Word: coburn
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...place to go." One of the group's first projects: supplying cash and ground troops to help South Dakota's John Thune beat Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle in 2004. Thune, a presidential prospect, electrified the Broadmoor audience, which also heard from Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn of Texas...
...Controversy is nothing new for Coburn, who joined the Senate in 2005. Elected to House in the historic Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, Coburn developed a reputation there for annoying Republican colleagues by demanding for cuts in wasteful spending. Along with his fiscal conservatism, he's also a strong social conservative. He's been criticized by other doctors for questioning the effectiveness of condoms and last year suggesting Terry Schiavo's doctors had not properly diagnosed her condition. He has suggested that if abortion is made illegal, doctors who perform abortions should be given the death penalty and called...
...mild-mannered Cochran seemed a bit frustrated with Coburn's tactics last week, and that's not unusual. Coburn's habit of going down to the Senate floor and ridiculing projects his colleagues want funding for is "annoying" to some of them, says Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida. Alaska's Ted Stevens threatened to resign from the Senate if it supported Coburn's drive to cut the "Bridge to Nowhere" from last year's budget, and Coburn won only 15 votes for the provision. But while his victories are rare and the ire from his colleagues high, Coburn says...
...While they may not endorse his views on social issues, Coburn's allies on his efforts to cut spending are perhaps the two most popular men in the Senate: Illinois Democrat Barack Obama and Arizona Republican John McCain. Before Coburn arrived in 2005, McCain was the chamber's most vocal basher of wasteful spending, but he has eagerly ceded that to Coburn, while working with the Oklahoma Senator to strategize on how to cut earmarks from this month's war spending bill. Obama, much to the left of Coburn, is an unlikely friend, but the Senate's most famous freshman...
...while Coburn is dogged, it's not clear how effective he is. No matter how many earmarks Coburn fights, dozens remain in the bills Congress passes. And for all the attention he has received, Coburn is calling for only $3 billion in cuts in a $106 billion bill. "The cost of pork in dollars amounts is not that large," says Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, "but in terms of time and energy, it takes up a lot." To achieve Coburn's goal of balancing a federal budget of more than $2 trillion - with an estimated deficit this...