Sen Tom Coburn

[Rascal]

"Sen. Tom Coburn (R.-Okla.) is set to introduce three commonsense amendments to the Water Resources Development Act to prioritize federal spending.

A statement from his office said, "By taking up this bill before emergency funding has been provided to U.S. troops on the frontlines, Congress has failed to take care of national security needs before addressing its own parochial interests."

According to information from his website, his first amendment to WRDC will provide emergency funding for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan without unnecessary pork barrel spending and without mandating surrender or retreat.
His second amendment will require that the needs of all Louisiana residents displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are met before spending money to design or construct a visitors center near Morgan City, Louisiana.

This third amendment to the bill will require that the residents of Sacramento be protected from the threat of floods before federal funds are spent to add sand to beaches in San Diego."

[clarkster]

Originally Posted by Rascal

"Sen. Tom Coburn (R.-Okla.) is set to introduce three commonsense amendments to the Water Resources Development Act to prioritize federal spending.

A statement from his office said, "By taking up this bill before emergency funding has been provided to U.S. troops on the frontlines, Congress has failed to take care of national security needs before addressing its own parochial interests."

According to information from his website, his first amendment to WRDC will provide emergency funding for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan without unnecessary pork barrel spending and without mandating surrender or retreat.
His second amendment will require that the needs of all Louisiana residents displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are met before spending money to design or construct a visitors center near Morgan City, Louisiana.

This third amendment to the bill will require that the residents of Sacramento be protected from the threat of floods before federal funds are spent to add sand to beaches in San Diego."

that **** all makes sense. itll never fly...

[Spider]

surrender or retreat ? I wouldnt expect anything less from some raw boned Okie goofball .........sure mr President , you can have all the money you want to stay in Iraq , for as long as you want ...........

[Rascal]

The Senator Fighting Pork
Tuesday, May. 02, 2006 By PERRY BACON JR.
Article Tools
Print
Email
Reprints

Tom Coburn, a Republican Senator from Oklahoma, has a problem with the $106 billion bill the Senate is working on that would help pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, preparation in case of a breakout of avian flu, rebuilding of the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina — and many tangentially related projects. Well, actually, the first-term Senator has at least 19 concerns. He called $176 million in the bill to refurbish a retirement home in Mississippi for veterans an "arbitrary sum." Another $10 million to equip fishing boats with logbooks to record data on how much they fish they were catching was "corporate welfare." And to Coburn, a $500 million provision to pay a defense contractor for business it lost due to Hurricane Katrina was "unnecessary and excessive corporate welfare."

A soft-spoken, polite man who has long worked as obstetrician, Tom Coburn has angered senators from the right and the left in his decade-long battle to cut what he considers pork-barrel spending from the federal budget. Coburn has diagnosed such spending, known as earmarks, as "the gateway drug to spending addiction" and he's determined to cure Congress of this malady. As the Senate has worked to pass a key appropriations bill over the last two weeks, Coburn has attached 19 amendments to the bill, all targeting spending provisions he thinks are pork. Most famous for his attacks last year on the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere" — which would have spent more than $200 million to connect two virtually uninhabited areas in Alaska — Coburn now has his eye on a bunch of projects inserted in this bill by two of the most experienced and powerful men on Capitol Hill, Mississippi Republican Senators Thad Cochran and Trent Lott. And while Lott and Cochran won a vote last week to keep in the bill $700 million for a railroad in Mississippi damaged by the hurricane that has already been rebuilt (a project dubbed the "Railroad to Nowhere" by critics), the Senate rejected $15 million for a program to promote eating seafood. "We're making good progress," said Coburn. "It tells you they're [his colleagues] listening better." With the Senate looking to move on to other issues, Coburn says he won't push for votes on all 19 of his amendments, but will insist on a handful, particularly one to stop money from going to Northrop Grumman, a shipbuilding company that lost money because of work disruptions after Hurricane Katrina.

