U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, is not running for
president. If he did, he’d never be elected. One reason is he’s
much more conservative on social issues than most Americans. The
other is he’s promoting a $9 trillion, 10-year, debt reduction plan
that takes some goodies from just about everyone and that’s no way
to make friends with the Washington politicians and lobbyists, much
less the public.
U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, is not running for president. If he did, he’d never be elected. One reason is he’s much more conservative on social issues than most Americans. The other is he’s promoting a $9 trillion, 10-year, debt reduction plan that takes some goodies from just about everyone and that’s no way to make friends with the Washington politicians and lobbyists, much less the public.
A plan that takes on all comers is very interesting.
He calls his plan “Back in Black” – an old rock album title. It’s a 600-plus-page document detailing his philosophy and specific recommendations for restoring fiscal responsibility to every department, every entitlement, and every tax-break that currently fill the 3,800-page federal tax code.
Coburn’s message on the tax code is powerful: That “tax breaks and subsidies in the form of tax credits to well-connected companies and special interests with powerful lobbyists” are really federal spending programs masquerading as tax cuts. They “are no different from any other federal program that spends taxpayer money.”
Tom Coburn does more than talk. He puts his votes where his mouth is. He was one of 26 Senators to vote against the last deal to raise the debt ceiling. It was not merely politics.
Tom Coburn was one of only three Republican Senators who voted against raising the debt ceiling in 2006 during the Bush administration, a vote that otherwise split solidly along party lines. In that instance, all 44 Democrats voted no including then-Senator Barack Obama, who now says he was wrong to reject that debt increase. Tom Coburn also twice voted against funding the war in Iraq in 2007. He may occasionally change his mind, but he’s no mindless partisan.
The constant burr under Coburn’s saddle is deficit spending and pork barrel projects. While so many of his contemporaries speak in generalities more tuned to reelection than reform, Coburn is the opposite – perhaps because he has term-limited himself announcing that he would not run for a third Senate term in 2016. That’s another point in his favor – in my opinion, no one in Washington who loves their job too much can remain good at it. Eventually their overwhelming desire to stay in office seriously clouds their judgment.
No column can possibly discuss Coburn’s recommendations in detail, so I’ll just encourage you to read the report or at least the highlights online at http://coburn.senate.gov/public/?p=deficit-reduction and hope you get interested. At a minimum look at the proposed cuts for the government programs and tax-breaks you love and hate the most. Most are in there. The reforms take on everything from the Defense Department to Social Security and Medicare and they are not the usual pie-in-the-sky.
They are real and easily measureable.
Several of Coburn’s ideas would hit me right in the pocketbook, but what I like best is the sensible philosophy he uses to approach tax code reform. He wrote, “The tax code is long overdue for comprehensive restructuring. Yet, instead of considering broad reform to simplify the code and lower rates, Washington continues to make the problem worse … the result is a complex tax structure that benefits only a few, hinders economic growth and drives up costs and taxes for many working families and businesses across the country.”
Coburn’s introduction also contains a dire warning: “If Washington does not begin making these difficult choices today, those decisions will be made for us tomorrow and the results could be catastrophic. The only guaranteed entitlements for future generations will be debt and lower standards of living.”
Marty Richman is a Hollister resident.
