Coburn Bets ‘A Porterhouse Steak’ that Obama Will Sign Cut, Cap and Balance

by Mike Brownfield

How confident is Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) that President Barack Obama would sign Cut, Cap and Balance legislation if it makes its way to his desk? So confident that he would wager a Porterhouse steak.

He issued the high stakes wager in a press conference today, making the point that America has a major spending problem, the President needs to sign a bill that solves it, and the Cut, Cap and Balance bill which passed the House on Tuesday is the only viable option on the table. In other words, Obama would have no other choice:

So the point is I’m willing to go out across this country, even if the polls are 70 percent against what we’re doing — the fact is you can’t solve our problem unless you do what “Cut, Cap, and Balance” wants to do. So, it doesn’t matter what the polls are. We’ve got to fix our country, and this is the only viable plan right now that will do that, and I will bet you a Porterhouse steak if it lands on his desk, he will sign this puppy.

Coburn’s assertion comes as Washington continues its months-long struggle to reach agreement on how to raise the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling while cutting spending. This morning, Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner described the division that has emerged as Washington stands at its budgetary impasse. In short, on the one hand there is a solution, and the other there is rhetoric:

On one side are those who have come to realize it would be madness to let the political class borrow more without imposing a serious check on government spending. They have produced budgets and now an actual legislative plan to get things under control.

On the other, you find those who consider more spending, taxing, and borrowing a royal prerogative. They have produced nothing but rhetoric and empty promises and have pushed this debate to the brink.

And that is Coburn’s point. President Obama ultimately will be unable to escape the cold, hard fact that the debt ceiling saga must come to a conclusion. If he wants it to end favorably–if he wants the problem to be solved–and if the Cut, Cap and Balance legislation is the only way out, he will have to sign it.

You can bet your Porterhouse on it.

">