Senator Colburn Presents First Real Effort To Tame National Debt

Senator Tom Colburn of Oklahoma has presented the first real proposal to tame the overall national debt. He is getting criticism, but deserves kudos for his effort.

Hard Choice

Before we get to the plan, I want you to understand something. The answer to the national debt doesn’t involve some hard choices. ALL the choices are going to be hard. If they weren’t, even the dolts running Congress and the White House would have come up with an answer by now.

Tom Colburn is getting hammered by his fellow Republicans because his plan includes a trillion dollars in tax increases. At the same time Democrats are hammering him for cutting spending dramatically. Each of these political groups should be ashamed. They’ve come up with nothing themselves, so the fall back to chirping their usual political blather without offering up anything different. Frankly, it is disgusting.

For disclosure purposes, I should mention I am a registered Republican who believes we need to slash spending, but also raise taxes. I tend to be very conservative fiscally, but moderate to liberal on social issues such as abortion, gays in the military, etc. If someone is willing to take a bullet for their country, I can’t really see any merit in discriminating against them, but I digress.

Colburn Plan

Colburn’s plan focuses on savings over the next decade, but has long ramifications. His goal is to save $9 trillion in the form of $8 trillion in spending cuts and $1 trillion in tax hikes. This total would more or less come close to balancing the budget for the next 10 years although we would probably still be in the red ink a bit.

Of course, the specifics of the plan are where things get a bit dicey. Politicians have historically been afraid to deal with the hard choices in the budget because, frankly, they want to maintain their cushy jobs in Washington, D.C. Lucky us. Colburn shows no such fear. He not only hits the hard subjects, but makes the decisions that need to be made.

A sampling of the choices shows how serious this plan is. The first example is raising the age for social security benefits to 70 years of age with benefits to the top 40 percent of earners being slashed. He would slowly start raising the qualification age for Medicare into the high 60’s over the next 60 years and would cut another $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years. As you can imagine, Democrats are nearly peeing themselves over these cuts. They aren’t alone.

Colburn also hits the other huge cost expenditure we have – the military. He anticipates cutting a trillion dollars out of its budget over the next 10 years. He would eliminate one of our aircraft carriers and a wing of fighter planes. He would raise the co-pay on military health visits and pursue a host of other small moves that would get the cut goals met. As you can imagine, Republicans are in a tizzy over this one.

Colburn doesn’t finish there. To make sure he’s got the attention of everyone, he details plans to end many farm subsidies, slash student loan guarantees, end grants for community developments and so on. Depending on the subject, either the corresponding Democrats or Republicans get their panties in a bunch.

Right Plan?

Is this the right plan to solve the debt problems we face? Yes, pretty much. Oh, you can bicker over the details, but this is what has to happen. To solve the debt, we must slash expenditures on Social Security, Medicare and the military while raising taxes. There is just no other way to do it and Colburn deserves credit for recognizing as much. Is it perfect? No, but at least he has put something tangible out there which is much more than can be said for any of his critics!

<< Back to National Debt News