If the Dems and Norquist don't like it, maybe it's worth a look

Coburn Ups Ante in Debt Ceiling Standoff, Pushes Plan to Save $9 Trillion

At a time when President Obama and lawmakers of both parties are struggling to find spending cuts of $2 trillion to $4 trillion, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., is offering his colleagues a menu of options for far more ambitious savings.

Coburn is unveiling a plan to reduce deficit spending by a whopping $9 trillion, shrink government by some 20 percent and balance the budget, all within 10 years.

"It's specific, it's detailed, it makes hard choices," Coburn said. "And it's rough, but it's necessary."

Coburn questioned all the agonizing over the search for much smaller savings of some $2 trillion, saying, "$2 trillion doesn't even pay our interest over the next 10 years. That's with no increase in interest rates."

Coburn's 600-page report lays out hundreds of spending cuts from every nook and cranny of the federal government.

He would save about $1 trillion from the Pentagon, another trillion from discretionary spending and $500 billion more from a range of federal agencies.
"We're cutting fat, not muscle or bone," Coburn said. "We can easily take several inches from our waistline."

Coburn also wades into the tax code, eliminating deductions worth almost $1 trillion.

That brought criticism from Grover Norquist of the conservative group Americans for Tax Reform, which opposes any revenue increases. A blog post on the Americans for Tax Reform website calls Coburn’s plan “a $1 trillion tax hike plan.”

“It's not tax reform, it surrenders on spending and it's outside the conservative mainstream,” the post continues.

And one Senate Democrat disagrees with the plan, saying $9 trillion in cuts is too much.

"You don't need to do $9 trillion, in my judgment, because it requires you to make too many Draconian cuts,” Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said.

Conrad is a member of the so-called Gang of Six, to which Coburn once belonged. Conrad and the other remaining members will propose a plan Tuesday to save as much as $3.7 trillion.

“There's a lot of good thinking,” Conrad said. “I just think the package really is more than needs to be done."

Coburn anticipated the criticism.

"People who call this a tax increase are defending earmarks for ethanol, earmarks for movie producers, stimulus tax breaks, tax breaks ... for Eskimo whaling captains and deductions for vacation homes," he said.

Coburn would eliminate the mortgage interest deduction for vacation homes and phase out deductions for mortgage interest on homes costing more than $500,000 dollars.

He also takes aim at tax breaks for all sorts of projects -- everything from auto race tracks to hockey arenas to movie theatres.

And Coburn's report notes some tax deductions are downright ridiculous -- such as an exotic dancer writing off breast enhancements as a business expense. Though he would reduce or eliminate many tax deductions, he would not raise tax rates. The ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases is 7.5 to one.

The senator has no expectation his plan will be adopted as is, but he calls it a menu of well-researched places to cut the federal budget.

"I hope people pick out things out of this," he says. "The fact is, is it's a treasure trove of how to solve our country's problems."

With the White House and lawmakers stuck over how to proceed, Coburn offers a plan that has more spending cuts than anyone else has proposed, as well as some revenues, on which Democrats have insisted.

The Man.

I'm against it.





Nothing good has ever come out of Oklahomo.

Eskimo whaling captains?

I like it. Get rid of the pork and fat.

While I like the boldness of the proposal, I'm still with Ron Paul on this point: If you don't get the cuts up front, you won't get them at all.

I agree too. All or nothing? Or is that counterproductive?

Exactly.

The whole ten year thing is a scam.

People have got to accept that when any politician talks further then two years out on financial matters it is mostly lies and wishful thinking because the current Congress can not bind the hands of a future Congress.

I can't / won't say all or nothing. But there's got to be real and deep cuts NOW for me to take an agreement seriously. No backloading of the cuts. Sure, I'm open to some talk of revenue enhancement but out of control spending is what has caused this problem and that's where it's going to be fixed if it's going to be fixed at all.

I like it. But I'd like it a whole lot better sooner than later, 'cause later may as well be 'never.'

But if you only fixate on short term spending cuts, and then what good will that do in the long term if spending goes right back up again? It seems to me that you can only cut so much spending NOW because there's only so much spending that's being done NOW.

Muad Dib linked to a news article this morning on facebook that some government agency spent a lot of money studying the size of gay men's penis'

That's the kind of shit that needs to be gotten rid of. When all that's gone, then we can talk about social programs and military spending.

There is a corresponding movement in the House to pass a balanced budget amendment at the same time as the cuts and the debt ceiling increase.

Tax codes needs to be simplified. Giving tax breaks and subsidies is the government playing favorites and takes a steaming liquid egg/beer/burrito shit on "equal protection under the law."

I couldn't be more proud of the junior Senator from my home state. Good for you, Tom!

Those corporations everyone is so quick to defend pay so little in taxes (comparatively speaking) that those who can least afford it are burdened with the brunt of it.

Get rid of tax loopholes for corporations and the rich and you'll see a drop in your tax burden.

Unfortunately, that's never going to happen because corporations are running this country.

It's just reality.

You would have to rely on each Congress to keep with the plan and as we've seen that never happens.

And it doesn't have to be short term cuts if you get rid of lots of things. Those would be permanent cuts.

And there's a lot of the philosophy of weeding a garden to it. No matter how good a job you do, you're going to have to keep after it or you're just going to have a mess next year.

It wont happen. Anything that takes power from the government and returns it to the people will never pass.

If that's the case, then what's the difference between cutting 10 trillion over ten years, and cutting 2 trillion over two years?

Is that like shrinking the government?

The need to eliminate the ability for Congress to pay for such crap.

A new set of guidelines about what can be researched and a cap on how much they can spend.

The money allocated for the study of gay men's members needs to be reassigned to the menace of high school bathrooms across Oklahoma.

That's right, teenaged lesbians.

Yeah, but that's meaningless without knowing whether the gay men's penises are bigger or smaller than the straits.

Coburn?

BWAHAHA!

Yeah right buddy. If Coburn is out of the conservative mainstream then they need to re-direct the stream.

He really ought to run for President. While I may disagree on some social issues (which he almost never talks about) - he's got more good sense when it comes to things like this than the current crop of candidates combined.

It is interesting to see what happens to people that try to get what has been a historically fiscally conservative message out there, isn't it?

So, now you see why we laugh at you guys when you say the Republican Party is fiscally conservative.

I shouldn't have to point you to examples of me saying the Republicans are the lesser of two evils in D.C.

As well, it's been in my lifetime that the Democratic party (at least here in the South) has had a fairly good history of strongly fiscally conservative representation. Yes, indeed, we did vote for Dems back when they had some shred of common sense left.

Ancalagon agrees: Ol' Zell comes to mind...

I was thinking of Sam Nunn, in particular...

There are plenty of Democratic candidates with common sense. You just need to be able look past that "D" to see it.

The person who wants to spend $100 on a purse may not be fiscally conservative, but they are more fiscally conservative than the person who wants to spend $900.

Right?

Uh, no. $100 for a bag to carry your shit? Wal-mart is lucky if I spend $20 on a bag and that's only because the strap broke on my last one.

There are no "degrees" in being fiscally responsible. You either are, or you aren't.

And comparing taxes to personal purchases is why we have a problem. My money is mine to do with as I please - as is yours. If you want to spend your money on a designer handbag and you have the money - go for it.

But, tax money is not the government's personal purchasing money. It's there for society. If neither side is being fiscally responsible, neither side has any room to talk about the other.