Coburn-Carson debate: on Budget & Economy

Brad Carson: Rid waste & fraud and close loopholes to balance the budget

A: First, we have to keep the problem in perspective. As a percentage of our GDP, the budget deficit this year is not what it was in the 1980s and early 1990s. We’ve had some extraordinary events happen in the recent years, but that’s not to say we shouldn’t get ourselves back on a path toward fiscal solvency. I release a detailed plan to do just this. We have about $50 billion in various forms of waste, fraud and abuse that prudent management from the Senate and the House and its oversight could eliminate. There are corporate loopholes that are exploited every day to avoid lawful taxation about $250 billion a year. I’ve also proposed eliminating unnecessary and outdated government agencies, things like the Council on Environmental Quality, the Export-Import Bank. Those proposals, combined with the amount you would save on interest on the national debt with that, would move us probably close to fiscal balance.

Tom Coburn: Creating deficit is stealing from our children

A: If we steal from our children, when we don’t have to, [that is a] problem. We have decision-making often being made that centers around the politician and not the next generation. Our decisions ought to be long run and we ought to be caring for the next generation rather than the next election. And the expediency of spending money we don’t have hurts now but it also hurts the next generation

Tom Coburn: Freeze any increase in spending except homeland security

A: Congress has not been responsible with spending. Everybody in America knows that the government is not efficient. We need to have a freeze on any increase in government spending except homeland defense and defense. We need to look at every government program. We have to be frugal. We have to do the right thing in terms of discretionary and we have to address the issues with Medicare and Social Security.

Tom Coburn: Hard to repay the ever expanding discretionary spending