states in terms of our own finances, and what you realize is that we're the best looking horse in the glue factory. [ laughter ] we're the only rosebud that isn't starting to wilt. and so our -- the comfort that we've experiencing today is really based on a relative comfort based on how the world is viewed everywhere else but here. europe's troubles will give us a reprieve, but they won't solve our problems. that's why leadership is so important, and -- and let me step aside for a minute. all the republican candidates in the primary i knew. i knew them well, from newt gingrich, to ron paul, to tim pawlenty, to rick santorum, and as a conservative i endorsed mitt romney.

and as a physician i want to tell you why. the problem in our country isn't that we don't have solutions. the problem in our country is that we don't have leadership, bold leadership that will teach and taught to the american public as adults and then lead on those principles, and if you go look at the life of mitt romney, at every juncture, at every intersection, at every challenge in his life and in his professional career he has demonstrated the qualities of leadership that i want for my children and grandchildren. [ applause ] and i would just have you contrast that with what we have today in the white house. the other thing i would have you

think about in terms of the problems in front of us is the contrast of where we are, like a college student that has five credit cards and now is trying to get the sixth one to be able to pay the interest on the other five, and guess what? the credit card isn't going to be available to us. solving the financial problems of our country, our debt and deficit is paramount for us having the vibrant economy and not doing anything is not an answer. not doing anything is a tax increase on everyone in this country. but more importantly, and -- and i want you to see this the way i see it. i do town hall meetings that have anywhere from 800 to 1,500

people all the way down to 50. when i ask seniors are you willing to do hard things for your children and grandchildren that would renew the american growth and excitement and vibrancy? every time they tell me yes. but just so you'll have a picture of what it msnbc if we don't. i want you to think about every 8-year-old and below in this country shackled both at the ankles and at the wrists for their entire life because what we're about to do in this country under this president's leadership or lack thereof is to create an environment where their opportunity, their standard of living and their liberty will be so constrained

that they will never taste what we have known in terms of what is known as america. so i'm dedicated my time and my life in washington for the next four years to make sure that doesn't happen to your grandchildren and does not happen to mine. [ applause ] we have no problems in front of us that are insolvable. what we have is a problem with a career status quo that thinks about the next election and places its priority in their own political career ahead of what is in the best interest of this country. our founders understood that. as a matter of fact, one of the things that's not talked about much but was written about a lot at the founding was called the

term rotation. only one of our significant founders didn't want to use rotation, ie term limits as part of our founding documents, and they really didn't think it was very important because back then who in the world who want to spend their life in washington, and the same today. have you to ask that question. who would want to spend their life in washington?have you to . who would want to spend their life in washington? no one should. no one should. so where we see the problem as we saw this week with the supreme court is what our founders intended. they talked about a balance of power between branches, but the greatest balance of power that they talked about was the balance of power of us holding the government accountable, all three branches, and that's why

this election and what can happen with this election will be seen as either the beginning of a renewal of the american spirit or the acceptance that we will go the way of every other republic. let it not be so. let it not be so. how do we fix it? it's not hard. we have to be honest with ourselves about where we are. we've made promises that will never be kept. in no way can they be kept, so the adult conversation needs to be had is what are the problems and what are the possible solutions? and the first thing is to get our country going again economically, and if any of you will recall the reagan years you will recall a

four-and-a-half-year span where we had actual gdp growth of 4.9%, two and a half times what we're seeing today, creating 10 million to 15 million jobs a year. why was that? that's because they reformed the tax code. they took the abnormal incentives out of the tax code, and they replace it had with the incentives that capital will flow where capital will be rewarded, so broadening the base and lowering the rates will change what is lacking today which is confidence and certainty. second thing. entitlement programs. you know, my staff just finished working up 59% of american households get over $2,500 a year from the federal government. let me repeat that. $ $59% of american households get

over $2,500 a year from the federal government. are we past the tipping point? i don't think we are, and the reason i don't think we are is because of the history of who we are. america has done hard things. america knows how to do hard things. hard things are going to be required of us to solve the debt and deficit problems in front of us. what is lacking is krablgous moral leadership to send us in the direction that we need to go. the final thing we need to do is to quit sending $300 billion a year out of this country for energy. [ applause ] i had a debate with that very popular and renowned economist

