Tom Coburn: “One reason is Americans believe we are totally out of touch with the realities they live with every day in terms of…”

“One reason is Americans believe we are totally out of touch with the realities they live with every day in terms of budgeting and spending. What I often hear in this body, both by statement and by action, is that we really do not have to choose between two priorities because we can do both. The American people can't do both, but we can do both. How can we do both? What we do is we ignore the choices we have and lay our responsibility on generations to come. That is how we do both. We do not do what is required of us in terms of oversight, eliminating fraud, eliminating duplicative programs, eliminating programs that do not work, that have no metrics. That, by the way, comes to $200 billion worth of fraud, waste, and abuse which has been documented, every year, that we spend, that we are not working on, we are not trying to eliminate. But what we are about to do, because we failed to do that, we are about to increase the amount which our children and grandchildren are going to have to repay. The problem is there is nobody outside this body who thinks that way--only inside. In the real world, people have budgets they have to live within. Their choices have consequences, and we choose to make the consequences happen to our children and grandchildren rather than accept the consequences.”