Is America Becoming a Banana Republic Watch - The Tom Coburn Version Posted by Michael Cohen

Courtesy of Matt Yglesias comes our latest Banana Republic entry - Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn. It turns out that Tom Coburn has a rule: if any legislation comes before the United States Senate that isn't fully paid for, he'll block it. Now of course it would be one thing if Coburn simply voted against such legislation, but because of the enormous amounts of power that the Senate gives to one cranky man (see Bunning, Jim) Tom Coburn can singlehandedly stop dead in its tracks any piece of legislation that he doesn't like.

Take for example the Lord Resistance Army (LRA) Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, a rather small $40 million initiative to help post-conflict recovery efforts in Northern Uganda and also assist in efforts to capture the batshit crazy (and deeply evil) head of the LRA, Joseph Kony. One of the many horrible tactics of the LRA is to kidnap young children, brutalize them and then force them to become soldiers. This Human Rights Watch report chronicles some of the terrible suffering of children captured by the LRA.

Now to be clear, the bill doesn't actually appropriate money - that comes later in the budgetary process. But that's not good enough for Tom Coburn who objects in principle to any measure that might possibly expand the deficit. (Just to give you a sense of how inoffensive this legislation really is, even deeply cranky Oklahoma Senator, Jim Inhofe supports it - as do each of its 63 co-sponsors).

According to the ever-principled Coburn, "Doing good things - you can do them one of two ways: you can do something good and hurt our children (by adding to the deficit), or you can do something good and help out kids."

Just so we're clear on the delicate moral balance that Tom Coburn abides by as a public servant. 

• Not doing good means saddling future generations with $40 million in deficit spending
• Doing good means holding up legislation that would help end the suffering of African children.

But look Tom Coburn has a point: saddling future children with $40 million in debt is pretty much the greatest evil perpetrated by mankind. 

When one of your two legislative branches is governed by rules that allow one man to stop the wheels of governance out of an irrational aversion to even $40 million in federal spending . . . then you are well on your way to being a banana republic.

Comments

[Don Bacon]

Good for Coburn. Using US taxpayer dollars for "post-conflict recovery efforts" in any country (see Afghanistan) will probably end up in the wrong pockets. And the situation has absolutely nothing to do with the US becoming a "banana republic", according to its definition.

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