Coburn rips the left and right alike
He pulls no punches during a town hall meeting in Wagoner.
By RANDY KREHBIEL World Staff Writer
Published: 8/28/2010 2:19 AM
Last Modified: 8/28/2010 6:15 AM
WAGONER - U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn called out Democrats, Republicans, Newt Gingrich, the military-industrial complex, teachers unions and Medicare - to name a few - at a town hall meeting Friday.
"The real problem is that America is asleep," Coburn said, speaking mostly in response to questions from an audience of about 65 people at the Wagoner Civic Center. "America is not involved. I think this election they'll be more involved than they ever have been, and the reason is they're scared."
The audience generally seemed to find comfort in the potential for a Republican takeover of Congress, but Coburn warned that that alone would not necessarily yield the desired results.
"If the conservatives in Congress gain control and don't live up to expectations," he said, "the Republican Party will be dead."
Coburn also expanded on his recent criticism of arms spending, echoing President Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 warning against the "military-industrial complex."
"I'm not capable of telling you, because I don't have the training, whether we have the forces we need," he said. "I can tell you that if you add our forces and compare them to the next 19 nations, ... we're stronger."
He continued: "The problem is, we have allowed the military-industrial complex to make things unaffordable. There's no choke chain. We need a choke chain. When the cost of an F-35 triples during development, something's wrong."
Coburn made it clear that he won't be on Newt Gingrich's 2012 presidential bandwagon.
Gingrich "is a super-smart man, but he doesn't know anything about commitment to marriage," he said of the thrice-married former House speaker. "He's the last person I'd vote for for president of the United States. His life indicates he does not have a commitment to the character traits necessary to be a great president."
As he has in the past, Coburn blasted health-care reform and traced the rise of medical costs to the introduction of Medicare in the 1960s. He said schools "are no longer about kids, they are about teachers' unions," and he claimed that academic achievement has gone down since the creation of the U.S. Department of Education, although some statistics argue otherwise.
Coburn also repeated what has become a popular line among conservatives - that "no one has ever been hired by a poor person" - to support tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations.
His audience was largely in agreement. One man complained that unemployment and welfare benefits are too generous, and another said "success is punished and failure rewarded" by the federal government.
Another man said taxes should not be raised for the wealthy and corporations, because they ultimately will be paid by those further down the economic food chain.
"The rich and the corporations are going to keep their money," he said.
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