am watching football games, have to say you should pass the tax bill, make everybody pay a fair share of their income. and i understand what you are saying, entitlements going on and on, people never get checked up on to see if they are able to go back to work. we are paying for it. i have before you, i am still surviving and look forward to a great country but you are 100% right. when you retire from that fraud, you move back to massachusetts where the pilgrims are. thank you. >> nice statement. again from "the debt bomb: a bold plan to stop washington from bankrupting america," you write it is important to remember that congress created a

system in which 47% of americans pay almost nothing in federal income tax. when those low income, the new income is taxed. when they start making money they lose benefits instead of being rewarded for making the transition from welfare to work. and gives the fruit of their labor to the others, that is hardly economic. >> guest: if you want to motivate somebody to move from this position to hire you need a transition with our programs which none of them do. we have been able to afford a system like that. >> host: this e-mail from johnson, as a medical doctor you

must know the administrative costs for medicare is 3% and the administrative cost of insurance companies is 25%. why do republicans oppose medicare? have you read healing america:a global quest for better, cheaper and fairer health care? >> guest: i have not read that book. let's talk about what the statistics are. medicare quotes 3% because of 3% on administration but that doesn't count the 14% that is fair. the average private insurance industry company has less than 3% and there's even 25%, close to 70%. so when you look on a net-net basis medicare actually the cost of administration and the cost of everything associated with it which has shifted to the

provider in medicare which has not shifted necessarily private insurance. there's not a great deal of difference so they absorb their costs. we don't count fraud in the costs of medicare. you can play games with numbers all you want. what i know is this medicare system we have today undermines the ability to create pressure on the provider to be responsible with the money. there's no penalty if i am not. come to me as a doctor there is nothing if i don't spend the money wisely. there is nothing if you don't spend money wisely. we have an uncontrolled spend the money especially in light of the court system we have in oklahoma and several other states which says water a whole bunch more tests. there are three studies out there all within the last three

years that show 550 to $850 billion a year on what we spend in health care costs, absolutely nothing to get somebody well and nothing to prevent them from getting sick. any time -- that is private and public sector combined. we are missing the boat. if you stop for a moment and think we got health care in this country whether it is through the government or private sector totally different than anything else. we make somebody else pay for it. unless you are one of the unfortunates the don't have coverage and the reason my opposition to the affordable care actors we are expanding a system that is broken now where a third of the dollar's don't help people get well or keep from getting sick. we should ask the question why

is it we have this inflation in health care, this waste in health care that we don't have anywhere else and it is because we are not allowing market forces to help us do it. can't we create a system where this truly dependent have a safety net and yet we drive this $550 billion to $850 billion out. we can't along as we all think somebody else is paying the bill for healthcare. >> host: who would you like to see run for president for the republican in 2016? >> guest: haven't even thought about that. that is the last thing we should be thinking about right now. we ought to be able to ask how do we enforce the people who are in power today get us out of the jam we are in. >> host: david in las vegas, good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon. i want to thank you so much for

your service in the senate. my wife, she has been since 2011, december, multiple strokes put her into a coma in regards to medicare and medicaid. in order to get medicare she has to be 65 or disabled for two years. my question is i want to encourage you not to raise the eligibility because we are getting nowhere since march of 2010. it is really hard as far as therapy goes. she can't get therapy because she doesn't meet certain requirements or anything as well as service. she is and a skilled nursing home and is only 49 years old.

>> guest: why would we have a program that says here is somebody who is young and had a stroke and obviously disabled and why would they have to go through long periods of time to get disability and once they are disabled with something that is probably going to have limited progression back and i don't know the details but at that type of age with multiple sclerosis you usually have limited progress in terms of return to full function, why would you have to wait two years to get medical help on that? what brilliant person said two years is the right amount of time? can we trust people who work in the government to make good decisions? yes we can. if we give them guidelines to be compassionate and frugal at the same time, i would tell you that i understand why you would not want the ages to go up but the reason you don't want that is you can't get what she should be

