‘What Eisenhower Said About the Military-Industrial Complex Is True’
Sen. Tom Coburn on the fiscal time bomb, the military, and morals in America
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Google“Both parties have equally participated in abandoning the limited role of the federal government,” says Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). Coburn’s new book, The Debt Bomb: A Bold Plan to Stop Washington from Bankrupting Our Economy (Thomas Nelson), argues that Republicans and Democrats together have brought the U.S. to the brink of fiscal calamity.
First elected to the house in 1994 as part of the Republican Revolution, Coburn is a strong fiscal conservative who doesn’t hesitate to publicly criticize members of his own party (including Revolution leader Newt Gingrich) for compromising their principles out of political expedience. Known in the Senate as “Dr. No” for opposing almost all new spending initiatives, Coburn says the federal budget is rife with “waste, fraud, and duplication.” In 2006, he co-sponsored legislation that created USASpending.gov, which makes publicly accessible a list of all recipients of government funds. In 2010, he was instrumental in getting the Government Accountability Office to begin researching and documenting wasteful government programs.
Coburn is a staunch social conservative as well. A supporter of a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, he was a co-author of the Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003, and he supported a 1996 law requiring that “V-chips” be placed in all television sets to allow parents to block programming deemed unsuitable. In 1997, he criticized NBC for airing the Holocaust film Schindler’s List on the grounds that it included “vile language, full-frontal nudity and irresponsible sexual activity.” NBC characterized Coburn’s views as “frightening.”
reason.com Editor in Chief Nick Gillespie sat down with Coburn in July to discuss wasteful spending, entitlement reform, the need for free market health care, and whether he’s losing faith in the government’s ability to enforce values. Watch a video version of the interview online at Reason TV.
reason: Let’s get right to it: When is the fiscal time bomb going to go off?
Tom Coburn: It’s anywhere from two to five years from now, depending on what happens in Europe and what happens in the world economy. But there will be a point in time where people lose confidence in our ability to repay our debts.
reason: But so far bond rates are low, which would signal that people lending us money are OK with us running trillions and trillions of dollars in debt.
Coburn: Bond interest rates are low and that’s normal when you have a debt de-leveraging. If you read long-term economic history, you’ll see that this is not uncommon.
(Interview continues below video.)
reason: So looking at low interest rates is missing the larger point?
Coburn: It’s missing two important points. One is that we’re the best-looking horse in the glue factory. The second point is that just because we have low interest rates doesn’t mean they’ll always be low. When you’ve printed $3.6 trillion worth of money—right now it’s printed but it’s not in the economy, it’s sitting on bank assets listings and the Federal Reserve asset listings—what happens is when that money starts moving, when the velocity of that money starts moving, you’re going to see 15, 18 percent inflation.
So the debt bomb is two things: short-term is deflationary, long-term is highly inflationary. And that has a real meaning to anybody that’s living in our country. If you’re my age or less, and you have socked away something for your retirement, the purchasing value of that goes away.
reason: Let’s talk a little bit about how we got here. Since about 1950, the federal government on average has pulled in about 18 percent of GDP as revenue. But it’s been spending closer to 20 percent.
Coburn: 21 percent.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
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Isn't this a repeat?
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and whether he’s losing faith in the government’s ability to enforce values.
Que?
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"And the character of the country, as you rationalize away standards of decency and standards of behavior, regardless of your libertarian viewpoint or not, the fact is those have consequences. And those consequences will impact the country. And the questions is, will it impact it positively or negative? The main answer to your question is, do you live a life that models the behavior that you think best represents what our Founders believed in?"
What Coburn and too many of the other SoCons out there seem to believe that any deviation from what the Bible does and doesn't allow is going to negatively impact the country. Never mind the fact that same-sex marriages, and the children they raise, are just as stable and well-adjusted as the mom-dad families. Never mind the fact that while drug use increases a bit if that drug is legalized, it doesn't spike to gargantuan proportions and we have tons of pothead zombies roaming the streets.
John Stuart Mill once said that if an individual is less encumbered by repressive societal dictates, he/she will be happier and more motivated to be a productive member of society. If only more politicians followed his lead, America would be a much better place, and "pursuit of happiness" would be more than just lip service these days.