The mild-mannered Cochran seemed a bit frustrated with Coburn's tactics last week, and that's not unusual. Coburn's habit of going down to the Senate floor and ridiculing projects his colleagues want funding for is "annoying" to some of them, says Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida. Alaska's Ted Stevens threatened to resign from the Senate if it supported Coburn's drive to cut the "Bridge to Nowhere" from last year's budget, and Coburn won only 15 votes for the provision. But while his victories are rare and the ire from his colleagues high, Coburn says he doesn't mind. "I don't care about the next election. I don't care about getting reelected," he says. "We have to change the process."

Controversy is nothing new for Coburn, who joined the Senate in 2005. Elected to House in the historic Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, Coburn developed a reputation there for annoying Republican colleagues by demanding for cuts in wasteful spending. Along with his fiscal conservatism, he's also a strong social conservative. He's been criticized by other doctors for questioning the effectiveness of condoms and last year suggesting Terry Schiavo's doctors had not properly diagnosed her condition. He has suggested that if abortion is made illegal, doctors who perform abortions should be given the death penalty and called the notion that global warming is occurring "crap." And for many years, looking to promote abstinence, he has given Capitol Hill staffers a detailed presentation on sexually transmitted diseases that includes many pictures showing how they harm the body.

While they may not endorse his views on social issues, Coburn's allies on his efforts to cut spending are perhaps the two most popular men in the Senate: Illinois Democrat Barack Obama and Arizona Republican John McCain. Before Coburn arrived in 2005, McCain was the chamber's most vocal basher of wasteful spending, but he has eagerly ceded that to Coburn, while working with the Oklahoma Senator to strategize on how to cut earmarks from this month's war spending bill. Obama, much to the left of Coburn, is an unlikely friend, but the Senate's most famous freshman said his and Coburn's wives became fast friends during the orientation for new senators and their families, and Obama has vocally supported Coburn's spending efforts. "He's fearless in his approach," says Obama. Coburn has also found support from groups like Citizens Against Government Waste and the American Conservative Union, as well as a blog called porkbusters, to which his office is often feeding information about egregious earmarks, in the hopes of stirring opposition in conservative blogs that could embarrass his colleagues into limiting their earmarks.

But while Coburn is dogged, it's not clear how effective he is. No matter how many earmarks Coburn fights, dozens remain in the bills Congress passes. And for all the attention he has received, Coburn is calling for only $3 billion in cuts in a $106 billion bill. "The cost of pork in dollars amounts is not that large," says Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, "but in terms of time and energy, it takes up a lot." To achieve Coburn's goal of balancing a federal budget of more than $2 trillion — with an estimated deficit this year of more than $300 billion — would require drastic spending cuts that Coburn might support but that his colleagues would almost surely oppose even more fiercely than they have fought his campaign against earmarks. But Coburn is determined. Asked by reporters where he would take his pork fight next, he mentioned some spending bills coming up and added with a smile, "It's going to be a fun summer."

*******

One of the constant complaints about the Bush White House from Capitol Hill is that the Administration doesn't listen to members of Congress. But since the appointment of new chief of staff Josh Bolten, the White House seems to be trying to change that. In a period of about 36 hours last Tuesday and Wednesday, President Bush personally met with about one quarter of the U.S. Senate. There was a bipartisan discussion with five Democrats and five Republicans about Iraq on Tuesday morning, followed by another large bipartisan session on immigration. The next day, Bush invited a group of about nine GOP senators, mostly chairmen of key committees, to another meeting in which he listened to their concerns on a wide range of issues. "I think it's a major outreach program," said Olympia Snowe, a Republican from Maine.

Ultimately, of course, many Senators will judge the President's "listening" campaign on whether he heeds their advice. And on that score, it was a mixed bag. Snowe, in the meeting with top GOP senators, called for Bush to extend the May 15 deadline for when seniors can sign up for the prescription drug plan and offered several proposals to lower gas prices. But the Maine Senator and the President couldn't even agree on how many seniors have yet to sign up for the drug plan (Snowe said 8 to 10 million , while Bush said it was 6 million). However, the White House did agree with one of Snowe's suggestions, announcing the next day a proposal to increase fuel economy standards for cars, as part of its strategy to reduce gas prices. On the other hand, when Republican Arlen Specter brought up his concerns about the NSA domestic wiretapping program that allows searches without warrants, the President "didn't choose to engage" on the issue, according to the senator. The next day Specter held a press conference in which he said he might seek to withhold funds from the NSA for the searches until the Administration informed Congress more fully about the program.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...190071,00.html

[Rascal]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2005Apr5.html

Ethics Panel Finds Conflict With Senator's Job as Physician

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 6, 2005; Page A05

For years, Republican Tom Coburn juggled his duties as a House member and a family physician back in Oklahoma, where he delivered dozens of babies annually.

