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U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn called out Democrats, Republicans, Newt Gingrich, the military-industrial complex, teachers unions and Medicare - to name a few - at a town hall meeting Friday.

"The real problem is that America is asleep," Coburn said, speaking mostly in response to questions from an audience of about 65 people at the Wagoner Civic Center. "America is not involved. I think this election they'll be more involved than they ever have been, and the reason is they're scared."

"If the conservatives in Congress gain control and don't live up to expectations," he said, "the Republican Party will be dead."

Coburn also expanded on his recent criticism of arms spending, echoing President Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 warning against the "military-industrial complex."

"I'm not capable of telling you, because I don't have the training, whether we have the forces we need," he said. "I can tell you that if you add our forces and compare them to the next 19 nations, ... we're stronger."

He continued: "The problem is, we have allowed the military-industrial complex to make things unaffordable. There's no choke chain. We need a choke chain. When the cost of an F-35 triples during development, something's wrong."

As he has in the past, Coburn blasted health-care reform and traced the rise of medical costs to the introduction of Medicare in the 1960s. He said schools "are no longer about kids, they are about teachers' unions," and he claimed that academic achievement has gone down since the creation of the U.S. Department of Education, although some statistics argue otherwise.

Coburn also repeated what has become a popular line among conservatives - that "no one has ever been hired by a poor person" - to support tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations.