i think a lot of people are saying this will be longer than that. look, i think it is critically important that we get a plan in place to get this debt under control. i will vote for short-term extensions. i think it would be catastrophic to renege on our debt, but we have to have a long-term plan to deal with this. senator coburn, if you look at the polling on this, americans, if you ask them, do not support raising the debt limit at this particular time. do you think, are you confident that there will be any linkage between spending cuts and a vote to increase the debt ceiling? well, the only way we solve our very real problems is to start getting our spending under control. a debt limit doesn t really mean anything, because we ve always extended it. and the treasury secretary has the ability, even if this debt limit is not extended, he has the ability to continue to pay interest on our bonds. the idea that we might say that this is catastrophic is wrong.
control. i will vote for short-term extensions. i think it would be catastrophic to renege on our debt, but we have to have a long-term plan to deal with this. senator coburn, if you look at the polling on this, americans, if you ask them, do not support raising the debt limit at this particular time. do you think, are you confident that there will be any linkage between spending cuts and a vote to increase the debt ceiling? well, the only way we solve our very real problems is to start getting our spending under control. a debt limit doesn t really mean anything, because we ve always extended it. and the treasury secretary has the ability, even if this debt limit is not extended, he has the ability to continue to pay interest on our bonds. the idea that we might say that this is catastrophic is wrong. what is catastrophic is continuing to spend money that we don t have on things we don t absolutely need and continue to
our very real problems is to start getting our spending under control. a debt limit doesn t really mean anything, because we ve always extended it. and the treasury secretary has the ability, even if this debt limit is not extended, he has the ability to continue to pay interest on our bonds. the idea that we might say that this is catastrophic is wrong. what is catastrophic is continuing to spend money that we don t have on things we don t absolutely need and continue to mortgage our future and not fix the very real problems that are in front of us. senator coburn, before we go, i want to ask you a political question as i asked senator mccain. you have been critical of newt gingrich because of multiple marriages, saying you ve said in the past he doesn t have the commitment to marriage to be a good presidential candidate or, indeed, to be president. do you think that donald trump will face similar difficulties, having been married several times, with conservatives? you know, not
right now. we don t really have time to get to a huge holistic solution. sure, we do. do we have time. it won t happen before the election. we have time. it won t happen before the election? why not? both sides want to push the issues for their own election. imagine the primary base for the presidency blessing it? that doesn t mean the congressional leaders won t strike a deal? they could but won t because republicans are too disciplined to cross their own presidential nominees. they won t do it. they did it in 1995. coming up in a few minutes, florida governor rick scott will be here to talk about the one year anniversary, the bp spill. what else do we have coming up? a smooth transition to the jersey shore. we can talk about this for some time. rules being laid down by the
has said and, as tom said, we need to deal with the revenue. deficits are caused not just by spending which is a driver, of course but also, when you gets the folk at the top, the big tax breaks which happened, and it exploded the deficit. chris: less than a minute left, senator coburn you voted against the debt limit a half dozen times over the years. what are you going to need to agree to raise the debt limit? first of all, people ought to ask a what is the debt limit? it is ridiculous. when was it not raised? the debt limit doesn t mean we limit our debt. it says we will, oh, borrow more. what do i need? absolute certainty we have made the critical changes that are necessary to put the country back where it needs to go. and, unless we do that there is no way i support it and, the fact is, we ll have a debt crisis, either with this, or soon thereafter, if we don t come together.