Breitbart News recently sat down with Oklahoma Senator Dr. Tom Coburn to get his thoughts on the fiscal cliff and what Republicans can do to win the 2014 midterm elections.
On November 15 Dr. Coburn gave a speech at the American Spectator’s Annual Dinner, addressing these issues. He called the current situation in America a “Valley Forge” moment for conservatives and suggested the GOP concentrate on a few points: truth, oversight, action, and accountability.
Dr. Coburn is famous for keeping an eye on wasteful spending by the government, but the majority of his colleagues ignore his reports. If the government took into consideration his reports and managed the waste instead of making excuses, the current financial mess would not be so difficult to overcome.
“Oversight isn’t very popular in Washington because politicians on both sides prefer to create new programs instead of looking at whether the programs we’ve already created are working,” said Dr. Coburn. “But I believe, oversight resonates with families because that’s how they live their lives every day. In the real world, people look at their budgets and make choices. In Washington, we make excuses, and defer choices to future generations.”
“The task before us is simple,” he explained. “Telling the truth, conducting oversight, taking action and holding politicians accountable will lead us out of our Valley Forge and on to victory.”
On Wednesday he released a report on the Department of Homeland Security allowing major cities to waste taxpayer money on grants that do not combat terrorism, including a luxury getaway about a zombie apocalypse and underwater robots.
“$35 billion has been given since the grant program started,” he said. “There are no metrics, no follow ups, no oversight. These cities become dependent on this money.”
Dr. Coburn told Breitbart News Republicans can win the Senate in 2014. There are plenty of Democrats up in red states, but the GOP has to change their approach.
“We have to choose people who care,” said Dr. Coburn. “People did not think Mitt Romney cared about them, they could not relate to him. We also need to choose people who come from the real world and give them proper training.”
And the approach involves more than choosing candidates, he asserted. The people and the GOP must hold career politicians accountable as well.
“But the problem in Republican politics isn’t the challengers: it’s the incumbents: it’s the career politicians who say they are for limited government and lower taxes but make decisions that give us bigger government and higher taxes,” he said in his speech.
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