One of the source e-mails I receive from Patriot Post gave me this heads-up on an item that could be included Friday. Because this goes along with a pet peeve of mine, I realized pretty quickly that there was no way I could write this in a small enough word count for inclusion so I decided to bring the item here in a longer format.
It quoted John Fund of Opinionjournal.com:
Majority Leader Harry Reid has had it up to here with Tom Coburn, the Senate’s scourge of excessive spending and pork-barrel earmarks. Mr. Reid is telling reporters he will no longer tolerate the Oklahoma Republican blocking about 100 bills using the power Senate rules give individual member to stop legislation from coming to a floor vote. Mr. Coburn objects to many of the bills because he says they would enrich special interests and private developers at the expense of taxpayers.
So Mr. Reid is taking the unusual step of assembling a package of bills that Mr. Coburn has stopped, forming an omnibus bill and ramming them through the Senate before it leaves for its August break. “For those of you who may not know this, you cannot negotiate with Coburn,” Mr. Reid told reporters. “It’s something that you learn over the years, that it’s a waste of time.”
Mr. Reid’s decision now puts added pressure on Mr. Coburn’s fellow Republican senators. An omnibus bill can proceed to a floor vote if 60 Senators agree to cut off debate. With many GOP Senators having inserted provisions into the bills Mr. Coburn is blocking, they will be torn between supporting their colleague in his fight against excessive spending or risking losing projects for their state. Mr. Reid’s move is a clever way to force Republicans to choose between their self-proclaimed principles and pork. It will be interesting to see just how many side with Democrats in their effort to roll over Mr. Coburn.
Senator Coburn should be regarded as a hero for attempting to roll back the pork; unfortunately his fiscally-responsible stances tend to make him a pariah in the Senate – even (shamefully) among members of his own party. He brings up more and more proof that the Seventeenth Amendment was a mistake.
But it seems to me that, in the dim recesses of my memory, the Democrats ran a campaign in 2006 which pledged to clean up the “culture of corruption” that they blamed on the GOP majority in power at the time. And if you follow the argument to the logical conclusion, the cause of the corruption was in large part Senators being enriched financially by special interests in return for special favors from Congress, such as earmarks to benefit those who provided the cash!
So here we have a lone voice in the wilderness who won’t retreat from his principle of taxpayer money serving the public’s good and not particular special interests, and the Democrats won’t take advantage of a position they gave lip service to just 2 years ago and allow Senator Coburn’s objections to stand. After all, one could infer from Senator Reid’s comments that there are only a few small portions of each bill which draw Senator Coburn’s ire; therefore it should be fairly simple to drop those amendments and clauses to get the main bill passed. But instead Reid is going to use the Oklahoman’s objections to score political points.
It’s only natural that Democrats inside the Beltway would campaign by saying one thing and govern in a completely opposite manner, for that has been their modus operandi since at least the days of George McGovern. But Senate Republicans are placed in one serious pickle because a portion of their base is completely up in arms about earmarks and federal spending in general but as part of the minority their opportunities to secure re-election by bringing pork back to the home state voters – those who are gullible enough not to realize that their one pork project in their state begats 49 more in all the other Senators’ home states – are few and far between. Unfortunately my bet is this play by Senator Reid means that most Senate Republicans have to abandon their party’s principles once again and nullify Tom Coburn’s efforts at some measure of fiscal sanity in Washington, D.C.
Given Senator Coburn’s pledge to term-limit himself (as he did after three terms in the House of Representatives) we may only have another two to eight years of his principled fiscal conservatism in the Senate. Obviously the Democrats can’t be trusted to watch out for the taxpayer so those of Coburn’s ilk need all the support they can get as they travel the road less traveled in Washington.
Most of all, I’m pleased about Reid’s statement about negotiating with Tom Coburn – when it comes to principle, there should be no negotiation with one who would act completely counter with your desired action. Hopefully Senate Republicans will grow a pair and stop Reid’s omnibus bill dead in its tracks.
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