I'm going to keep on digging the tunnel under spending." Because, he says, large deficits reverse the American tradition of making sacrifices for the benefit of rising generations: "I'm an American long before I'm a Republican, and I'm a granddad before I'm either one of them."
"If I don't get reelected? Great. The Republic will live on."
and:
When Coburn disparaged an earmark for Seattle -- $500,000 for a sculpture garden -- Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) was scandalized: "We are not going to watch the senator pick out one project and make it into a whipping boy." She invoked the code of comity: "I hope we do not go down the road deciding we know better than home state senators about the merits of the projects they bring to us." And she warned of Armageddon: "I tell my colleagues, if we start cutting funding for individual projects, your project may be next." But Coburn, who does not do earmarks, thinks Armageddon sounds like fun.
Since Ted Stevens went ballistic over the cancellation of his damned bridge, I have had some hope that he would penalize all of the other senators who wanted their pet re-election projects, I mean their earmarks entered.
Read the whole thing. With luck, our only professional criminal class may be forced into doing the right thing. It may be for all of the wrong reasons, but it is still the right thing.
1 comment:
I've been discussing this same issue with friends. Coburn is my senator, I'm proud to say, and despite him voting Yea to renew the sketchy Patriot Act, he's been great, particularly regarding earmarks, etc.
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