My favorite U.S Senator

[Rick Lee]

It may be faint praise, just sayin'

Coburn: Deficit spending is bigger moral issue than abortion
By Mike Soraghan
November 02, 2007

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said Congress’s deficit spending has become a moral issue surpassing abortion because it saddles future generations with massive debt before they’re born.

“The greatest moral issue of our time isn’t abortion, it’s robbing our next generation of opportunity,” Coburn told reporters at a breakfast meeting Thursday at the National Press Club. “You’re going to save a child from being aborted so they can be born into a debtor’s prison?”

The conservative Republican also criticized his own party, saying voters bounced the GOP from office for their hypocrisy. “It’s not a bad thing power changed last year,” said Coburn, who also criticized President Bush for not doing enough to curb spending.

“He hasn’t been the ideal president when it comes to limited federal spending,” Coburn said.

Congress’s failure to respond to voters calls into question its own legitimacy, he said. “If we have only 11 percent support, are we a legitimate government?” he asked, before adding, “The 11 percent who have confidence in us, what hole are they in?”

Coburn predicted President Bush will give in on some policy points in order to force Congress to cut its spending down to the level he has targeted.

“He’s not going to blink,” Coburn said. “He may well give some policy to get the spending down.”

He explained that he thinks it is in Bush’s best political interests to stick to his threat to veto bills that exceed the spending levels he set because he developed a reputation for accommodating the big-spending desires of previous Republican Congresses.

Coburn, a physician who served in the House before he was elected in 2004, has rankled the collegiality of the Senate by putting roughly 80 holds on bills for new heritage areas. He even placed a hold on a bill designed to close a loophole that allowed Cho Seung-Hui to buy the gun he used in his deadly shooting spree at Virginia Tech this year.

Quizzed about his holds, Coburn reached into his pocket and brought out a card he carries with a printout displaying each of the bills on which he has a hold and its author.

The Virginia Tech shooting is an example, he said, of how lawmakers’ hunger for earmarks has real-world consequences. He said the federal government’s background-check system is authorized for $200 million, but Congress has appropriated only $10 million.

“Did we buy earmarks instead of doing what we were supposed to do?” he said.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Good to see another anti-War Republican.

[sammyg2]

My favorite congressman is Ed Royce, and I let him know it.
I correspond regularly with him and always get a response, either from him or one of his aides.
This is clipped frrom his website:



Flake-Gutierrez "Amnesty" bill is Wrong for America




Washington, Apr 27 - To me, pardoning lawbreakers and rewarding their crime with citizenship and jobs is amnesty. Simply because you make illegal immigrants pay fines and sit through English classes does not change the simple fact – Flake and Gutierrez are proposing an amnesty.


In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act provided legal status for undocumented aliens already present in the country. It was passed with the promise of tougher enforcement, which was never realized. The law required illegal immigrants to wait, pay a monetary fine, and learn English. Sound familiar? Black's Law Dictionary categorizies the 1986 law as an amnesty. Following the introduction of that law we saw an immediate spike in illegal immigration. (this was mirrored when we passed the 245(i) amnesty and when President Bush first announced his amnesty proposal.) The 1986 law was touted as the solution to our illegal immigration problem. But more than 10 years later, amnesty law in hand - our problem is even worse.


Again with the Flake-Gutierrez bill we are promised "tough enforcement." But if you actually read the bill, its provisions are mostly meaningless, toothless authorizations, thrown together with requirements for some "tough" reports and "tough" directions to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to implement laws we already should be enforcing. In implementing some of these "tough" laws, it is also requires DHS to consult with the government of Mexico, because we all know that the government of Mexico wants us to get tough on illegal immigration.


Another “tough” provision, severely limits the ability of state and local law enforcement in assisting with our immigration laws. And on top of that, it gets “tough” on those who are detained while breaking U.S. immigration laws - by making taxpayers provide them with individual group counseling, daily access to recreational programs, private facilities and clothes that are not “prison-style” uniforms or jumpsuits.