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It's hardly surprising. Scratch the surface of any flag-waving freedom fighter and you find that the freedom they're fighting for is the freedom to oppress others.
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The problem with SoCons is that, despite their (supposedly-cherished) views about the inefficiencies of government when it comes to the economy and spending, they think the government is an effective agent to uphold these morals and values that they hold dear. I don't think I need to explain to anywhere here why it's idiotic to look up to the government to enforce morality
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It's pretty clear from the interview that Senator Coburn does not think the way you insist that "SoCons" think. So either Senator Coburn is not a "SoCon" or you have dived in to a collectivist fallacy. I don't think this conversation benefits from collectivist nonsense, such as painting people as "SoCons" or any other label and then attacking the label.
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Never mind the fact that same-sex marriages, and the children they raise, are just as stable and well-adjusted as the mom-dad families.
Lol, believing this in 2012.
What Coburn and too many of the other SoCons out there seem to believe that any deviation from what the Bible does and doesn't allow is going to negatively impact the country.
Implying it doesn't. 50% of children born to couples under 30 are out of wedlock. How will millions of new single moms impact the nation? I dunno lol.
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I can sense the complete insecurity of his "position" in how he lashes out at cultural libertarianism. I can imagine him having the same trouble explaining to cultural conservatives who have collected Social Security for 20 years why there's a debt crisis. He is straddling two camps, and there's an uncomfortable barbed wire fence heated by a bon fire a couple inches below his crotch.
@Jacket: You don't have incarceration dollars for non-violent drug offenders on the tip of your tongue? There's one obvious cost.
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Fucking hare-brained morons get far too much attention.
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And the same people are good people but they’re politicians.
Oxymoron.
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those consequences will impact the country. And the questions is, will it impact it positively or negative?
Freedom.
HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE FREEDOM!
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Dimwit doesn't realize he's part of the fucking problem.
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http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm
The speech is actually quite good, but it always pisses me off that everyone focuses on the Military-Industrial Complex and completely ignores what he said about the Scientific-Technological Elite.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
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How can someone claim to want limited federal government, and then support a ban on same sex marriage?
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Its a government marrage licence, so limiting marrage would limit government.
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Banning gay marriage is not nearly the same as, say, No Child Left Behind or the war in Iraq.
Of course, I've argued with someone who claimed that throwing people in jail for smoking pot is more like limited government than legalizing and taxing it because you'd have to create a department to handle that sort of thing. (All those police officers' pensions and the costs of keeping people in prison might disagree with that statement, but, hey, what do Republicans know?)
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It’s a tie game, folks: With the first of three presidential debates down and the vice presidential sideshow over, the two men at the top of the major party tickets will face off once again in yet another 90 minute debate, but putting on a carefully scripted show. cheap nfl jerseys positions. If either candidate started talking a good libertarian talk, even if only on a few subjects, they wouldn't ever be trusted this late in the game. And the game here is not just this general election but the whole of their political careers.
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Let us hope the preceding paragraphs rouse the nation’s guardians from their torpid slumber, and alert them to the peril that threatens the very fabric of our nation. Let us hope. This insouciance seems ill-advised, when you reflect that Virginia’s Eastern Shore, where the chicken attack took place, is home to the Wallops Island Spaceport – a crucial piece of the nation’s transportation infrastructurecheap nfl jerseys positions. I can't tell if this article was Hinkle trying, poorly, to make a point about regulatory waste or Hinkle doing a rambling Andy Rooney schtick, poorly.
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An Alternative to Capitalism (since we cannot legislate morality)
Several decades ago, Margaret Thatcher claimed: "There is no alternative". She was referring to capitalism. Today, this negative attitude still persists.
I would like to offer an alternative to capitalism for the American people to consider. Please click on the following link. It will take you to an essay titled: "Home of the Brave?" which was published by the Athenaeum Library of Philosophy:
http://evans-experientialism.f.....nsvold.htm
John Steinsvold
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."
~ Albert Einstein -
thank u
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