book jobs and the con pe jobs and the economy. you day the debt bomb is a bigger threat than al-qaeda. it s not just ming z saying that. forer joint chiefs of staff said it s not al-qaeda. no country can defend itself if it s broke. that s the point he was making. and how do we fund this debt. you know, the interesting thing to me that the political dynamic that nobody is working on the biggest problem facing our country today because it s an election year and nobody has been working on it for two years because they don t want to address the hard issues and the point i make in the book, this is going to get much more difficult and much more painful if we continue to delay, because then somebody else is going to be telling us what to do rather than us. jon: the most predictable crisis that s right and the lack of inaction, i make the case in the book, is because of careerism, the next election is the most important thing to people, including the
joining us live, oklahoma senator tom coburn, he is also the author of the book the debt bomb . we re going get to that book in a moment. but first your thoughts on afghanistan, the situation there, and the president s visit. i think it s good that he visits, any time that he goes, and embraces the troops, and encourages them, is effective. i think we have to look and see what this agreement is that he inked, and what kind of costs are associated with that, and he also ought to know what the real exit plan is that will not give up the goals that we went there for in the first place. so i applaud him for traveling over there and encouraging our troops. i don t know jon fighting for ten years, and 2000 soldiers, plus or minus 2000 of our troops who have given their lives, so many thousands more injured. you don t want to see it all for nothing. yeah, i and i think we need real clarity on what the plans are. it doesn t necessarily have to be public but the intelligence community and
president, rather than the issue. where, in fact, is the president s plans to save medicare? or social security? we haven t heard them. where is the plan to reform the tax code so that when, in fact, we have a fairer, broader based, lower tax rate code that actually generates more revenues for the federal government, take away the specialty favors that have been put into the tax code, where is that plan? we see little pieces but nobody is addressing the whole plan. and i make the case that if you don t do this, the consequences will be disastrous. jon: the book is the death bomb , author, senator tom coburn. glad to be with you. appreciate it. harris: they are calling it a spring offensive, the taliban announcing more violence is coming in afghanistan, this following a deadly attack on the heels of a presidential surprise visit by mr. obama, and all of this as president obama says his administration has been in direct talks with the taliban. foreign affairs columnist brett steeives
al-qaeda. i think everybody in america is more and more aware of that every day, and we are fortunate enough to have senator tom coburn with us who happens to be on the homeland security committee actually here. the authorship of his new book the debt bomb which will get into his diagnosis of the broader issues in just a second, but in the context of the news of the day, your initial response to the extent you even have one to the news. coming from a fairly conservative state, i can tell you there s big-time war fatigue in oklahoma as well in terms of questioning, what are we doing, what are we accomplishing? i think it will do well for the president to explain whatever this new agreement is is why we need to do it. what are we accomplishing? what are our goals and what s it going to cost? and i think that s what has to be answered. that s a question i get all the time. are we making enough headway to
in other words, when there is so much we find ourselves fighting about, is there enough for the cohesion and exit of this war that we may not have seen it since the war was initiated ten years ago. leadership is best when it clearly defines a problem, offers the solutions that can be there and then leads the why of what we re doing. not the what or the when or the how, but the why of what we re doing. i think that s the bar he s going to have to jump across. why. let s talk about the base theme in your new book the debt bomb which is that congress is what you use to describe the whole apparatus of the way decisions are made not just in the senate but the entire process. what do you mean with that statement and what is the sedative that is creating that effe effect. first of all, i made the cake in the book account that she