getting right now. if in fact she is truly disabled she shouldn't have to wait to get help with medicare and that is the problem. where do we get these crazy ideas and why are people who are labeled disabled who are no longer disabled, why are they still collecting disability check and medicare when they have returned to function and we are still paying them? those are the questions, that is in effect of government and that is the point i make in the book. we don't do this very well or efficiently or effectively. that should mean we ought to have somebody and as i looked at this disability thing and take a lot of criticism because i actually believe anybody who is truly disabled we ought to help but i really think one out of five people who have gotten disability truly aren't disabled because under the law, there's

not a job in the economy they can do and i want to help, goes back to this book the tragedy of american compassion, how did you help people help themselves and not undermine who they are? i would love to get a note on your wife's condition and where you are on her disability and maybe we can try to help move that forward. >> in either "the debt bomb: a bold plan to stop washington from bankrupting america" or breach of trust you see read all the mail you get. >> guest: i don't read mail from outside of oklahoma. along ago, the one thing i know is people want to be heard. if they take the time to send you an e-mail or a letter, as long as it is not waste with profanity and purely what i would say inappropriate, i want an original land back of what i

think about that. for big states that is very hard to do. oklahoma is less than four million people in it so i can keep up of 500 to a thousand letters a week especially when one is the same or the same topic, i can do that. but i think it is important to know what oklahomans think. i also think it is important to keep being reminded about what oklahomans think rather than what washington thinks and that is the reason i go home. i will tell you the other thing. i have instructed my legislative correspondents under some good supervision, you research every question. what happens is as i read the proposed answer and question i learn. i am learning things about the government every day, reading answers back to my constituents and get to retain a lot of that.

knowledge of fierce power. my biggest frustration is i know what i have uncovered and seen. most members of congress don't know. if they really knew it, we would be doing something about it but they don't. how do you get their attention? one of the changes i make in the senate fiber majority leader, there's no debate unless there is attendance on the floor. i would never let committee hearings be held at the same time anything is going on the floor and i would require attendance on the floor for the debate. so that you could actually have real debate with real input about what is really going on because i'm convinced senators don't take the time to read as much as they should. everyone is pulling out a senator and if we can actually influence them on what the details are we could accomplish

more. we will all learn from each other better. i will share this example, working with chuck schumer we had the defense authorization bill and there is an area of that i have been overhard on which is we have veterans and come home from iraq and afghanistan and they have either close head trauma were lost the ability for a short period of time to maybe manage their affairs. we have through executive orders in the past, not with this president, with a republican president, taken away their ability to own a gun. not a gun to defend them but to go hunting with their grandson. and no where have they been adjudicated by the court to agree that they should lose their second amendment rights. social worker or psychologists do that. in working through this we had some tough stuff on the floor.

we should do this on people not dangerous to themselves or anybody else and i had a way to roll chuck schumer last week, a second-degree amendment but i actually listened to him and said what are your real concerns? i chose not to roll him. i have a procedural way where i was going to win my amendment. i listened to him. that is what is not going on much. what is going to happen is the staff are going to try to work out his concerns and pass this by unanimous consent. that is not what is done often enough. i was ready to fire and i didn't. so what i hope i have done is build a relationship with chuck schumer but also solve the problem. >> host: we have 45 minutes left in this month's "in depth". our guest is senator tom coburn. a lot of our senator has learned

from research and constituents and listening are contained, is contained in the reports that are available on his web site including subsidies of the rich and famous, back in black and a report on waste in oklahoma. in your home state as well. one area of that is sidewalks only:a federal bureaucrat could love. do you get criticism back home for these reports on waste in oklahoma? >> guest: sometimes i do especially if it is the people who are getting money for the programs that i described as ineffective or not effective. that is my job. my job is to call it as i see it. is okay to get criticism at home like sidewalks to know where. in the stimulus we wasted a couple hundred billion dollars of stimulus money on stuff that was absolutely priority.