But since winning a Senate seat last fall, Coburn has clashed with Senate ethics committee members over whether he could continue to do double duty as a lawmaker and an obstetrician. Now, Coburn says, the ethics committee has ruled that his private practice constitutes a potential conflict of interest with his work in Washington, and it has given him until Sept. 30 to close his office in Muskogee, Okla. An outraged Coburn is vowing to fight the ruling, arguing that the panel's decision contradicts the Founding Fathers' desire for lawmakers to retain ties to their communities.

In an interview yesterday, he vowed to seek the backing of sympathetic grass-roots groups to try to persuade the panel to alter Senate rules and open the way for doctors in the Senate to see patients for pay.

"My hope," he said, "is to get a rules change that will allow me to continue to practice medicine."

Coburn and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) are the only senators who are physicians. For nearly two decades, Senate rules have barred members from holding outside professional jobs, such as those as lawyers, real estate agents and physicians, for fear that such services -- and compensation for those services -- might conflict with their role as policymakers. The Senate panel refused Coburn's request to grant him a special exception once he closes his business.

The decision is a blow to the freshman who pledged at almost every campaign stop last year to serve as a citizen legislator -- a senator in Washington and an obstetrician-gynecologist at home.

The maverick conservative won election to the Senate last November after a bitter battle with Democrat Brad Carson. Coburn's medical practice became an issue when he was accused of sterilizing an underage women without her consent. Coburn denied the charge and called it a smear tactic by his opponent.

Last December, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate ethics panel warned Coburn in writing that long-standing rules prohibit senators from receiving compensation for various professions, including a medical practice. The committee asked Coburn to shut down his practice by the time he was sworn in.

In response, Coburn, 57, stopped accepting new patients "to comply with the spirit" of the request and began negotiating with the committee to waive the rules in his case. Meanwhile, he has continued to see patients and deliver babies in technical violation of those rules.

Coburn argued that the nation's founders envisioned that legislators would continue to function as citizens in their communities, including as doctors. He said that he wanted to make only enough money as a doctor to cover his expenses, and that working as a physician does not pose the same kind of potential conflicts of interest that being a lawyer might.

He said that he has a duty to his patients, many of whom are indigent, and that he needs to continue his practice to maintain his skills and his medical license.

"I am currently caring for many high-risk patients including some who have multiple sclerosis and other debilitating conditions," Coburn wrote the committee. "I simply cannot abandon those patients. I trust that the committee can imagine how abruptly terminating my practice would violate my medical ethics."

While Coburn served in the House from 1995 to 2001, that chamber's ethics committee allowed him to practice medicine provided he did not receive net income beyond his expenses.

But Senate ethics rules do not differentiate between net and gross income, and the Senate panel concluded on March 18 that physician-lawmakers are barred from taking any money from patients regardless of expenses.

Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), the ethics panel's chairman, and Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), its vice chairman, informed Coburn by letter that "it would not be possible, prudent or fair" for the panel to reconsider or reinterpret the rules, which have been in place since 1977.

The original rules were written during the reform-minded period after the Watergate and South Korea influence peddling scandals when lawmakers were cracking down on their own conflicts of interest and other possible ethical lapses.

The Senate committee did agree to Coburn's request, conveyed by J. Steven Hart, his attorney, to allow the senator to take nine months to close shop, enough time to see his pregnant patients to term.

Coburn said that he will continue to treat patients until the end of the year, but, in line with the ethics panel's decision, will not take any payment from them after Sept. 30.

