Congress needs to cut spending now or face fiscal Armageddon later, one senator warned Sunday.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) predicted “apocalyptic pain” if Congress does not enact major spending cuts.

“If we don’t fix the problems in front of us everybody’s going to pay a significant price,” Coburn told host Chris Wallace.

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The senator predicted that the US could face an economic crisis like the ones in Greece and Spain if changes aren’t made soon.

“I think within three to four years if we have not done the critical changes that we have to make, I think the confidence in our economy and in our currency will be undermined significantly,” he said.

Coburn recommended sending “a signal of to the rest of the international financial community that we are going to start down a road to austerity, we’re going to start living within our means, we’re going to decrease our spending, and look at what the true role of the federal government is and try to limit our impact to that range, and we’re going to eliminate programs that are not a priority.”

“What is happening in our country is we’re not taking seriously the real and urgent threat that will undermine the standard of living in this country,” he continued.

“I told you the other evening if we didn’t take some pain now, we’ll experience apocalyptic pain. The idea should be that we control it,” Coburn added.

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The senator suggested that the incoming 112th Congress could begin by cutting $100-200 billion in federal spending. He said “both Republican and Democratic administrations have refused” to make the tough choices needed to rein in the deficit.

As an example of wasteful spending, he cited the existence 267 federal job training programs across 39 different agencies.

This video is from Fox’s Fox News Sunday, broadcast Dec. 26, 2010.

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