E-mail a friendSen. Tom Coburn
airdate December 16, 2008
Oklahoma's Tom Coburn is one of only two licensed doctors currently serving in the U.S. Senate. He's a staunch fiscal conservative and a rare non-attorney on the Judiciary Committee. He previously served in the House—keeping his pledge to serve no more than three terms—and co-chaired President Bush's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. After graduating with an accounting degree, Coburn was a manufacturing manager. He later returned to school to become a physician. He's also a two-time cancer survivor.
GOP senator discusses the short- and long-term implications of the failure of the auto industry bailout in the Senate. (4:29)
Full interview. (11:46)
Sen. Tom Coburn
Tavis: Senator Tom Coburn is serving his first term in the U.S. Senate from Oklahoma, having previously served in the House. He's also a medical doctor who has served as co-chair of the president's advisory council on HIV/AIDS. He joins us tonight from his home state of Oklahoma - Tulsa, specifically. Senator Coburn, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Senator Tom Coburn: Great to be with you.
Tavis: There are a number of reasons why I wanted to talk to you tonight. The first, of course, is this auto bailout. You are one of those Republicans who has been opposed to this thing from the very beginning. Now, your president, Republican George Bush, says that something -- I'm paraphrasing, of course -- something has to give.
The president and the White House are prepared to do something now to help bail out this industry, never mind what others in the Senate like you have had to say. What do you make of where we are at this precarious time for the industry?
Coburn: Well, I think something certainly needs to happen. We don't need to have everybody lose their job, we don't need to have the industry go away, but whatever we do, it ought to be through the eye of long-term success, and what was passed by the House and what was turned down by the Senate was a disaster waiting to happen that will just delay the time at which all these people lose their jobs.
And so I applaud the president for trying to do something; I'm worried about using TARP funds for it, because you can't move past the auto industry and into them without telling every other business that's been ravaged by the downturn of the economy that the American taxpayer is going to have to bail them out.
Tavis: Tell me specifically, Senator, what it was that disappointed you about a lack of a plan, if I can put it that way, and more expressly what you would have liked to have seen, or see, if the president, in fact, is going to move on this?
Coburn: Well, I think if he moves on it, what we would ask -- and you have to -- look, this is not all the United Auto Workers' fault. When you have management that agrees to contracts that's going to kill a company, it's not the auto workers that caused it, it's the management.
But what had been requested is that at some point in time, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler have to have competitive wages, and the further out that is, the less likely they are to be successful. And the hang-up over what stopped the progress in the Senate was a lack of refusal that at any point in the future we will contend and certify that we're going to have competitive wages with other domestic auto companies, even though they're transplanted or not.
And there's no reason to take the first dollar of taxpayer money, regardless of how much the short-term pain is, unless you're going to secure the future for all these jobs. And if the plan by the Bush administration is to do the same thing that passed the House, what you can assure yourself is that we're going to spend at least $100 billion with no guarantee that the American taxpayer will ever get their money back.
Tavis: Why would the president do that?
Coburn: Because he's more worried about the short-term shock and pain to the economy and how that will reflect on him, I'm certain, and how that will reflect. I don't want us to do this, either, and I sent a message to the White House today suggesting that if you're going to do this, at least have the requirements that we requested that we could not get agreement on in terms of competitive wages.
And that way, at least the American taxpayer has a shot at getting their money back, and number two, the confidence that the firms are going to be there. If you give $14 billion or $15 billion knowing you're going to have to give more, what will happen is there'll be less confidence in the domestic auto manufacturers, because will we continue -- at what level will we stop sending money?
And there's going to be plenty of things competing for that, and what we hear is well, you bailed out the banks. And as a conservative I voted for that bill, but not to bail out the banks -- to bail out Main Street so that we could have commerce flowing, which was frozen.
And so people have a right to be upset with Congress, they have a right to -- the United Auto Workers have a right to be upset with us that we drove such a hard bargain, but the long-term benefit for this country is we better get this right, and we better not send money down a rathole that we know isn't coming back, because we're going to need all the money we can get.
We're going to be borrowing far in excess of our ability to repay over the next two years, and whatever we spend, it better be spent really wisely and very prudently.
Tavis: I guess the question is, Senator, if I were one of the three CEOs of the Big Three, and god knows these days I'm glad I'm not, but if I were sitting here now and heard you say that you voted as you did, for the measure to bail out the banks, the argument for that was, as you've stated yourself, that it was going to have a devastating impact on the economy.
The auto workers, if they were here, the three CEOs would say the same thing, that when you look at the millions of jobs that are connected to the auto industry -- not just those who make the cars, but the suppliers; I know you've heard these arguments -- they would make the case we're talking millions of people who are going to be impacted by this.
So if the argument is to bail out the banks because of a negative or disastrous impact on the economy, could the auto workers make the same argument, and then say, "Senator Coburn, you ought to vote for us, too?"
Coburn: Yeah, I obviously wasn't very clear -- I wasn't voting for bailing out the banks; I was voting to maintain commerce in this country. And had we not bailed out the banks -- not the auto companies but John Deere, Caterpillar, Boeing, and every other commercial enterprise that uses commerce, liquidity and commercial paper would have gone under.
