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Coburn the
Barbarian
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On current
trends, freshman Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is soon going to need a food taster to
accompany him to the Senate dining room. Which is all the
more reason for the rest of us to admire his political nerve.
Mr. Coburn
yesterday took to the floor not once, but twice, to force his colleagues to defend
some of their more egregious "earmarks,"
or pork projects they plan to funnel
to home states. The Republican dared to use the "p" word
("priorities") and suggested that taxpayers might be better served if
hurricane relief was offset by deleting earmarks for a sculpture garden in
Washington state, an art museum in Nebraska, and a Rhode Island animal shelter,
among other national necessities.
Washington Democrat Patty Murray escalated immediately to Defcon 1, vowing that if her colleagues so much as blinked
at her sculptures she'd personally see to the untimely demise of their own
projects. Mr. Coburn lost 86-13. The miracle is he got 13.
Senator Non
Grata returned to the floor later in the day, this
time to suggest shifting $223 million from the infamous "bridge to nowhere"
in Alaska to a bridge over Lake Pontchartrain that
was damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Alaska's alleged Republican Lisa Murkowski
responded that the very idea of refusing to spend $4.5 million per each of the
50 residents on Alaska's Gravina Island-so that they
would no longer have to take a sevenminute
ferry-was, well, "offensive." As we went to press last night, the
vote on this amendment was still being tallied, but you already know how it
turned out.
Rest
assured that none of this is making Mr. Coburn popular with his colleagues,
Republicans or Democrats. The Senate is a club and one thing that is beyond
ideology is "earmarks."
They're almost considered to be a perquisite of service, like a golf
membership for a CEO (at least before Sarbanes-Oxley). Mr. Coburn is risking
his dinner invitations by daring to shine a public light on his fellow
Senators as they practice their everyday, routine outrages. Good for him, but
he'd better hire a bodyguard
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