we just did because we tried to do it too fast and ineffectively. we for them out and build them again and they go nowhere, they go to a ditch in a town with nobody in it. it is right to be critical of that. i should be criticized if i am not critical and when we do a report i try to look at what oklahoma has done. 50% of the time oklahoma is doing better than a lot of other states on these issues but nobody likes to be criticized when you're pointing out waste. the defenders of the squirrel, the department of everything report we had, we have a squirrel, fake squirrel whose tale is up to see how rattlesnake react. we already knows that. we knew the answers, spending $30 million on pottery classes in morocco when we can't get the play we use for the classes to morocco because -- all this

stuff you have to stand back and say if we're spending money we don't have on this type of thing who is in control up here? who is making those decisions? why are they continuing to make those decisions? why is it the defense department will spend a couple million dollars to figure out how to make better rolled up beef jerky. why? most really like what is out there right now. why was it worth that kind of money. help the government, see if you configure a way to do this. we won't pay you a thing but if we do it well we will buy it for you in the future. why should we be researching? we are spending money doing things that may be ok to do but not at a time you have trillion dollar deficits and we continue to do that and whether it is conferences, always have video teleconferencing ability around

the country with all government offices and we spend $16 billion over the last 9 years on conferences. think about that. find people to conferences when we could have been doing it through teleconferencing. if your grand kids don't have the same standard of living and never going to get a college education and probably not going to have a well paying job why would we continue to spend money on that when that is what the outcome is? why waste money on things that are not absolutely critical right now? when we are stealing standard of living from kids and grandkids? i don't get it. >> host: daniel in indiana, good afternoon, you are on booktv on c-span2. >> caller: i would like to thank you for taking your sunday afternoon to come and get "in depth" with us about your views and other questions from the public. last week senator rand paul stated that the republican party

would become a dinosaur if something wasn't changed radically within the conservative movement. what needs to be done? i know this is hard to talk about because we have strong beliefs? what needs to be done with the young republicans in america to energize not only the republican party but the rest of the conservative movement along with the outskirts of moderates and liberals to come together for the future of not only sound economic policies, but military strategy to meet possibly within the borders of the united states? thank you. >> nobody has ever excuse me of being a strategist nortek titian's awhile apologize for my response. i think principal matters. i think leadership matters. what you have to say is either you believe in limited government or you don't.

history shows that governments that stay very limited survive long periods of time. governments the grow big don't. as governments grow big freedom abates, liberties are lost. so the question is can we as americans cheat history? what do we need to do to do that? i am not so sure it is important we think in terms of republican vernacular. we ought to think about our founders's vernacular, what they were trying to accomplish and how they were trying to do it. if you really read what they said, i know there is some manipulation with some of that but if you just read the federalist papers, it is awfully insightful in terms of what their intent was. what we have to do is embrace a

limited government and have to have a true conservatism, not a cheap conservatism. remembers the republican party associated with george bush when they controlled that period of his presidency cruise the government massively. that was, quote, conservatives doing that and that is free war they were doing that. i would tell you what we have to do is find our values and ask for leadership so that is not cheap conservatism but one that is willing to stand on principle and willing to lose. if you are not willing to lose and you are not willing to stand on principles which means you put the people ahead of principles then there's not much future. >> host: are term limits a cure for the fiefdom politics that we have? fiscal cliff arguments are

juvenile in light of that. >> guest: i agree. i believe in term limits. i actually had no intention ever of running for the senate. i can imagine how great my life would have been had i not. my wife reminds me of that whenever i complained about my job. term limits is a great dancer but term-limits are only going to work if you term limit and ask the populists who have experience outside of the political realm. there really is a lot to say. if you have somebody who had 30 years of experience outside of politics and outside of washington, some real-world experience, if you go through and do biographies in the senate and looked at what is there, even me, i have now had 14 years' experience in the federal

government. that is probably too much. probably too much. i brought a business career and medical career and accounting degree, production management, i brought a different mix to my position so i think what we ought to do is recruit people to run for office to know what they are talking about rather than a lot about politics and how to get elected. >> host: who in 2012 are your top five senators and who are your top five representative? >> guest: oh gosh. i need to think about that one a little bit. >> host: if you want to think about that we will come back to its a widow put you on the spot. john in black mountain, n.c. go ahead with your question or comment for offer/senator tom coburn. >> caller: thanks for having me. question for you.