paul krugman who once -- who wants to have another $800 billion borrowed and another $800 billion stimulus. there's now $2.6 trillion sitting on corporate balance sheets. that's about 1.7, 1.8 trillion more than normal, and it's sitting there because there's no confidence or certainty about the future. the best way to have that money invested is to create expectations and confidence about the future through our tax code, through our energy and through our refinement of our entitlement programs. we can keep commitments to seniors, but we have to change how we do that, and that requires rigorous leadership, but it also requires honesty and an apolitical answer when the political questions are asked. and i would put forward to you the stance that we can't ever have a tax increase puts us in a

place where we're going to guarantee there's going to be a tax increase in this country because it's called final repression, and when all of a sudden your 401(k) or your i.r.a. or your son-in-law or your daughter graduating from college can't get a job and the value of that i.r.a. and that 401(k) can purchase a third of what it could before, that's a tax increase, and that's what governments do by printing money like we're seeing the federal reserve do today, because ultimately the price for printing that money will come back with a decline in the purchasing power of everything you have. it is the worst tax on everybody in this country, and it's called inflation, and it will be with us. it will come screaming out of thin air, and it will punish us like no other method of

taxation. so we should resist that, and we should do what we need to do to solve the problems in front of our country. i'll close with this. there's only two areas in our country where we do not let markets work. as americans we've proven to the world this a free enterprise system, although not perfect, causes markets to allocate resources better than any other method. we spend $2.75 trillion a year on health care, and we know 850 billion of it is wasted. 1 in $3 does nothing to help anyone get well and does nothing to prevent anybody from becoming

sick. the answer is to reconnect payment with purchase in health care. [ applause ] and the affordable care act goes just exactly the opposite of that, and then finally the other area where we don't trust markets is education. we spent $2.7 trillion since 1970, and there's no parameter of education measured in this country that is better, and many are worse. if in fact you want something to become affordable, you can guarantee if you ask the government to do that, it will make it more expensive, and that's exactly what's happened to college education and education across this country. i -- i would leave you with the thought that this country is on the brink of a new beginning. with our energy reserves, we are

going to see a manufacturing renaissance in this country lake most of us have never experienced if we're allowed to utilize it. america has more energy than china, saudi arabia and canada combined, and yet we're the only country in the world where we as citizens own that energy and our government refuses to allows us to use it. that has to change. [ applause ] 2012 is important. to me it's a seminal moment for our country. we always hear elections are important, but we've seen the largest, strongest move towards collectivism by this administration that has ever before been seen in this country, and we can see the failure of the chief justice,

and in my opinion a failure to fully understand and comprehend the founders' intent of a limited government. and so the balance of power, if we're to change that, it depends on us. it depends on you, we, the people. and they counted on us to control washington rather than washington to control us. it is time we do it. it is time for us to move. it is time for us to sacrifice in many ways to make sure we accomplish the fact that there is a president romney, that there is a large majority of republican -- conservative republican members of the senate, and that the house is maintained by the republicans. if you want to save this country. [ applause ] now, usually with my speeches, i have prozac pills at the back as

you exit. i'm not depressed about our country. i'm worried. i'm anxious, but you can change it. and you do so by demanding the truth, and you do the work to get the transparency to hold us accountable to the very standards, beliefs and more or less that our founders initiated with the founding and birth of this country. i'll take any questions that you might have. thank you very much. [ applause ] thank you, good to see you. >> we'll open it up. we'll open it up just like we did with, of course, bill bennett to senator coburn here. i'm take the liberty to ask the first question, and then we've got microphones around here. senator coburn, you speak eloquently in your book "the debt bomb" about the morality or the immorality of debt.

can you spend 30 seconds and just talk about debt. you talk about moral leadership and the lack thereof. what about the morality of debt? >> well, the morality of debt, corporate debt as a nation is a form of thievery. think about it for a minute. when i went to the senate in 2004, the average individual debt on our national debt was under $30,000. it's at almost $60,000 per man, woman and child. second point. if you have an adolescent in your household today, when they were my age, if we don't change things, they will owe, not counting interest, in excess of $1 million per person. that's what they will be

responsible for in terms of our accumulated debt and the compounding interest on it. there is a question to ask. i'm doing a big study on disability right now. is it moral to create dependency in individuals? or is it a petter option to nurture them to earn success and raise the lid so they can achieve their god-given abilities? and if you really look at what we've done with many of our, quote, social welfare programs, is we've taken away opportunity. god's gift to these individuals to excel in many ways as we've undermined personal responsibility in our country, and that's why moral leadership, character-based leadership is so important for our country in the next few years. >> very good, very good.

