Senator Tom Coburn M.D (Republican from Oklahoma) is probably losing friends in D.C. left and right. He appears to be taking on the ridiculous spending on pork barrel projects in the Senate.
He came to my attention because he has been forcing each additional pork project being stuffed into an emergency spending bill to come up for a vote. Unfortunately so far only one project has been axed thanks to this vote (a multi-million dollar earmark for the Gulf Coast seafood industry). I’m sure the people in Alaska, Hawaii, and Maine are very pleased they aren’t going to be paying for marketing for the Gulf seafood industry with their tax dollars.
Senator Coburn’s website is very good as well. He has an RSS feed and a
podcast feed. He has pledged to only serve two terms and looks like he is really making waves by confronting the excessive spending.
Now if only we had more like him. Then we might actually spend less federal money than we take in (you know, like you and I have to do in our own personal budgets).
Keep an eye on this guy. Hopefully others will follow his lead (like some of my silly Alabama congressmen that don’t seem to care about cutting spending no matter how many letters I write). Unfortunately I have a feeling he will be black-balled and forced out in the end. But at least he is taking a stand.
Hooray Senator Coburn. Keep up the great work.