Tom Coburn Wants $4 Trillion in Cuts

The Economist's Democracy in America blog writes Deficit reduction: Tom Coburn wants $4 trillion in cuts. "These qualities are abundantly on display in this conversation with the Wall Street Journal's Gerald Seib, in which Mr Coburn insists that the United States must cut no less than $4 trillion out of its long-term budget deficit in order to retain credibility with international investors. He makes no attempt to substantiate the claim that international investors have doubts about the America's determination or ability to pay its debts. He makes no attempt to justify the claim that any such doubts are rooted in long-term projections of entitlement obligations, rather than, say, the absurd political impasse over lifting the debt ceiling itself, which he insists on prolonging unless he gets his $4 trillion in deficit cuts. He makes no attempt to justify the claim that nothing less than $4 trillion will do. He wants $4 trillion in cuts because, gosh darn it, we've gotta get serious, folks! The fixation on huge, poorly-defined, dam-busting initiatives in the service of whatever world-threatening crisis conservatives have defined as the priority of the day, without so much as an attempt at evidentiary grounding, is a sharp reminder of the kind of unmoored thinking that dominated the severely troubled administration in which Mr Coburn served on the president's advisory council on HIV/AIDS."

And that's not the worst of it.