Posted on 05/02/2005 1:42:42 PM PDT by HJH207
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$106 million could be spent over the next two years, ''we are going to have $486 million hanging out there that will be rescinded and spent on something else.''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.
"Last time I checked being as senator is a full time job. A lot is expected from them and if I were a resident of Oklahoma I would be a little peeved that his attention was not focused solely on working for Oklahoma. I hope he realizes this and gets back to being a full time senator."
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Article I, Section IV Constitution of the United States:
"The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, [and such meeting shall be on the first Monday in December,] unless they shall by law appoint a different day."
Our founders wrote this because back then (before the spread of American socialism) Government didn't have the power to tax and spend all your families money, in fact it didn't have the power to do much of anything besides negotiate with foreign powers and declare war(which was good)! Our founders wrote like this becasue they were actually afraid that Congress wouldn't meet ENOUGH. Which is really fine, this is the whole idea - a citizen politician.
However, over the years Government has given itself tyrannical powers and now a power hungry bunch of elected thieves now sits in Washington year round getting their friends rich at our expense. When one good man stands against the flow he gets slammed for it.
Perhaps you think what I'm saying is 'radical', but I think if you look into it, its really 'right'.
On some level, I agree with you but there still remains the problem of conflict of interest. If we let Coburn do it, we have to let others as well. This could mean that a Senator could be a CEO of a major corporation (and would probably vote for pork directed at his industry). If they can et around that and the people of Oklahoma are okay with it, why not.
This could mean that a Senator could be a CEO of a major corporation (and would probably vote for pork directed at his industry)
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I think some of our CEOs would be pretty good Senators. In fact, JP Morgan and a group of private bankers once were looked to by the public when the economy turned south, not the Congress - because the Congress didn't have the power to do much!
So, if Congress didn't have the power to pork barel spend, then it wouldn't matter who was elected to the position. Congress has given itself the power to pork barrel spend -and create regulations that are = to pork barrel spending in that they steal money from us in the future rather then in the present.
That would be none of your damn business. Unless it's you.
Then fire him and get a differant doc.
Hey Tony,
I'm not suprised. Back on election night I was at this party for the Cuyahoga County Republican Party. I was chatting up this Voinovich intern until she told me she was rooting for Coburn's opponent. I'm certain she must have gotten her anti-Coburn bias from her boss.
Yes, well, we're used to holding our noses while we vote here in New York City--although the smell is coming from the left.
It wasn't a criticism of HIM holding both jobs. It was me just wondering why a pregnant woman would want a doctor that is RARELY around?
By the way . . . "different"
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