While the top priority of most Americans — including a growing number of moderate Congressional Democrats — is legislative action on domestic oil exploration, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) wants the world’s greatest deliberative body to set aside concerns over skyrocketing energy prices to deal with such pressing issues as interstate pet-monkey sales, a botanical garden in Maryland, and the establishment of a committee to encourage celebration of the War of 1812 bicentennial. Reid’s cloture motion on a 35-bill package called the“Advancing America’s Priorities Act” (AAPA) which authorizes over $11 billion in new spending, is currently scheduled for a Saturday vote.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
ADVERTISEMENT
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
On the one hand, the legislative package lets Democrats run out the clock on the debate over high energy prices ahead of the August recess. The issue of $4 gasoline has become a rare and significant Republican success that Democrats hope to minimize by moving on. But Reid’s package also has another purpose — it moves several spending authorization bills that an obstinate reformer, freshman Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), has been blocking. It is for this reason that the bill in question is also being called “The Coburn Omnibus.”
Coburn portrays himself as a servant to the taxpayer rather than a member of the Gentleman’s Club, having begun his war against Washington’s spending culture during his three terms in the House of Representatives. He more than earned his reputation as a reform-minded gadfly in 1999 when he fought his own leadership, gumming up a House agricultural spending bill by proposing more than 100 amendments.
Since being elected to the Senate in 2004, Coburn has continued his war on government expansion and waste by using holds and procedural moves to keep the Senate moving as slowly as possible. In 2006, he used the so-called “clay pigeon” — an extremely rare tactic — against his own party’s “emergency” spending bill. After proposing a single, lengthy amendment to abolish $2.7 billion in what he considered wasteful spending items, Coburn broke up his own amendment at the Senate desk into 19 separate parts, with the idea of holding separate votes on each one. A press release from his office explained at the time: “Dr. Coburn used this strategy to help ensure that the American people could hear a full and open debate about a few of the items in the bill that may not be true emergencies related to either the War on Terror or hurricane recovery effort.” He explained that the Senate could easily debate all 19 parts “within a few days.”
As obnoxious as his colleagues have found Coburn’s tactics, he justifies them by pointing out that nearly everyone in the Senate is focused on the short-term — on the next election — and no one is thinking of the long-term fiscal crisis our ballooning deficit threatens to cause. “Congress tends to fix things when there’s a fire,” he said yesterday. “They won’t put any smoke alarms in — they just wait until there’s a fire and they call 9-1-1.”
Coburn’s stubborn commitment to reform has won him few friends. To date, Coburn has fought in near isolation, angering many members of his own party. Other reformers, such as Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) on the Right, Sen. Russ Feingold (D., Wisc.) on the Left, and frequently Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), have joined him in his many losing battles to control wasteful government expenditures — in the form of both member-item spending and the creation of new, ever-expanding and often duplicative federal programs. But having sworn off all earmarks for his own state, Coburn has offered enemies few opportunities to punish him.
