Mike Rosen, Mike Coffman, 7/04/2011

Station: 850 KOA

Show: Rosen

Guest: Coffman

Link: http://www.850koa.com/pages/mikerosen.html

Date: 7/04/2011

Corporate Tax Rate, Budget Ceiling, Defunding the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funding, Global Warming, Discretionary Budget Cuts, U.S. Army, July 4th, Post 9/11 Military, Iraq, Afghanistan,  Senator Mitch McConnell, Tax Code Reform, Loopholes, Deductions, Growing Economy, Capital Inflows, Discretionary Spending, Defense Spending, Entitlement Reform, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Growth Rate, Unemployment,   Representative Paul Ryan, Armeed Services Committee, Nation Building, Yemen, Somalia, Al Qaeda, Cap and Trade

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Coffman: “I am all for reforming our tax code and doing away with these loopholes, supposed loopholes and deductions credits and all this good stuff.   But I want it to be revenue neutral in exchange for a lower marginal tax rate. I think we can grow this economy to create more revenue for the federal government. Although I think that we need to bring down the size of the federal government. I don’t think it should ever be larger than a fifth of this economy. Right now it’s a quarter of this economy…”

Coffman: “Gates put out a list of cuts that he thought should occur and some of them were savings that would be redirected towards higher purposes in defense and some of them were savings, period, that could bring down he deficit. I thought that, I vetted all of those cuts, disagreed with him on one but just the bulk of them agreed with. And what Paul Ryan did was take that top line reduction and say, ok this is what you get. And the Armed Services Committee on the own would have never done that…”

Coffman: “There are weapon systems that I think we need to take a second look at. And we need to take a look at this nation building stuff. I think it is very expensive direction and the template of what we are doing in Yemen and Somalia with special operations to deal with Al Qaida is probably what we are going to do moving forward. It would be far less costly than these heavy footprint conventional operations where we need to administer a country and make them look more like us…”

Coffman: “Its tough for the wrong reasons. Where they are talking about in my district I am defending a particular manufacturer or a defense contractor whether or not I believe that weapons system is critical to this country or not, its about jobs for my district. We have to stop looking at defense as a jobs program and start saying are these dollars being spent in the best interest of the country.“