‘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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If you really think, given this country’s make-up today, that you can get 60 Tom Coburns in the Senate to where you can actually cut the spending enough and reform the entitlements where you wouldn’t have to have it and you could get the government down to 15 percent of GDP, I’m all for it. But if that’s the case, I have a whole bunch of spoiled land in Oklahoma I’d like to sell you for $10,000 an acre. Because there’s no truth to that.
The fact is, our Founders made this country where if you’re going to change something, you have to do it based on compromise. And we’re going to have to increase revenue. That doesn’t mean increased tax rates. Actually, the increased revenues will come from the dynamic effect of lowering the rates and broadening the base and getting some of the $2.6 trillion that’s sitting on the sidelines right now in businesses, invest it, and that will create jobs.
reason: Entitlements are where the big money is, right?
Coburn: A lot of people say that, you know, a trillion dollars a year in discretionary spending is big money, especially when 30 to 35 percent of it is waste, fraud, or duplication. If it’s 35 percent, that’s $350 billion a year, that’s $3.5 trillion. If you truly ran the government efficiently—and that’s not talking about things that are done outside of the purview of the enumerated powers—if you did that, you’d cut another $150 billion, and that’s $5 trillion over 10 years. Then if you fix entitlements.…
reason: You’re talking about changing eligibility ages and things like that. But how do we fix Medicare? Medicare is something that gives essentially free or reduced price health care to seniors irrespective largely of income. Is that something we should be doing?
Coburn: The question is, is it constitutional? I would have to say it’s outside of the enumerated powers. So is Medicaid. Social Security, if you wanted to create a system where the Social Security actually was set up independent and people could put their funds into it, and they could do it, that’s all constitutional. You can do that. But the point is that if they were all self-financing, we wouldn’t have any of the problems with it.
reason: So what’s your best fix for Medicare?
Coburn: You can’t fix Medicare unless you fix health care. And the best fix is to let free-market forces work on health care. What Sen. Richard Burr [R-N.C.] and I have proposed is the Seniors Choice Act, where you have a premium support system, and you connect purchase with payment and allow individuals to be involved. There are great corollaries in the private sector. And even our private sector doesn’t have real market forces.
reason: How do we get to that market-based system? I know that you agree that markets have delivered great increases in productivity and service and treatments in every aspect of our lives. They can do it in medicine, you’re a doctor, you recognize that. But how do we get there? Because the resistance is humongous, it seems, toward moving to a system where the patient is actually in charge of spending money.
Coburn: How you get there is to contrast what’s going to happen if you don’t change. And the question you ask a senior that’s on Medicare today is, do you want Medicare not to change knowing that your children and your grandchildren will have a markedly lower standard of living if we don’t change it? That’s how you get there.
You have to have transparency in outcomes and quality in medicine, which we don’t. Unless you’re a doctor. I mean, I often ask the question, why do only the doctors know the bad doctors? Why isn’t there a transparent market in terms of quality and service? If you want to get a complicated operation, do you really want to go to somebody who does it twice a year or 200 times a year? Which place do you go?
reason: If I created a system to rate doctors publicly, like Rate My Professor for doctors, would that be allowed?
Coburn: Sure it would. You have consumer reports out there right now. You could have consumer reports on health care. Here’s the problem in health care: People in health care don’t want transparency because we have a system that pays based on the more you do, the more you earn, rather than the quality of outcome and prevention. Market forces aren’t perfect. But I guarantee they’re better than what we’re doing right now. And when you have a Medicaid system where the outcomes are worse than if you have no insurance at all.…
reason: Which is stunning. Medicaid is not just an inefficient program, it’s actually a disastrous program.
Coburn: It’s a low quality program that says you have access when really you have no access or you have access to inferior quality. So there’s ways to fix all that.
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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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good thanks sohbet
cinsel sohbet
