Coburn condemns Reckless GOP spending, Allen's ears burn
Coburn condemns Reckless GOP spending, Allen's ears burn
As the Patch reports, former Senator George Allen is continuing to mislead Virginians about the six years he spent in the Senate voting for trillions in unfunded legislation and turning a massive surplus into a massive deficit.
Today, an unlikely source called Allen out on his budget busting years in Washington. Republican Tom Coburn lambasted his fellow Republicans, including Allen, for abandoning fiscal restraint and putting their own political fortunes ahead of smart fiscal policy.
Yesterday
George Allen: "The debt situation is dangerous... We may not be Greece, but we can learn from Greece. We just cannot keep spending this way. It's loading future generations with such dangerous levels of debt we're going to end up with inflation and a weakened dollar," said Allen.
Read more: http://annandale.patch.com/articles/george-allen-hosts-roundtable-with-asian-american-community
Today
Fellow Republican Senator Tom Coburn on the Allen Senate Years: "During the Bush administration, they had four years where the Republicans controlled the House, the Senate and the executive branch. We had a great opportunity to do great reform to fix what was wrong with this country. We didn't do it...
"When the number one goal is to make yourself look good at home, rather than fulfill your oath and fix what the country needs to have fixed, you're actually adding to our downward spiral, and so I think it was a missed opportunity of tremendous proportions that the Republicans didn't embrace what they said they believed in during those times.
Coburn specifically criticized the Republican-controlled Congress and President George W. Bush for enacting Medicare Part D in 2003. "We created no tax base to pay for it, right? No tax base to pay for it so we created a brand new entitlement program that has $12 trillion worth of unfunded liability. Did we really do that to help people with their drugs or did we do that to make that no longer a campaign issue for the 2004 presidential election?" Coburn said.
"Which was it, because Republican principles would not embrace creating an unfunded entitlement? They might embrace creating an entitlement, but those same principles would say you ought to have a revenue source for it rather than borrow it from your children." Coburn continued, "If you're going to do something you ought to pay for it and you ought to have the guts to say, 'here's what I want to cut in the federal government now to do this good thing now,' but we didn't see that."
George Allen wants Virginians to believe he will spend their money wisely, but even fellow conservative Republicans admit he failed the first time around.
Virginians deserve more than George Allen's empty rhetoric and reckless spending.
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