No Dealing On The Debt Ceiling, Part 38

GOP Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma has decided he's had enough of this debt ceiling nonsense burning up Washington, so he's deciding to put the fire out with 30 metric gigatons of hyper-flammable extra-explosive napalm.

Republican Senator Tom Coburn said he will unveil a plan tomorrow that would cut $9 trillion from the federal budget over the next 10 years in an effort to curb spending and avoid a default on U.S. debt.

While he said he doesn’t expect his plan to pass Congress, it would offer a wide range of spending cuts and revenue increases that could be used as the basis for bipartisan negotiations on a budget compromise.

“We have $9 trillion worth of savings that are achievable over the next ten years,” Coburn said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “Pick half of them. Half of them solve our problems.”

With Washington deadlocked on a strategy to cut spending and raise the nation’s borrowing limit before an Aug. 2 deadline, the Oklahoma Republican said he will offer a 10-year plan that cuts defense by $1 trillion, makes changes to Social Security and Medicare, and raises $1 trillion through changes in the tax code, among other things.

Some Republicans, including Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona, have resisted any talk of tax increases as part of a budget deal.

“We should focus on the real problem, the spike in spending, and not this phony problem of taxes,” Kyl said on ABC’s “This Week” program. 

It's a great plan, since President Obama showed the GOP is completely uninterested in $4 trillion in deficit reduction, Coburn's plan to shave $9 trillion by closing tax loopholes and cutting defense spending will show the GOP is even less serious about deficit reduction than before.

Not sure what Coburn's doing here other than to show the country just how good the GOP is at wasting everyone's time, but there you are.