What Representatives Flake and Gutierrez don't discuss is the cost associated with their bill. The Heritage Foundation recently released a report titled, "The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Households to the U.S. Taxpayer" by Robert Rector. The report analyzes what low-skilled households cost the U.S. taxpayer. In reading this report, we find immigrant households (legal and illegal) receive about three dollars in benefits for every dollar paid in taxes, resulting in a net fiscal deficit of $18,500 annually. The illegal aliens who are here are already costing us. An amnesty would ensure they stay here permanently and cost us even more in the future, not to mention the fact that they would bring over additional family members which would cost the American people significantly more. Using Rector's numbers, the new Flake - Gutierrez guest worker program would cost $7.4 billion. Their general amnesty, or if you prefer, changing the status of illegal to legal, would cost a staggering $54.4 billion a year.


I think we all can agree that our immigration system is broken. We have tough enforcement laws on the books but they are not being enforced. We have an underfunded, overwhelmed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service that has stated it will be unable to handle the huge number of illegal immigrants the guest worker proposals would bring in. And we have a Border Patrol that is under siege by coyotes, criminal gangs, drug smugglers, and yes, even terrorists. The only question is how do we fix the problem? I believe that we must approach it from a national security standpoint. We need to start by fixing our immigration system first before we add tens of millions of people into it. But that is an issue for another article.

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

Congress’s failure to respond to voters calls into question its own legitimacy, he said. “If we have only 11 percent support, are we a legitimate government?” he asked, before adding, “The 11 percent who have confidence in us, what hole are they in?”

Awesome, but how long before the other republican put his head on a stick like they have done in the past to John McCain and Ron Paul?

Speaking your mind first and putting your party second isn't always wise, but it's the right thing to do.

I applaud him.

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by Shaun 84 Targa

Good to see another anti-War Republican.

I didn't see that in the article.

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by kach22i

Awesome, but how long before the other republican put his head on a stick like they have done in the past to John McCain and Ron Paul?

Speaking your mind first and putting your party second isn't always wise, but it's the right thing to do.

I applaud him.

Unlike Paul and McCain, Coburn isn't running for pres. Anyway, McCain has been hated by most Republicans since campaign finance "reform". I don't know Coburn's stance on thatl, but my guess is he supports the First Amendment in its original form, unlike McCain.

[kach22i]

Maybe he should be running for President.

http://musingsandmutterings.com/2007/04/21/gonzales-i-dont-recall-count/



Obama and Coburn revive effort to stop no-bid FEMA contracts
By Elana Schor
September 14, 2006
http://thehill.com/the-executive/obama-and-coburn-revive-effort-to-stop-no-bid-fema-contracts-2006-09-14.html

Having scored a high-profile victory on their bill to set up an online federal spending database, the unlikely freshman duo of Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) are hoping their fourth bid to crack down on no-bid contracting at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will finally make it to the president’s desk.

[Dantilla]

I, as a simple, average American, live debt-free.

Why can't I expect this very basic behavior from our elected officials?

Good for him. There needs to be a majority of congressmen like him. It will never happen.

[sammyg2]

Maybe he should be running for President.

I'm sorry, we won't be providing any emergency help this week. I know you need it right now but we are in the process of a long, tedious bid process that is full of beurocracy and red tape to ensure fairness because two clowns wanted to try and make points to win a few votes from the weak-minded, so you million or so victims will have to wait as long as you can. I sure hope you don't die.
As soon as get the contract awarded we will send help, that will probably be sometime late next month.

[Tobra]

Originally Posted by Dantilla

I, as a simple, average American, live debt-free.

Why can't I expect this very basic behavior from our elected officials?

Good for him. There needs to be a majority of congressmen like him. It will never happen.

I am not totally debt free; owe money on some real estate, but you gotta live somewhere, and the other place has a tenant covering the nut and then some.

I tend to save my money and keep stuff a long time, drive old cars that I bought new and paid off two years early(well, not the Porsche, someone else took a beating on the depreciation for that one. I spent way more on bits of rubber for it than I did the car, including all 10 alloy wheels I got with it.)

People are selfish pigs, for the most part. They don't want to wait for something they don't really need in the first place. Most people don't get that if you work hard and put more away as a youth, rather than driving the new BMW, or whatever, it will make things much better for you in the long run. Gotta be an easy way. That is why debt is such a problem for individuals and the country as a whole.

Not a lot of men who have been political beasts for long and avoided corruption. Coburn, fine man from what I know. Hope he stays a fine honest gentleman the rest of his life. Won't matter though. If you have 20% honest guys sitting in the posh chairs in the big room with the legislative ambience, they can only stop the other guys from doing bad things, not force them into doing any good ones. Damn man, didn't you ever see Mr Smith Goes to Washington?