In the meantime, he said, he intends to "live by the rules" but added that "I would love to enlist anybody's help that I can to put a balanced perspective on the issue."

[Rascal]

Robert Novak’s column about Dr. Coburn published in the Daily Oklahoman

May 2, 2005

WASHINGTON - 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 to deliver babies.

In a legislative body whose 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. It is serious. 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 since 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 only by 54-45).

The Oklahoma Republican 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, 2004, a Senate staffer handed Sen.-elect Coburn's chief-of-staff a letter signed by Sen. George Voinovich, the Senate Ethics Committee's Republican chairman, and Sen. Harry Reid, then the committee's ranking Democrat. The letter ordered Coburn to stop practicing medicine.

The staffer was no stranger to the new senator: Robert L. Walker, staff director of the Senate Ethics Committee. He had 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 Committee 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 he is a part-time senator, Coburn wrote constituents last week 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.

[Rascal]

He's an idiot in his support of the Iraq war, but it's apparent he is the type of politician we need IMO. Wish we had more like him (Iraq views withstanding).

I was skeptical when he became Oklahoma's senator, but I've been very pleased with his performance thus far.

[Hotrod]

Wait a damn minute here.............were adding sand to beachs WTF is that all about

Keep your eyes out for the bill to add water to the ocean

[Crushaholic]

Originally Posted by Hotrod

Wait a damn minute here.............were adding sand to beachs WTF is that all about

Keep your eyes out for the bill to add water to the ocean

Believe it or not, it makes sense. The beaches have been eroding for years and it's time to replace the sand.

[Hotrod]

Originally Posted by Crushaholic

Believe it or not, it makes sense. The beaches have been eroding for years and it's time to replace the sand.

Really, I guess that makes sense.

Heres an idea thou why dont we ask each soldier coming back to fill one pants pocket with sand. Then they stop in San Diego on the way home and empty their pockets. They get a nice long weekend paid for in San Diego and we get sand.

See thinking like that is why I should prolly be in office.

[Billy Clyde Puckett]

I heard on the radio at lunch an interview in which the speaker (sorry, I tuned into the middle of the interview and did not get his name) was telling the story of talking to a US congressman about how thoroughly he read each bill in congress. The congressman said he hardly read them at all and depended on his staff and others in his party to provide him with input regarding the bills. When asked why, the congressman said he had to raise an average of $60,000 per day to get elected and stay in office. That is where all of his time was devoted. If this is true, it's no wonder our political system is toally f'd up.

There is also the story of Sonny Bono (of all people) carrying a budget bill to the podium and ranting that no one in congress could possibly read and understood the entire 1600 pages.

A good book on this very subject is "The Corruption of American Politics - What Went Wrong and Why" by Elizabeth Drew

[Crushaholic]

Originally Posted by Big Guy

I heard on the radio at lunch an interview in which the speaker (sorry, I tuned into the middle of the interview and did not get his name) was telling the story of talking to a US congressman about how thoroughly he read each bill in congress. The congressman said he hardly read them at all and depended on his staff and others in his party to provide him with input regarding the bills. When asked why, the congressman said he had to raise an average of $60,000 per day to get elected and stay in office. That is where all of his time was devoted. If this is true, it's no wonder our political system is toally f'd up.

There is also the story of Sonny Bono (of all people) carrying a budget bill to the podium and ranting that no one in congress could possibly read and understood the entire 1600 pages.

A good book on this very subject is "The Corruption of American Politics - What Went Wrong and Why" by Elizabeth Drew

The American political system is truly sick...

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Originally Posted by Crushaholic

Believe it or not, it makes sense. The beaches have been eroding for years and it's time to replace the sand.

Yep, we have to replace sand here about every 5-10 years. As far as the Okie Senator trying to practice medicine while he tries to Senator, the rules are pretty clear and for good reason.

[Rascal]

If he wants to practice medicine and not charge them, or if he can prove that he makes enough money for expenses only, I don't have a problem with it.

But that is a minor thing compared to the grand scheme of things. Eliminating/fighting pork barrel spending is a much bigger issue IMO.