{"id":232955,"date":"2010-01-26T17:51:56","date_gmt":"2010-01-26T22:51:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.szone.us\/f95\/senator-coburn-s-radical-alternative-raising-debt-limit-38638\/"},"modified":"2010-01-26T17:51:56","modified_gmt":"2010-01-26T22:51:56","slug":"senator-coburn%c2%92s-%c2%93radical%c2%94-alternative-to-raising-the-debt-limit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/232955","title":{"rendered":"Senator Coburn\u0092s \u0093Radical\u0094 Alternative to Raising the Debt Limit"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>On 01.26.10 12:09 PM posted by Steve Keen<\/p>\n<p>Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has a radical alternative to raising <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7yJRci2pARk\" >the debt limit<\/a>: spend less money. In an amendment introduced last week <a href=\"http:\/\/coburn.senate.gov\/public\/index.cfm?FuseAction=RightNow.Home&amp;ContentRecord_id=4c7c8bcd-802a-23ad-406b-e0bfa401a0f8\" >Senator Coburn proposed<\/a> saving approximately $120 billion by, \u0093consolidating more than 640 duplicative government programs, cutting wasteful Washington spending, and returning billions of dollars of unspent money.\u0094 The vast majority of the savings, $100 billion, would come from rescinding discretionary federal funding that has been unused for over two years and remains unassigned for a specific purpose. The remainder would result from the consolidation of hundreds of duplicative government programs and recessions to several government departments and agencies.<\/p>\n<p>The total public debt outstanding is now <a href=\"http:\/\/www.treasurydirect.gov\/NP\/BPDLogin?application=np\" >$12.3 trillion<\/a>, and public debt as a percentage of the economy is currently projected to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/Press\/ALAChart\/alachart-detail.cfm?customel_datapageid_244663=376453\" >exceed World War II levels.<\/a> At some point Congress must say enough is enough. Debt has consequences; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/omb\/assets\/fy2010_msr\/10msr.pdf\" >President Obama\u0092s own figures <\/a>see outlays for interest on the debt rising to levels greater than the all defense spending by 2018. Currently, a single month of interest payments on the national debt already exceed yearly spending on programs such as Child Nutrition, and International Assistance.<\/p>\n<p>Although this amendment is not a cure all for the nations addiction to debt \u0096 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/research\/features\/BudgetChartBook\/Entitlements-Alone-Eclipse-Historical-Tax-Levels-by-2052.aspx\" >entitlement spending alone is set to swamp the entire budget by 2052 <\/a>&#8211; Senator Coburn\u0092s amendment is certainly a good place to start. Any true solution must address Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid spending by including placing the program on long-term budgets and including the long-term obligations of these programs in the budget. In the meantime, actions such as consolidating duplicative programs and rescinding unobligated funds should be common sense.<\/p>\n<p>The amendment needs 60 votes to pass. Will Congress finally choose the fiscally responsible solution?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/01\/26\/senator-coburn%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9cradical%e2%80%9d-alternative-to-raising-the-debt-limit\/\" >http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/01\/26\/&#8230;he-debt-limit\/<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 01.26.10 12:09 PM posted by Steve Keen Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has a radical alternative to raising the debt limit: spend less money. In an amendment introduced last week Senator Coburn proposed saving approximately $120 billion by, \u0093consolidating more than 640 duplicative government programs, cutting wasteful Washington spending, and returning billions of dollars of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}