Senator Coburn Joins the Announcement Effect Club

Over the holiday break, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) gave an interview on Fox News that qualified him to be the newest member of the Announcement Effect Club.

Sen. Coburn stated that the United States will face "apocalyptic pain" if our fiscal house is not brought into order and predicted that the unemployment rate could reach 15-18 percent, devastating the middle class. He also said that all Americans must sacrifice in order to achieve true austerity, and remarked that "printing money" in order to pay for our debt is not the answer.

Qualifying Sen. Coburn for membership in the Announcement Effect Club was the following quote (when asked "How bleak do you think our financial and economic picture in this country will be over the next decade if we don't get serious about cutting spending?"):

I think you'll see a 15 to 18 percent unemployment rate. I think you will see an 8 to 9 percent decline in GDP. I think you'll see the middle class just destroyed if we don't do this. And the people that it will harm the most will be the poorest of the poor, because we'll print money to try to debase our currency and get out of it and what you will see is hyperinflation.So we don't have a lot of options other than living within our means and sending the signal that creates confidence that we can repay our debt and that we're not going to debase our currency to do it.

Sen. Coburn believes that printing money to increase inflation is the wrong way to go about repaying our debt, and we agree. The United States desperately needs a fiscal plan. Here's hoping that the upcoming Congress can come up with one.