Word: coburn
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Coburn, a Republican Senator from Oklahoma, has a problem with the $106 billion bill the Senate is working on that would help pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, preparation in case of a breakout of avian flu, rebuilding of the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina - and many tangentially related projects. Well, actually, the first-term Senator has at least 19 concerns. He called $176 million in the bill to refurbish a retirement home in Mississippi for veterans an "arbitrary sum." Another $10 million to equip fishing boats with logbooks to record data on how much they fish they...
...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...
...soft-spoken, polite man who has long worked as obstetrician, Tom Coburn has angered senators from the right and the left in his decade-long battle to cut what he considers pork-barrel spending from the federal budget. Coburn has diagnosed such spending, known as earmarks, as "the gateway drug to spending addiction" and he's determined to cure Congress of this malady. As the Senate has worked to pass a key appropriations bill over the last two weeks, Coburn has attached 19 amendments to the bill, all targeting spending provisions he thinks are pork. Most famous for his attacks...
...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...
...Such spats would be comical if they did not hint at a worrying lack of understanding on both sides. This defining feature of the relationship was clearly in evidence in late March when U.S. Senators Charles Schumer, Lindsey Graham and Tom Coburn visited Beijing. Schumer and Graham are co-sponsoring a bill - now delayed until the fall - that threatens to slap a 27.5% tariff on Chinese imports to the U.S. unless Beijing allows the Chinese currency to rise sharply, a move the senators believe would help cut America's trade deficit. Chinese businessman Liu Weiping attended a talk given...