When it comes to politics in this country, we’ve got plenty of cooks in the kitchen, except they’re whipping up a recipe for disaster.

Yesterday, the Senate voted down the same payroll tax cut extension they defeated last week, wasting all of our time on yet another bogus debate about jobs when americans simply don’t have time to waste.

Let’s compare shopping lists, if you will. First, here’s Congress’ shopping list:

Payroll tax cuts, emergency unemployment benefits, medicare reimbursement rates, and — if possible — don’t let the government shut down next week.  (How’s that for high hopes?)

How about America’s “to do” list? Well, we need 30 million jobs and a wave of innovation in health care, energy independence, and education.

You get the point. Nothing on Washington’s list even comes close to serving the interests of the American people to drive investment and job creation to solve our problems.  (Remember, a payroll tax cut doesn’t help if you don’t have a paycheck and one in five of us don’t!)

We have all the ingredients to fix America’s most pressing problems, but we quite simply have the wrong recipe.  It’s a recipe being baked by special interests, purchasing our politicians to invent them from initiating the very investment we so desperately need.

Dylan talked to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) about this issue yesterday on the show.

“We’ve spent 40 years growing a government that has become highly ineffective and highly inefficient. We’re going to have to make tough choices over the next two years to get our fiscal house in order. If we’re going to truly create jobs, what we have to do is every dollar that the government spends has to be done properly. Not wasteful, not duplicated, and not associated with fraud — there’s $200 billion worth of fraud per year coming out of the federal government,” said Sen. Coburn.

He also sees career politicians as a huge problem that needs to be fixed.  “If there’s any way you can buy me, then I’m of no value to the people of oklahoma or this country,” said Sen. Coburn.

How does he suggest we fix that?  “First of all, you eliminate long-term service, by term limits, and let the American people decide what that is. Number two is the voters have the ability to fix this in the next few elections. Don’t keep re-electing career politicians,” said Sen. Coburn.

“If our focus is who’s going to be in power and who’s going to be here the next election, the problems take short shrift. They’re second behind what the primary goal of the politician is,” he continued.  “So I’m a self- term limited senator. I agreed to never serve more than two terms. I won’t serve more than two terms. That gives me a tremendous amount of power, because I’m going to do what’s in the best interest of the country, and I don’t care what somebody says or whether they support my election, because I’m not having another election.

Watch the segment with Sen. Coburn from the December 8th edition of the show here: