During an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday morning, Senator Bob Corker, a member of the Senate Budget Committee, said the "greatest threat to our nation is our inability to get our fiscal house in order."
He said, “We’ve got all these threats around the world… but right now our greatest threat is ourselves.
We have $20 trillion in debt, and we’re continuing to do things that make that worse every day. And I believe unless something abruptly changes very soon, we will have a fiscal calamity.”
Senator Corker also discussed the need to enhance the ability of low-income citizens to buy health insurance.
“I think everybody recognizes in our caucus that if somebody is making $12,000 a year and you only give them enough of a subsidy to buy a $6,000 deductible policy, that’s not really health care,” he said. “And so we do need to deal with this.”
Senator Corker also stressed the need to reform Medicaid to help address the mandatory spending problem that he said is the most critical element of the looming fiscal crisis.
He said, “We have got to deal with the mandatory spending issues. We have to deal with them. It’s 70 percent of our spending. Medicaid reform has to occur. There are a few states around our country that, in essence, are holding us hostage… For us to say to states, ‘Look, we’ll continue to have the Medicaid expansion, and here’s the deal: we’ll pay two-thirds of the cost, if y’all will pay one-third of the cost. We’ll give you the flexibilities that you need to make it work.’ And for them to say, ‘No, we would throw everybody off the rolls’ and for people then to say we are heartless, to me, is a ridiculous proposition.”