August 22, 2005, 8:48 a.m.
Tom Is Still Terrific
A top-flight budget hawk is back in Congress.

By Greg Kaza

U.S. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma was the top budget hawk of the historic Republican Class of 1994 that swept into power after two years of Bill Clinton in the Oval Office. During his three terms in the House in the 1990s, Coburn sponsored more successful amendments to cut spending than any other member of the lower body. The nonpartisan National Taxpayers Union consistently gave him high grades during a six-year career that ended when he voluntarily term-limited his political tenure in Washington and returned to Oklahoma to resume delivering babies as a physician.

Elected to the Senate in 2004 in a landslide, Coburn has returned as a leader in the fight to cut spending on Capitol Hill. He repeatedly has demonstrated his leadership on fiscal policy, sponsoring more amendments this year to cut federal spending than any senator. His budgetary amendments do not always pass in roll-call votes. But his presence in the Senate has moved the fiscal debate rightward, and is a reminder that the Class of ’94’s message of fiscal restraint is alive and well with grassroots America, if not with those suffering from Potomac Fever.

Indeed, Coburn is fighting the good fight for America’s taxpayers.

“If Congress doesn’t act quickly to rein in spending and reform Social Security and Medicare,” Coburn explained recently, “we will be the first generation of Americans that leaves the next generation with a lower — not higher — standard of living. Members of Congress have a moral obligation to plan for the next generation, not just the next election.”

One example of Coburn’s success in fighting for taxpayers was his amendment to prohibit funds from being made available to the U.S. Agency for International Development for entertainment purposes. He also sponsored a measure to mandate transparency in the budget process, requiring inclusion of “limitations, directives and earmarks.” Another amendment, co-sponsored with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), would have prohibited “any funds from being used by the U.S. Export-Import Bank to approve a loan or a loan guarantee related to a nuclear project in China.” These last two measures failed, but Coburn vows to persist.

Most legislators play it safe by shunning the losing side of lopsided budget votes. But Coburn wears his “no” votes like badges of honor. He was one of only four senators to vote “no” on the Legislative Branch Appropriation, which includes funding for congressional operations and staff, and the only senator to oppose the budget for the Department of Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies after it emerged from conference.

Coburn also voted “no” on Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter’s amendment to increase discretionary health and education funding by $2 billion. The amendment passed this year with the support of critics of President George W. Bush’s fiscal policies. Yet Coburn’s presence has made it more difficult for moderates who talk “fiscal restraint” out of one side of their mouths while gobbling down every pork-filled appropriation to come before them.

Before his brief return to public life, Coburn authored the 2003 book, Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders. In it he argues that citizen legislators are more likely than career politicians to impose fiscal restraint on the federal government, as it is “careerism” that has “perpetuated big government and [is] a constant corrupting force in the system.” Well, it appears that a citizen legislator has returned to Congress for the laudable purpose of taking on the big-government careerists. Sen. Tom Coburn’s presence in the U.S. Senate is a daily reminder that the ideological spirit of the Class of ’94 lives on.

— Greg Kaza is executive director of the Arkansas Policy Foundation, an economic research organization based in Little Rock.

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