By Danielle Knight
As the Senate hammers out next year's spending bills, Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is on high alert. The physician turned lawmaker has become known on Capitol Hill as the chief fiscal whistleblower, irritating Republicans and Democrats alike when he holds up bills he deems wasteful. Several weeks ago, he embarrassed Democrats by removing a $1 million spending earmark from the Labor appropriations bill that would have gone to a performing arts center in New York that included a tribute to the 1969 Woodstock festival. The senator recently spoke in his office about why he's so fired up against pork barrel spending.
How did you become the spokesperson against earmarks?
Earmarks is the symptom of the disease. What's the disease? The disease is a comparison of us versus what's best for our country. When I ran, what I said is that the biggest problem in our country was the culture of Congress because the culture is the thing that limits the Congress from doing what is best in the long term for the country.
The people up here are good people. But they are human, and their desire for themselves oftentimes gets in the way of the desire for the best interest of the country. Earmarks cause us to think short term about, "How do I satisfy the desires of people from my state?"... Earmarks really aren't about helping your state. They're really about helping you look good in your state. And if it is about helping you look good in your state, then it is about you, which means it's about your next election, not what's in the best long-term interest of the country.
Read more...Labels: Sen. Tom Coburn
Posted at 11/09/2007 03:35:00 PM
