bill is due.
JUDY WOODRUFF: One of the things you talk about is saving, I think you say, $3 trillion over a period of years just by cutting out duplication, waste.
Every president I can remember has come into office saying we need to do something about waste, fraud, and abuse. But once you get here, they have gotten here, they found out it's a lot more complicated than that.
SEN. TOM COBURN: Well, it isn't.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So. . .
SEN. TOM COBURN: What has happened is, it's not presidents. It's Congress. And that's the point I make in the book.
Here's Medicare. We're worried about Medicare. And we can document that there's at least $100 billion a year in fraud and Medicare. Why? Why would he have a system -- if the system is designed to be defrauded, why haven't we changed the system?
JUDY WOODRUFF: But you're talking about a culture, a kind of conduct on the part of members of Congress. How do you change that, Senator. . .
SEN. TOM COBURN: You change who's here.
JUDY WOODRUFF: . . . quickly enough to do something about this debt crisis?
SEN. TOM COBURN: You change who's here.
It's term limits. I'm self-imposed in terms limits. I know that this place changes people. And everybody -- these people are great people here. They're well-intentioned, but they're double-minded. Get reelected, that's what is number-one goal. Fix the country becomes number two because you can't fix the country unless you're here.
Note that "haven't put the revenues to pay for them" = the Appropriation Bills (which actually spend money, not budgets) did NOT fund programs to what was necessary = did NOT raise taxes needed in the first place.
Also, IMHO, today the Republican Party's ONLY goal is to get reelected.
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