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.
