Doctor and Senator Coburn

Steven Moore has a great piece on my favorite Oklahoman, Tom Coburn. Dr. Coburn is the leading voice in US Senate on controlling the federal budget, and often annoys his peers in the Senate who like to ladle a little budget gravy back to their states. Coburn has tangled a muber of times with such stellar porkers as Robert Byrd and Ted Stevens, amending bills to cut spending with a vengence. He often fails, but at least he is putting a uncomfortable spotlight on the sponsors of such boondoggles.

"Coburn feels about pork spending the way liberal environmentalists do about greenhouse gases. And so for the past two and a half years that he's been in the Senate, Coburn has led the lonely fight against this spending avalanche. At the start of this crusade he was losing and losing badly. When he tried to cease the funding for Stevens's infamous bridge, 80 of his colleagues voted against him in the then-Republican controlled Senate.

But the culture of spending on Capitol Hill may be shifting. In January, Coburn strong-armed the new Democratic majority into passing the leanest federal budget in five years, and, more remarkably, one that withholds funding for thousands of Teapot museums and Wild Turkey Federations. Coburn and his constant but lower-profile senatorial sidekick, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, teamed up to save the nation about $15 to $20 billion."

It's a start, and the House, led by Jeff Flake of Arizona is trying to follow suit, although it's a lot more difficult in the House. Coburn's opinion is that there is as much as $200 billion wasted in the Federal budget.