a followup question. can you buy your book on credit cards, sir? no, i'm just kid begun that. that was a very poor joke. let's go to better questions, and we've got the microphones set up here so go right away. >> thank you, senator coburn. my name is juri, and i would like to find out how to address progressives who believe that health care is a right. thank you. >> well, let's -- let's -- let's expand. if health care is a right, the right for me to have a home is a rig right. the right for me to -- in other words, what you have to do is have you to carry it on. what is not a right? what our founders said was a right is the right to pursue, life, liberty and happiness. there was no guarantee that you would have life. there was no guarantee that you

would have happiness. there was no guarantee that you would have liberty, but what you were guaranteed was the right to pursue it. there's no question most people in our country feel compassion for those that need our help. bill bennett referenced it. we're the most charitable group of citizens of any country anywhere in the world. mast, we're the most charitable group privately in terms of what we do in terms of our own aid. so the question comes what's next, and that's in the our founding principles. the difference is to help somebody means to love them which means you give of yourself. there can be no compassion in a government program because there's no sacrifice in a government program. [ applause ]

>> let's go over here this time, please. >> senator coburn, thank you so much for your moral leadership. i have a small business question. another monstrosity that came out of the pre-2010 congress wa the dodd-frank bill. that didn't get as much negative publisity as obamacare but it is still a big deal can you speak to what you would do to encourage a repeal of that law or modification of that law? >> let me share with you coburn's rule of bureaucracy.

dodd-frank is built on the premise that we can regulate every error or wrong mode out of the financial system. ca and you can't. milton friedman had an interaction i'm skipping his name from chicago. the radio and tv talkshow -- phil donahue, he asked him comparing the free enter price system. it isn't perfect. but there's nothing that compares with it. what liberals do to us is they say see, it doesn't work. but they never look at the 98% of it that does work. when we try to control everything with a bureaucracy and regulation, we can control it. people will still cheat and get

around it. but we have cost opportunity that gets filtered and magnified in an exponettial fashion and what need to happen, there needs to be transparent regulation in every area that puts our nation at risk. but it needs to be based on smen sense and things that actually work and it needs to be able to be anticipate d what is the cos benefit what is happening right now in our banking industry, one of the reasons we are not growing is our small and medium sized banks are so tied up in knots from fdic new rules that we are seeing a half a point a year less in gdp because of it.

i'm on a bill to eliminate dodd-frank and start all over. [ applause ] let's go over here to the far right. how appropriate. go ahead. >> dr. drive murray from denver. in your book you talk about the careerism not only of our legislators but those that move onto the lobby phase of washingt washington. what incentive could there be to cause people that we send to congress to limit their time in office? >> well, that is a great when. who you send matters. if you are sending somebody from the real world.

who has an appreciation 70% of the senate has never had a real job. they lack real world experience. how do you think they ended up with programs causing $30 billion a year. the point is, make them sign an after dafidavit and notarize it. if you byou pick from the bench. if in fact you limit your terms. you can guarantee it is not going to be about you. if you don't, then what it says

is when it comes down to push versus shove. my political career ends up trumping the best interest of the nation. they didn't say we are going to have a tax to pay for it. they used it as a method to get themselves to get re-elected. you would create a funding stream to pay for it. don't send a career politician

to washington. make them sign that pledge. he is one of the best senators in the united states senate. he knows what is possible and fights for it every day. >> we have time for just one more question. which one of the four has the best question? he beat you. this is a market question economy here. and look at this, this is the generosity that we talked about, you said give this gentleman the question. >> my name is marlin doorhout. i don't know much about bonds, but i know when you keep debt in the family, the family as a

whole is better off. i'm just wondering if we can't find a way to sell u.s. savings bonds and pay off china with that -- with those bonds and other countries and have the debt in our family where we are paying interest to ourselves. would that not be better? that is one of the reasons that japan with 220% debt to gdp ratio twice ours has not experienced significant problems yet. but they will in the next five years. debt crises to go away without default. we have a chance to save our

country and not default. i would encourage you all, if you are not getting much in the bank or in your ira, it does help us. it puts us at risk of selling the bonds.

unless you see a romney republican leadership in washington. and the other thing you should be vigilant. if you put us in charge, hold our feet to the fire to do the right best thing for this country. thank you. [ applause ] senator tom co burn. and thank you very much for this opportunity. >> coming up on c-span3. a homeland security submit looks at the security committee. and honoring former congresswoman giffords.