reading an article in the washington post regarding medical costs. they have an appendectomy in the u.s. costs $13,000 but in germany it is $3,100. you would think it is government run so it is subsidized but yet they spent 11.5% of gnp while we spend 17.5% of gnp. how do you explain the discrepancy? that is my question. >> guest: i think that is a great question. they have somewhat controlled system over there which i have no doubt have good outcomes. german fidelity to the quality and engineering and expectations. we don't have real competition. if you read marty mccrery's book on i am accountable your going to find out the reasons things

cost. often times one of the points he makes and one reason we have physicians with great reputations to all the doctors know are the worst dr. the question is about having transparency on what you get. third thing is they don't have the court system we have which is tremendously expensive. my last few years of practice it was costing me $1,000 to $2,000 a baby in malpractice costs. that was the fully absorb cost. they don't have that. they don't have the hoops and rules and regulations we have. there's a lot to be said about what the germans do and how they do it. but what we would want to apply, the same proclivity for being frugal as they create a government program and our lack of being frugal in any government program we have. >> host: two e-mails semi

related. this is thanks for your service and straight talk. i live in west africa where i hear increasing concern about illness linked to an unhealthy diet, namely the consumption of processed foods. what percentage of the u.s. population do you reckon eats mostly processed foods and how important is this factor in the country's state of health and health care costs? related question to that is this e-mail that came in, your statement that federal government should have no say about our personal consumption choices, eat your vegetables, was the same argument used by tobacco companies who complained about federal government regulation in the campaign against smoking. to you agree with the tobacco company? >> guest: two aspects, they were dishonest about the effects of

their product. in terms of libertarian point of view if you are stupid enough to do it you deserve to reap it. let's go back to the other question. there are great studies right now saying if you have a vegan diet or vegetarian diet and don't have juvenile diabetes you will not get high blood pressure and you will not get diabetes. that is the question. if vegan and vegetarian don't eat processed foods, what is the culprit? the culprit is sodium. if you look at all processed foods. a ton of sodium, in the self there is a poem called a sodium/potassium pump and potassium/hydrogen pump which is the real cause i believe of diabetes. not that this all won't take the glucose but the pump has been overlooked. the american diet is about 16

parts sodium to one part potassium. what it should be is 0.6% sodium to one part potassium so in processed foods your getting 20 times as much sodium as a normal diet should. when you do fast foods or processed foods from the grocery store your getting a low sodium that ultimately is going to give you -- or at least metabolic syndrome or syndrome x which all the doctors know about which is one of the things why we have so much more than the rest of the world. if we educate, i am not saying -- i believe people eat what they want and market which one as long as you are not hurting people, the point is what we have not done is get out and talk about what the real effects are. the usda mandating what they were doing is underfeeding in total calories. they are serving a ton of

processed foods. what they should be doing is we are going to go, if the government is going to get involved we will make a difference, make and do a vegan diet. how we learned this is people with gastric bypass don't deliver -- developed diabetes because they can't absorb of a sodium. what happens? you see this markedly increased incidence of diabetes in people with gastric bypass. we saw people that did have diabetes, diabetes went away. we know diet is immensely important put self discipline is one of the things we prided ourselves on as a nation, personal sacrifice, self discipline, hard work and all these other things and as we undermine a lot of these other qualities and give up our freedoms we are reaping all sorts of negative benefits and one of them is tremendous --

tremendous, massive amounts of diabetes, heart disease, hypertension. >> host: you said you have gone through three different cancer bouts. how serious? what type? >> guest: two of three serious ones, malignant melanoma as a young man, very fortunate, didn't have great odds and was fortunate enough to survive:cancer ten years ago this may, metastatic and recently prostate cancer. >> host: is:can to diet related? >> guest: it is genetic and diet related. is one of those cancers that because we have good early screening or can have the we made great strides in terms of screening and developing and beating it. whereas you can take pancreatic