And so it wasn't about the banks, it was about commerce in this country, and where is the money? The money flows through the banks and the financial institutions. So the press has continually said that this is a bailout for the banks. Well, half of the banks got forced to take money that they didn't even want to take because we're trying to drive liquidity, drive down short-term interest rates, correct the question of fear in the markets, and so it's a considerable difference.
If, in fact, I voted to bail out the banks, the United Auto Workers would be absolutely right and say I'm taking a double standard.
Tavis: Fair enough.
Coburn: I didn't vote to bail out the first bank -- I voted to make sure we still had commerce operating in this country.
Tavis: I hear your point loud and clear now; thank you for the clarification. Let me ask, though, if, in fact, the auto industry, and for that matter anybody else, before you guys helped them, if the automakers can't get money from the banks because the banks don't have the commerce to loan to anybody else and the banks are caught in that situation like everybody else -- that is, again, to say unable to draw money down from the banks -- where do they get that money to keep them from going under if not from Congress?
And I'm not supporting the argument -- I'm just asking the question. If you aren't going to give it to them, where are they going to get it from?
Coburn: That's a great question, and the answer to that is a prearrange bankruptcy, Tavis. Is, in fact -- if you heard, all the players, with the exception of UAW, embraced Bob Corker's plan, and the reason they did is because they knew that that was a way to solve their problems and they knew it was a way to make them successful in the future.
And they knew that we wouldn't have a problem. If you have debtor and possession lending, then you're the primary security. So all of a sudden, things loosen up for the auto companies, or the American public could be the debtor in possession.
But the fact is that's why we have bankruptcy in this country, and the very adamant position is that you could not have a prearranged bankruptcy with the government backing up the warranties and the floor plan still being able to be financed, and then these companies work off their debt.
If the president goes on and does this, you got General Motors with $62 billion worth of debt. You're going to add $9 billion more debt on it, and the reason they're failing is they can't tolerate the debt. And so they'll never repay that money -- they'll never be able to repay that money because they have a capital structure that is not conducive to ever becoming profitable again.
Tavis: I got two minutes, Senator. Let me ask you two quick questions, if I can -- we'll do a minute on each, if we can. The first question is you are the only practicing physician in the United States Senate -- he's a Senator, and yet he still practices medicine. When you have the time to practice, I don't know.
Coburn: Well, early mornings. I practiced this morning and saw about six patients early this morning before I came to Tulsa. So on days that we're off, on Monday mornings, before I come to Washington I go to see anywhere from eight to 20 people.
Tavis: So if you are a Dr. Coburn patient, the best time to see him is Monday mornings.
Coburn: That's right, yeah. (Laughter.) But it's a great benefit to me, because I get the wonderful picture of being able to visit with Americans as a physician, not a senator, and I get to see a whole different perspective than that of a politician. It's tremendously valuable.
Tavis: I'm glad you went there, Senator. I would suspect it is valuable. To that point, as a physician practicing and a member of the U.S. Senate, practicing in that body, what ought we be doing on the healthcare crisis? It was debated so much during the campaign -- where do you come down on universal healthcare?
Coburn: Well, as an obligation one human to another, we ought to be helping everybody that's sick. We ought to create a way to do that. Our problem, Tavis, is we have plenty of money in healthcare -- $2.4 trillion a year. The fact is, 30 percent of it doesn't help anybody get well, and 30 percent doesn't prevent anybody from getting sick.
We don't need to do anything except have some market forces and availability -- making sure everybody has an option and a way to get it. And we have plenty of money to continue to get the best care. And the second thing is we need to switch our paradigm to one of prevention.
And if we'll go to prevention as our number one goal, we're going to save a ton of money. And if we don't, there's no way we're going to be able to afford the $85 trillion just in Medicare alone that the Medicare trustees said this year -- $85 trillion.
Tavis: When you come back on this program next, we'll talk more about that. I'd be curious to pick your brain more about this universal healthcare issue, because I know it's going to be hotly debated in the coming term by Mr. Obama, and I want to close on that right quick.
You are a Republican, he is a Democrat, and yet he served in the body that you serve in, and you all heretofore have sponsored legislation together.
Coburn: Yes, we did.
Tavis: As a Republican, as a member of the minority party in the Senate now, what say you about your working relationship and that of your colleagues, Republicans, with Mr. Obama, come a few weeks from now?
Coburn: Well, I think it's going to be -- mine's going to be great. I've talked to him since he was elected; we have a great personal relationship as well as professional relationship. He's going to get a nice honeymoon period, he's going to get a lot of benefit of the doubt.
We're going to hold him accountable where we think he's absolutely wrong or if he's nominated, we think, somebody that might need better qualifications or better character width, but overall, he's going to do a good job in this tough time for our country.
Tavis: Senator Tom Coburn, Republican out of Oklahoma -- Dr. Coburn. Nice to have you on the program, sir.
Coburn: Tavis, good to be with you.
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