Coburn launches two-week campaign to highlight 'stupidity' in federal spending

By Ramsey Cox - 01/30/13 06:24 PM ET

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) vowed to return to the Senate floor during the next two weeks to show the “stupidity” of government spending.

“There is no accountability to rein in the size, scope or accountability of the government,” Coburn said Wednesday, kicking off the two-week campaign. “So I’m going to outline $1.35 trillion of cuts I think the vast majority of Americans would agree with.

“I’m basically going to show the stupidity of how the federal government is being run today.”

Coburn said he was inspired to start the campaign because the Senate will be taking up the House debt-ceiling extension bill, H.R. 325, this week. He complained that the three-month suspension of the debt ceiling did not include spending cuts.

“A debt bomb is coming,” Coburn said. “There is a time where the world will not loan us additional dollars and when that time comes, interest rates will rise.”

Coburn said the time to act is now, but said he thinks his colleagues lack “courage” to make spending cuts. He proceeded to highlight several areas where the government has “duplicative” spending programs, such as 94 separate programs run by 11 different agencies to spend $1 billion a year on green building. Coburn said if those programs were consolidated and fewer agencies were involved, it would reduce government spending and waste.

“It’s absolutely asinine what we’re doing. It’s craziness,” Coburn said. “I hope to build a case so that no member of Congress can tell a constituent that we can’t cut spending.

“Work of government is hard but there is no longer going to be a bogus set of facts out there that we can’t cut spending.”

Coburn said that Congress was the “enemy” because lawmakers cannot agree to spending cuts, heaping more debt of future generations.

“I hope America can see how incompetent we are as we continue to allow these things to continue,” Coburn said. “We’re going to continue to raise the debt bar on your children and we’re not going to do anything about it, nada.”

Coburn said he was positive that there is at least $200 billion worth of duplicative and wasteful government programs that could be cut. He hopes that by highlighting some of the duplications, lawmakers will include reforms in a major deficit-reduction package, but admitted that people in both parties wouldn't agree with all of his suggestions.