At first glance, Tom Coburn and Robert Lieber appear to express perfectly opposite perspectives about America’s future. In fact, their views are two sides of the same coin.
Neither should be ignored.
Without question, the junior senator from Oklahoma is a man of his word. First elected to Congress in 1994 on a promise he would serve no more than three terms, Coburn returned home in 2000.
There, he wrote a book, “Breach of Trust,” chronicling the sad betrayal of the 1994 Contract with America revolution by Washington Establishment Republicans like Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott.
Oklahomans returned Coburn to Washington in 2004 as a senator. In short order, Coburn was forcing Senate colleagues to make choices they desperately wanted to avoid, such as whether they’d rather fund the Bridge to Nowhere or help Hurricane Katrina victims.
Because he is still forcing similarly unpopular votes, one of Coburn’s few publishable nicknames from the Senate cloakroom is “Senator No.” Ever a man of his word, he vows not to seek re-election in 2016 when his current term ends.
That will be America’s loss. In his latest book, “The Debt Bomb.” Coburn argues that by promising entitlement benefits they knew were unaffordable, professional Washington politicians in both parties have for decades saddled Americans with what has now become an unimaginably huge debt.
“America is already bankrupt,” he writes. “We may not believe it. We may not yet feel its full effects. But we are effectively bankrupt. Our debt now exceeds the size of our entire economy. Our payments on our obligations — our unfunded liabilities — exceed our income as far as the eye can see.”
Coburn sees only one way out of this disaster: “Fundamentally reimagining what government can do in the 21st century.” But it’s got to happen soon. There is little road left along which to kick the can.
In “Power and Willpower in the American Future,” Georgetown University politics professor Lieber argues that “despite daunting problems at home and abroad, there remain compelling reasons why the United States is not likely to find itself in an irreversible state of decline.”
We have, among many others, energy, military technology, economic freedom, political culture and demographic advantages over such nations as China, India and any other conceivable rival on the world stage. Absent a Black Swan catastrophe, this country’s often underestimated “resilience and sense of purpose” make it likely the 21st century will be another American epoch, according to Lieber.
So, are we doomed to bankruptcy and the end of the republic, as Coburn warns, or are we entering the American century of world dominance that Lieber predicts?
That depends on whether, as Coburn reminds us, citizens of all persuasions force career politicians to make those tough decisions they’re always promising — or else replace them with new leaders who will.
As Charles Krauthammer put it in a memorable October 2009 lecture at the Manhattan Institute: “For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline — or continued ascendancy — is in our hands.”
Krauthammer’s focus was mainly on foreign affairs, but, as Adm. Mike Mullen told Congress in 2010, “Our national debt is our biggest national security threat.”
So the bottom line is this: Either we defuse the debt bomb now, or in a few years, others — likely China — will choose our domestic and foreign policies for us.
Mark Tapscott is executive editor of The Washington Examiner.