cancer it is late onset because we can't have early diagnosis so we have seen significant spread of the disease before it is diagnosed. the one thing americans should be proud of, we are going to spend between $26 billion and $36 billion this year, we are on the cusp of such great breakthroughs because we are doing translations research and molecular and cellular research rather than disease based research. the reason that is important to people is because when we learn the functioning of a cell, it has cross application across all the diseases so we're down to the genetic levels of how fins are translated within a cell, with the communicators, proteins and carbohydrates are, and how

that impacts disease. so then we take the information they are learning and look at all the diseases with it and a tendency by congress to push down the disease, do this, do this, fix lung cancer, fix:cancer, the answer to it and the nation should be grateful we have francis collins who did all the work on the human genome. if you remember he is the guy, he is leading this and so it is really important for us to trust, here is one area where they make a bunch of stupid mistakes, they still spend money on stuff we shouldn't be spending money on but overall they are doing a grand job and we are going to see cures for diabetes, we're going to see cures for diseases, we are going to get your on breast cancer, we are going to see such light at

the end of the tunnel over the next ten years, we have a greater understanding how things work at the cellular level land once we understand we will apply to all these others so that is where the great work is being done today and i am proud of what they are doing. >> host: pretty minutes left on "in depth" with tom coburn. hi, bill. >> caller: thank you for your service, your greatly admired by myself and my family. i would like to ask the practical question. in the presidential campaign there seems to be the issues of how many people were on food stamps etc.. i have real-life experience where there's a gentleman where i have coffee every morning and basically has $5,200 on his food stamp card and it obviously a cruise every month and he

doesn't spend that money on food. with the technology why isn't the government looking at that and saying this can't be worth more than $500 or whatever that amount should be? >> we could do that. where is the oversight of congress looking at the food stamp program? in the last six years they decrease the fraud but i am sure the fraud is back up now we have seen this massive expansion but those other commented questions members of congress don't hear from quest -- constituents and don't apply to the hearing and the don't dig it. if you call my oversight staff if i was your senator from montana and you called that would be one of the first letters, how do we handle this? or the question, here is the thing to think about. we just talked about sodium and processed foods and there is no question we want to help people who can't get food but why don't

we use universal product codes to say here's what you can combine and here's what you can't. you can combine pop and potato chips which are loaded with sodium. what we want you buying is other products that are healthy for you that won't cause disease and both of those -- we ought to ask bigger questions and what we will see is more prudence in terms of what we need to spend and the food stamps will help people better rather than worse. >> host: where do you right? where do you write your book? where do you write your report? in your office? at home? >> guest: at home. not my office. what we do is sit down and say where are the areas? we already such next year's areas of study and out for two more years. what are we going to oversight? what we going to look at? what are we going to do? the actual reports are not written by me.

my staff actually writes them. they will go through four or five iterations and go through two or three more in terms of that in terms of raising the question with the american people but i have been blessed with wonderful staff, great people. john hart who essentially put my words, i am not a great writer. i have great common sense ideas and what i want to do is effectively communicate them. then they get changed to something that flows better and sounds better. mostly at home i ride the airplane eight hours each way every week or travel eight hours so i get a lot of time to do a lot of head scratching, thinking, reading, which is very helpful and also depressurizing from what i see up here versus the rest of the country.

>> host: "the debt bomb: a bold plan to stop washington from bankrupting america" came out in 2012, breach of trust in 2003. now let's go to this tweet, top five senators and top five representatives. >> guest: i have a lot of personal friends in the senate. let me think across the aisle. joe lieberman is one of the greatest centers i ever met. the reason he is is he is one of the best listeners i ever met. he is never in a hurry to push you a side. he is always willing to listen. won't necessarily agree with you but really is -- i think he is truly focused on the country. i don't think there is much partisanship in joe lieberman. he is thinking about the country. he is a real statesmen. i have a lot of admiration for dianne feinstein. we disagree more with her than i do with joe but she is a good

