Go home, Congress. You’re drunk — on spending money, that is.
On Sunday, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) called members of Congress ‘drunk on spending’ for their inability to introduce new legislation to solve the debt ceiling and another potential shutdown in three months.
“We just raised the debt limit for a period of time, and that’s kind of like saying we’re going to raise the legal limit for blood alcohol, thinking we’re going to control drunk driving,” he told David Gregory on Meet the Press. “We’re drunk up there in terms of spending money and we can keep commitments, but we can’t keep commitments if we continue to spend money on things that we shouldn’t be spending money on.”
And the fight over Obamacare, one that engulfed Washington over the past month, is “off message,” according to Coburn. He said President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law would fail during its implementation, with only sick people signing up and premiums skyrocketing as a result. But the focus of Congressional fights needs to be over spending, not just Obamacare, Coburn emphasized.
“The large percentage of the American public knows that Washington wastes money,” he said. “They just don’t have a clue of how bad it really is, and so we lost the message there of what really needs to happen in Washington.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) advocated for the McConnell rule to be implemented in order to avoid a federal shutdown in the future. The rule would force Congress to disapprove all increases in the debt ceiling versus how it currently is set in place to pre-approve taxpayer money before dispersed.
Congress reached a deal to reopen the federal government last week, but Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) remains adamant about doing anything to stop Obamacare. Coburn refused to get distracted from the larger problem.
“I think focusing on Obamacare takes you away from the larger picture, David,” he explained. “We have $128 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities and the total net worth of our country is $94 trillion and we have another $17 trillion worth of debt. Until you have leadership that brings our nation together rather than advantages themselves by dividing this, we’re not going to solve these problems.”
