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Editorial: ‘Tom Quixote': Coburn finds his target this time
The Oklahoman
October 24, 2007
SEN. Tom Coburn's fight against pork-barrel spending has parallels with the classic tale of Don Quixote. The Senate's clubby, you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours atmosphere makes tackling spending earmarks much like the Spaniard's tilting against a giant windmill. But occasionally, the tilter scores a hit.
Indeed, Coburn, R-Muskogee, often has failed to strip out wasteful (in his eyes) spending from appropriations bills. Only a few senators don't "earmark” or designate spending projects for their home states. Attempts to remove earmarks are almost guaranteed to fail because senators save each others' bacon.
But last week Coburn found his target in a $1 million earmark for a museum dedicated to the 1969 Woodstock music festival, which attracted 32 top musicians and about a half-million flower children.
The earmark was supported by New York's senators, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer. Economic development, they said. According to news reports, soon after the bill won committee approval the museum project's backer gave thousands of dollars to the Democrats' senate campaign committee (headed by Schumer) and Clinton's presidential campaign.
Coburn and fellow Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona said the money would be better spent on a maternal health program. The Senate, rarely so shamed, voted 52-42 to drop the museum earmark. Of course, the Senate didn't stay ashamed. Another Coburn bid got smacked down Tuesday.
Still, the Woodstock battle achieved a national profile. During Sunday's GOP presidential debate, Sen. John McCain quipped that he missed the "cultural and pharmaceutical event” at Woodstock because he was "tied up at the time” as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam — no doubt, a line he'll use again if he and Clinton are their party's respective presidential nominees.
We commend Coburn and others who challenge Senate culture by shining light on such things. Last week's victory should encourage pork-barrel busters to go after other windmills on the horizon.
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