listener. she was my chairman on the intelligence committee. i think she will listen and try to make a judgment each and every time rather than blindly say no, that is a republican idea. those are really good qualities. one of my great friends is sex the chandler said richard burr. i love the man's friends but we also put are heads together a lot and think about things. i love jim demint's courage for where he stands on where we need to go. i don't agree with him but he will go down in history as trying to redirect as towards our limited government. he has a lot of courage that way. i have a lot of admiration for different people. in the senate. just like they see my negative qualities and positive qualities but the assumption on those that

i mentioned i really think are thinking long term, not short-term and that is a real problem for us in the senate, we need to think about the outcomes ten years ago, not our political careers. >> host: you walk us through the 1997 coup attempt against speaker newt gingrich and some friends over there. john k. sick, sue myra -- >> guest: she is a lame duck, seller individual with -- she knows what she believes and willing to stand on principle no matter what it costs her. john casek is fun to deal with. as fallout with serving with him, his wife got pregnant with twins, i was still practicing. i got the update every week about how the twins were progressing.

i think there is a loss. the coo was about not being true to what you say. wasn't about being angry. it was about here is the team i came to sign up for and the team's leadership is not how they recruited all of us. if you don't trust people to do what they say you are not going to follow and we had come to a point in time where we saw the politics was more important to our leadership than the principles. >> host: what is your current relationship with newt gingrich and dick armey? >> guest: it is interesting. the observation and dick armey as soon as he announced he wasn't running again, in other words wasn't going to run for congress again, look at his voting record. once you are in leadership, your

job changes and you start seeing how it is important to make the trains run on time and for the life of me, be in leadership and still have the core principles you are seeing some of that exposed by mitch mcconnell today and what he said, here is where we are and where we need to be. we need to solve these things so you can do -- you don't have to -- was interesting for me to see the voting pattern change and turn around to he really was and how he recruited me to the house was among those that did to run for the house anyway. newt gingrich, friendly but strange. >> host: i had another question but forgot what it was so we will go to this e-mail. it is probably better than what i would have asked. facebook comment from mark. please address the very recent

increase in the number of filibusters and the majority leader's comments about his number one -- minority leader's comment about his number one priority of making the president a 1-term president. >> guest: any time a minority leader states that, what you do is create an issue that will distract you, it was unfortunate that it was said. i think most people don't understand what is going on in the senate. let me take a minute to describe it. what did our founders' intent by creating a bicameral legislature? if you read the history, they wanted the house of representatives to be very attuned and responsive to the people. they wanted the senate to do two things. they wanted to make sure that there was never an overwhelming majority or minority where rights were not respected or

heard, didn't have to win but had to be heard. number 2, they wanted long enough terms so people less likely to bend to popular will and more likely to bend to thought and long-term thinking. what has happened in the senate since 2006 is the senate has become politicized to the point, using the rules of the senate to not have to make the decisions that we should. so for example we have had three years of no budget, two years of no appropriation bills. what is that all about? that is about not having to cast votes. the senate won't be of any value if there is no minority rights. might as well not have it. it won't do any good. you might as well have the

unicameral legislature and parliamentary system where the president controls the process but what was unique, and what the stabilizing factor for the society that lot of people don't realize is the fact that when the senate functions the way it should or is allowed to buy the majority leader, the pressure of the minority position, if they can have amendments, if they can express their viewpoint, if they can stop things that they think are important to stop, all of a sudden you don't have a pressure bill where you are totally divided. what has happened over the last three to five years is the reason there is more filibuster's is there is no amendment process. we are doing just the opposite of the defense bill, the leader

put it out there. we are probably not going to vote on cloture orphanage before the end but the fact is he that the process work and people don't feel sorry. here is the question for the questionnaire. because i'm from oklahoma and a republican should oklahoma's viewpoint, unlike the house, not counting? of oklahoma's viewpoint, majority counts, when you were in the minority, it didn't count at all but the senate was designed so the minority always get their say. they don't always win but they always -- that was to be the vessel that allowed the pressure to go off. i understand with everybody out there the campaign has been made

