I love this guy - Washington is full of crapheads, too!!!
Coburn is one of a small number of Senators with gonads.
Posted on 04/28/2005 9:23:35 AM PDT by churchillbuff
Dr. Tom Coburn, a U.S. senator from Oklahoma for less than four months, last week was up to old tricks he started playing in the House a decade ago. He was making colleagues' lives miserable by exposing wasteful, unnecessary spending that is supposed to stay hidden. The Senate establishment, like its House counterpart, has retaliated by bringing ethics charges against the obstetrician-senator for going home to Muskogee, Okla., to deliver babies.
In a legislative body where members spend much of their time off the Senate floor begging for money, it is worthy of Kafka that the only pending ethical proceeding involves Coburn's concept of the citizen-legislator. Unless the rules are changed, Coburn must either break his campaign pledge of continuing baby deliveries or leave the Senate.
His early departure from the Senate would occasion rejoicing there, as he showed April 20. Not observing a freshman senator's customary silent period, he proposed reducing the $592 million for a new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad provided by the emergency supplemental appropriations bill. Coburn argued that because only $106 million could be spent over the next two years, ''we are going to have $486 million hanging out there that will be rescinded and spent on something else.'' Instead of settling for the usual voice vote, Coburn insisted on a roll call (which he lost by only 54-45).
The Oklahoma GOP establishment thought it was finished with Coburn when he fulfilled his term-limit pledge and left Congress after three terms, ending in 2000. His subsequent memoir showed his contempt for Capitol Hill mores. When a Senate seat opened for the 2004 election, Coburn withstood vicious attacks in both the Republican primary and general election campaign.
On Dec. 2, a Senate staffer handed Sen.-elect Coburn's chief-of-staff a letter signed by Sen. George Voinovich, the Senate Ethics Committee's GOP chairman, and Sen. Harry Reid, then the panel's ranking Democrat. The letter ordered Coburn to stop practicing medicine.
The staffer was no stranger to Coburn: Robert L. Walker, staff director of the Senate Ethics Committee. He held the same post for the House Ethics Committee the year after it made the same demand in 1998. House rules were not as firm, and the ethics panel backed down in 1998 when Coburn made clear he would quit Congress before he quit medicine. But Senate rules prohibit ''substantial'' outside income.
During six years in the House, Coburn's campaign against pork-barrel spending made him anathema to Republican leaders. He planned a lower profile in the Senate, but the ethics complaint made that impossible. He also had an agenda ensuring him more attention than ordinary freshmen: bringing free market principles to health care, oversight of federal programs (as chairman of the Federal Financial Management Subcommittee) and assaulting congressional pork. For the first time since Phil Gramm left the Senate, Sen. John McCain had an anti-pork partner.
In the April 20 debate on the supplemental appropriations bill, Coburn was the only senator to support McCain against Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who was mandating that a $40 million project go to a ''Philadelphia-based company.'' ''I believe this is the wrong way we should be doing things,'' Coburn told the Senate. ''We need to stop. Our future depends on the integrity of a budgeting and appropriations process that is not based on politics but is based on having the future best will for our country.''
It is hard to exaggerate how much Coburn's rhetoric riles pork-loving colleagues, explaining the absurd ethics proceeding against him. In answering charges that he is a part-time senator, Coburn wrote constituents that he will continue to ''devote at least 60-70 hours per week to my Senate duties.'' Other senators spend as much time as Coburn back home but mainly for fund-raising. They are not stopped from padding their bankrolls with book royalties, farm income and investments.
With little chance Voinovich will bury the complaint in the Ethics Committee, Coburn can hope that the Senate Rules Committee under Chairman Trent Lott will save the Senate from embarrassment by amending the rule. What is sure is that Tom Coburn will neither yield nor shut up.
I have never been prouder of my Senator. Keep up the great work, Dr. Coburn.
Amen to that brother! Tom Coburn don't scare worth a damn!!
Hopefully, the only way he will resemble McCain is in fighting to get rid of "pork".
Add this to the growing list of things that are really pissing me off about the Republican Party. Kudos to Senator Coburn! We need 99 more like him. Actually, we need 543 more like hime.
OMIGOD! They have an honorable conservative in the Senate and he must be destroyed before he contaminates the other 99.
Yes, that will be the only way. Dr. Coburn is very conservative and will back ending the filibuster of judges, etc.... The only way Dr. Coburn is like McCain is when it comes to fighting pork. I hope that Dr. Coburn actually takes to the Senate floor and names names about those wanting to waste our money.
One thing the Republican Party doesn't want is an elected conservative. Simply goes against corporate policy.
I must read this. BTW, Coburn was just wonderful today during the Judiciary Committee hearings on the asbestos fund legislation. He confounded them with facts and science. It was priceless.
Stupid Party lives....
Yeah, tell that to Herb Kohl.
I'll bet if he were flying home on weekends to perform abortions nobody would be saying anything.
Coburn is a hero - one of the only ones in Congress, especially the Senate, who isn't a thief.
It would seem that Pubs_R_Losers, too.
I think it's great that they made his quote larger than their request to get him to apologize.
I wonder how many people, reading that sign, agree with him?
I bet it's more than the people who are against him will admit.
I'm sure that sign gave the people a good laugh before they went to the polls and voted for him overwhelmingly. LOL.
I just wish one of the Louisiana senators, Landrieu, had the same perspective...I think Vitter does but he is not as confrontational as Coburn...if we had 100 Coburns in the Senate, this country would have a much brighter future. Doc, keep up the good work....
BTW, how much was SENATOR Clinton's book advance? And how much did she earn from the book in royalties?
How much does Jon Corzine earn annually, excluding his Senate salary?
This is a crock...and Voinovitch leads the charge. What's with this guy? First Bolton, now Tom Coburn. We continue to eat our own. We continue to look rudderless.
I love this guy. We should all write the other 99 thieves in the Senate and tell them we support his ideology wholeheartedly.
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