Tom Coburn: “There is an interesting case law on this. There was a company, I will not mention their name, that had several thousand…”

“There is an interesting case law on this. There was a company, I will not mention their name, that had several thousand employees in the State of Colorado who decided to do that on their paycheck stubs, and the IRS and the Social Security System took them to court and made them stop and they won. So the idea that there is some secrecy about this is true. If the American public actually recognizes the amount of money withdrawn from their paycheck, and paid also additionally by their employer, and that that money is really theirs that they cannot have because Washington is consuming it, the participation rate and the recognition of the value of what they are getting would rise in terms of their acknowledgment of it, and we would see much more activity on the part of the regular citizen to help us try to change the mindset of spending more of their money. One final point I would make is that all through this we have shown this graph that depicts the rise in spending. And the question that I continue to be asked, and the question that I ask to people in my district, is how many people believe that the Federal Government is efficient? They kind of snicker. That is not to say we do not have some great Federal employees, but bureaucratic run programs typically are not very efficient.”