HumanEvents | Sen. Tom Coburn | Apr. 28, 2008
America became a great nation because at key moments in our history our national leaders were willing to make sacrifices to preserve freedom and opportunity for future generations. Yet, that tradition is being abandoned today in Washington. Congressional leaders have decided that sending money home for pet projects, appeasing special interests and catering to well-heeled lobbyists are more important than giving future generations the hope and opportunity that was sacrificed for us. Politicians have found it easier to make the easy decision now and hope they do not have to deal with the difficult decision tomorrow.
Congress’s inability to distinguish what is a true national priority from a local, parochial interest illustrates this problem. For instance, while many Americans enjoy a bike ride on one of the bike trails in their local communities, few Americans would want to fund bike paths at the expense of bridge repair and maintenance. Yet, Congress did just that last year. By a vote of 80 to 18 senators went on record defending their right to earmark $12 million in new funds for bike paths instead of waiting until the more than 150,000 structurally deficient bridges were repaired.
Congress also last year voted by 68 to 26 to protect their parochial pork projects instead of ensuring that every child had private or public health insurance. The amendment I offered would have prohibited the $470 million worth of earmarks in last year’s Labor/HHS/Education appropriations bill from being funded until the secretary of Health and Human Services certified that each child in America younger than 18 is covered with either a private or public health insurance plan. Despite a lot of rhetoric about the need to provide health care to kids, the Senate showed that it was more committed to its pork.
A timeless example of misplaced priorities in Congress continues, of course, to be the Senate’s lopsided 82-to-15 vote to protect funding for the “Bridge to Nowhere” in 2005.
The actual amendment I offered would have redirected funding from two dubious Alaska bridge projects–the Gravina “Bridge to Nowhere” and the Knik Arm Bridge–costing a combined $452 million to reconstruction of the Twin Spans Bridge connecting New Orleans and Slidell, La., damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Despite howls of justifiable outrage about the Katrina recovery effort, nearly all senators, when push came to shove, put their pork ahead of hurricane victims.
With our nation on an unsustainable course, Congress simply can’t continue to tolerate business as usual. Conservatives need to unite behind a common sense message, supported by Senator John McCain, that it is possible for Congress to restrain spending. After all, if taxpayers can tighten their belts in tough economic times, so can politicians in Washington.
Over the past three years I’ve tried to detail the more than $300 billion the federal government wastes every year. A few of the areas of recurring waste include:
Medicare Fraud = $80 billion
Medicaid Fraud = $30 billion
Governmentwide improper overpayments (net loss) = $15 billion
Department of Defense maintenance of unused buildings = $3 billion
DOD performance awards not earned = $8 billion
Emergency spending for non-emergencies = $15 billion
Mismanagement of UN contributions = $2 billion
Information Technology (IT) mismanagement = $10 billion
National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) = $17.5 billion
Other potential areas of savings include tax reform ($100 billion) and a simple 5% improvement in efficiency in each agency ($50 billion). The list goes on and on.
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Sadly, it appears that our elected officials are only concerned about what is good for them, personally, rather than what is good for our nation. Probably almost all politicians owe something to the special interests who provide funding for their political careers. With all of the sex scandals in congress, I wonder if someone is required to have “skeletons in their closet” before they will be financed into winning a place as a law maker. By having damaging information about somebody, a powerful tyrant can enjoy the position of controlling that person. That way, a politician is forced to serve his or her master. For example, say a weapons contractor controls a particular politician by possessing damaging information about that politician, along with having provided the needed finance for that politician’s campaigns. It would then be safe to say that this weapons contractor would be able to get this politician to vote for making this contractor be the paid supplier of weapons for our military, Of course, these politicians also want to vote favorably on pet projects that their constituents will like, regardless of how it affects the rest of the country. That’s how one gets voted into office.
Politicians serve their masters rather than serving the public.
I’ve stated in my posting previously that politicians serve their masters. There is one exception, however. In the case of Hillary Clinton, her masters serve and obey her. This is just as everyone else should.