U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) visited the Heritage Foundation’s Blogger Briefing Tuesday, May 22, 2012, to address his new book, The Debt Bomb: A Bold Plan to Stop Washington from Bankrupting America, along with the growing budget crisis facing Americans.
Senator Coburn opened the lecture with his thoughts on the federal government’s wasteful spending. According to Coburn, the current greatest threat to America’s national security was neither one of military readiness nor foreign conflict, but of the growing national debt. Coburn identified HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) and an overwhelming number of teaching programs, explaining that these programs were extremely ineffective or unnecessary and the biggest examples of wasted government spending. “We have 110 teacher training programs,” he noted. He observed that while they have been in place, education has not improved markedly.
The budget crisis will only continue to worsen, because “there is a shortage of courage in Washington,” according to Coburn. Instead of acting for the good of America, politicians today focus solely on bringing home the most funding to their state to further their political careers. Every issue and action executed by the government today is all related to the upcoming election. Why? “Politicians [have] mixed up careerism with a representative government,” said Coburn. Politicians now focus only on continuing their career in government instead of addressing the real issues, like the federal budget deficit.
The excessive spending of the federal government now allows Americans to become more dependent. But many of those people who become dependent do not actually deserve the government aid they receive. “We have enabled dependency in our country, which in the long run hurts those who are dependent. Learned dependency is the opposite of earned success,” said Coburn. Political leaders have created the idea that dependency is acceptable. This takes away from those who actually require federal aid, and from those who are successful without the government’s help. Coburn said, “History has shown that when we have problems—if we have good leaders—we can solve them.”
Sara Cummings is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
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