the problem is the filibuster. the problem is the inability of the minority to have amendments on bills. when the majority leader does not allow, there will be no amendments, i will pick the only two amendments, what you think and how to modify it, when the bills that have not been through committee, we have another viewpoint, most of them haven't been through committees that come to the floor because some idea written in their office, that is -- i will tell anybody that is critical of republicans on the filibuster read the history of the senate. robert byrd would be turning over in his grave if he thinks we will change the rules of the senate by breaking the rules. he would never do it. he was the protector of the senate and now that he is gone and when republicans were thinking about doing this, they

knew it would ruin the senate and it will. consequently not only will we have all these budgetary things the senate will not function. you were totally unwind the senate into another house of representatives in the history of the senate as a deliberative body will be gone. with one vote in january. because it will set in motion a chain reaction that will create a reaction over here when we do that, it will create another reaction over here and it will fall down to the lowest common denominator, the house of representatives, the rules committee dominated by the majority and that is it, it is over. >> host: roger in new mexico, a few minutes left on booktv's "in depth". >> caller: i will try to be quick but i got to save the senator reminds me of my grandparents in oklahoma. they lived by the rule of two wrongs don't make a right to.

i think that is a good solid will to live by. i remember reading a book called aftershock about two dangers facing america. one of them is the debt situation whereas your book "the debt bomb: a bold plan to stop washington from bankrupting america" said that the only thing supporting the u.s. dollar is the fact that it is the world's reserve currency. the day that is gone is the dave dollars gone. it becomes worthless paper. would you care to comment about that? >> guest: you are accurate in your assessment of that. one is you heard some discussion this past summer of the chinese and several others thinking of creating another reserve currency or at least using currency denominated costs to be

traded. it is very critical to the world's reserve currency, we started undermining this in 1971 when we went off of the gold standard and as we have printed money, through the last four years we have actually made at worse. to your other point, one thing is an oklahoma value. the only way you can change somebody is to love them and when you forgive somebody the idea of two wrongs don't make a right, what you do is set somebody free. any questions and said this, when you forgive somebody you saddam free and the person you set free is you. so you don't carry to the next level this i got to get even if in fact you have done that and

personal human relationships are the key to how the senate should function and they have been severely damaged over the past six years. >> host: in back in black you write, your staff writes this report provides a plan to put the u.s. back in black by identifying $9 trillion in very specific savings that can be achieved over the next decade. it is the result, for review of every federal department agency program, it does not rely on gimmicks. the late senator warren rudman had done some oral history at the university of california and in that oral history he said, this is in the boston globe, the american people sound great on deficits and debt reduction but when it comes to actually getting rid of the program or reducing the death everybody

overall essentially is week. >> guest: i agree. i think that is true. every program has a constituency or an author or a creator. some have been around long enough to be the creator of the program to build the constituency even though it is totally ineffective, it is either personal pride or authorship or money going into a district. here is where we are. that is why it is important. people realize what is going to happen to us. we don't have the luxury of that behavior anymore. the more we continue to behave that way the later we will respond to the crisis that is coming. everybody is tied up in and not compared to the fiscal cliff, this is nothing compared to what will happen. using two million people losing their jobs is a big deal? if this debt bomb goes off you

will see twenty million people lose their jobs. you will see 17% inflation. you are going to see tax revenues go down. you are going to see all the pension plans in the country go belly up. when you're counting on isn't going to be there. your home isn't going to be work anything, your retirement isn't going to be worth anything. the only people who survive that are going to be the very wealthy. what we are going to see is the crash of major proportions because those of us responsible have fulfilled our duty of sacrificing our political careers to do what is in the best interest of the country. >> host: michael in maryland, please go ahead. >> caller: hello. i have a question and a comment. my first question is did you find the two members of the oklahoma delegation who asked for those sidewalks to know

