Senator Tom Coburn’s Deficit Reduction Plan – Obliterate Every Social Program, Every Health Care Program, Social Security and Medicare

Yep, That Should Do It

Into the deficit reduction idea pool comes Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn with a 600+ page proposal that can be summarized as follows.

1. $9 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 Years
2. $1 Trillion in tax or revenue increases
3. $1 Trillion cut in Defense spending
4. Leaving $7 trillion or $700 billion per year to cut in Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Social Programs.

Back in Black: A Deficit Reduction Plan

[Senator:  Check with The Daily Show and Comedian Lewis Black.  You may have come copyright issues here.]

And the neat thing, none of this will cause any problems, any concerns any disruption.  It is all done out of unneeded, wasteful programs that don’t do anybody any good any time.

It provides a plan to put the U.S. back in black by identifying $9 trillion in very specific savings that can be achieved over the next decade. These savings are derived from consolidating duplication, weeding out waste, eliminating special interest subsidies, reducing overhead costs, demanding results, and setting priorities

And

Social Security is protected for future generations by giving more to those with less and less to those with more. The life of Medicare is extended without changing the fundamentals of the program. Our national defense is protected while eliminating over $1 trillion in Pentagon waste and excess. Foreign aid to nations who are making money by loaning the money back to us is cut off while maintaining our commitments to our allies and needy nations who rely upon our continued generosity to combat disease and poverty.

Wow, where do we sign up?  Just set priorities and demand results.  Who knew it could be this easy?  All we have to do to save the fiscal integrity of the Federal government is to destroy it.

 Thanks Senator Tom!

(Note:  Senator Tom was an M. D. before coming to Washington.  A report from his patients said that when he said "this won't hurt a bit", they ended up screaming at the top of their lungs.)

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, about $275 billion a year comes out of Medicare and Medicaid, and while we are at it, a couple of billion a year is knocked out of disability income, you know, just to be fair about things.  (No beneficiaries are harmed in the making of this report.)

On a serious note, the Coburn report is a sad reminder of what could have been.  Sen. Coburn and the staff that developed this report obviously spent a huge amount of time and effort to produce the report, and had they used that same time and effort to develop an honest report, one that described a set of reasonable cuts and tax increases along with their impact on the economy and how that impact could have been ameliorated, they could have done the dialogue over the deficit an enormous favor.

Instead they produced a document that is already forgotten, a document that is a useless paper that reflects the fantasy world of it authors, and hence is of little or no value whatsoever.

This is not unexpected but still is very disappointing.