where and we cannot compare our economy to greece because the only thing the greeks have our beaches and they make a contribution to the world economy like we do. >> guest: here is how you compare to their economy. their economy, they were living off of borrow money and there came a time no matter what their economy produces it still produced a $40 billion year economy, $40 billion, $50 billion and i may have that number wrong. what they produced wouldn't meet the interest needs of servicing their debt so what is happening? confidence in the ability to pay went down, the price of the debt, interest costs went way up and they have gone through two years, three years of austerity with riots and complaints. i'm not trying to compare our

economy. i'm trying to compare what is going to happen to us because the same economic realities will hit us that it grease. we can deny it and say that isn't going to happen to us but everything continues until the doesn't end that is what is going to happen to us. admiral mullen as two years ago when he said the greatest friend to our nation isn't any foreign threat. it is and al qaeda or the chinese russians. it is the debt. when the head of the joint chiefs of staff recognizes the greatest threat to our freedom is the death, he wasn't speaking in military terms. we can no longer be in denial. there are people who are in denial but you can't be in denial and the proof will be when the debt bomb goes off. i'm not saying the earth is

ending we have problems ahead of us that if we act now can make it much better for those who depend on us in the country than ignoring and reacting rather than being proactive. >> host: our first call from oklahoma. hi, marilyn. >> caller: they triage not plan on calling in until i heard you say that the military should be paying for their medicare. i will tell you in 1980 i know for sure if someone who was recruited by the military was told his medical care would be taken care of if he came in that the rest of his life, and i know what i heard that in many cases. the at that time knew that it

wouldn't happen anyway. as and had parkinson's through this tour in vietnam. everyone made this sacrifice and those with two years made sacrifices and even though you made a sacrifice is not compared to what the military has made by joining the military. they are the ones who keep this country safe. i don't understand. >> host: let's hear the response from senator coburn. >> guest: you can debate what the recruiter told -- what our troops signed was they have health care are not medical basis, but let's say they did. my point is not since 1995 has there been an increase in the cost of that for our retired military which i think everyone has to sacrifice and i think they should have to as well. that is not undermining their sacrifice or not being

appreciative of their sacrifice. all the way from txs to grocery store to retirement benefits, we have done better and doing better every year in terms of how we support that but to say there shouldn't be an increase ever as long as you live in terms of your co-pay associated with your health care, the country can't afford it, isn't going to happen and we might as well get used to the idea that all of us have to give up something including those to make $174,000 a year like me. >> host: maxine from oklahoma, final call. >> caller: i am 86 years old. i live alone. i have medicare but i also carried myself a good medical policy. i am happy with that. i think people everywhere i go that have never worked a few i sitting at home trying on

medicaid, medicare that the government is giving to them. that is where i think we should begin. call out those that are undeserving, make some function with less or something but not a full benefit for having done no working. i have seen quite a few dollars at the doctor's recently and always question my doctors about the cost and talk to them about the cost before i have but test. i have a good medical plan but i question the doctors because i am 86 like i say. you have to watch things that are happening in the world around you. >> host: do you know where that is? >> guest: i am trying to think. i am not sure i do.

that goes back to the book the tragedy of american compassion. one of the things he raises in that book is how do you get people to motivate to enhance and better themselves rather than become dependent? creating dependency hurts people. it doesn't help them. helping people who actually need your help and not creating dependency is a great way to be compassionate. we can do it the right way. the question is like i said earlier if you make something affordable, if you want to make something expensive have the government make it affordable because we are not very effective at what we do and we end up in the name of doing good with pure intentions undermining the future and that is what we have done on many of these programs. >> host: is there a third book coming? >> maybe but it won't be anything about politics. >> host: what is it going to be

about? >> guest: in my medical career and what i have seen one of the ways americans are handicapped today is through anxiety, worry and fear. of i started doing an outline of that because we allow that to capture as too much and we have too many positive things to look forward to that we could use some help with on that. i saw it in my medical practice and i see it here. >> host: breach of trust:how washington turns outsiders into insiders came out in 2003 and "the debt bomb: a bold plan to stop washington from bankrupting america" came out in 2012. several reports, long form, 600 page reports, back in black, "subsidies of the rich and famous" are available on the senator's website as well. senator tom coburn, medical doctor, senator and doctor, we appreciate you being on this