Coburn opposed to Kagan nomination to court
With a majority in the U.S. Senate, Elena Kagan appears to be headed to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court despite her overt liberal bent.
U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, R-Okla., voted against her nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“By her own words, Elena Kagan will violate her oath as soon as she’s sworn in,” Coburn said. “Kagan believes wrongly-decided Supreme Court precedents trump the original intent of our founders. With Kagan on the Court, Congress and the executive branch may succeed at sweeping away whatever limitations remain on its power to micromanage the decisions of states and individuals.”
Coburn said Kagan believes in bigger government and more federal power.
“During her testimony Kagan indicated she would support the big government policies that created our $13 trillion debt and the welfare state that is threatening to bankrupt our country,” Coburn said. “The court needs to force congress to pull back from this precipice, not give it another reason to push our economy over the edge.”
Coburn was shocked at her view of the U.S. Constitution.
“It was extraordinary to hear a Supreme Court nominee decline to endorse the concept of natural rights contained in the Declaration of Independence that is the basis of our Constitution,” Coburn said. “Refusing to acknowledge natural or God-given rights undermines our entire system of government. Without natural law, so-called ‘progressives’ would take us back to the 17th century, when rights emanated from the state or the king rather than the creator.”
Her confirmation is expected to approved in early August. She will replace Justice John Paul Stevens, a liberal judge who retired. Republicans apparently are not planning to filibuster the nomination.
Coburn has also criticized the poor performance of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. A recent review by the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency found that the Afghanistan inspector general’s office did not meet professional standards for investigators and found multiple serious deficiencies in the audit division. Coburn asked President Obama to conduct this review in December 2009.
“For more than a year, I have urged President Obama to ensure that the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has the leadership necessary to fulfill its mandate to prevent waste, fraud and abuse in Afghanistan,” Coburn said. “The recent findings of the independent review of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) are appalling and confirm that there is clearly a lack of competent senior leadership in this agency.”
The effort in Afghanistan suffers from mismanagement, Coburn said.
“Fraud, corruption and wasted resources are placing our soldiers and the mission in Afghanistan in danger,” Coburn said. “The president must take swift action and replace the Inspector General and his top staff and immediately appoint an aggressive and independent watchdog who will oversee the billions of dollars the United States is sending there.”
In other action, Congress passed an extension of unemployment benefits despite an effort by Coburn to find funding for those extra benefits.
Coburn filed a procedural motion challenging his Senate colleagues to pay for unemployment instead of adding to the national debt. Coburn has also filed a motion that will expose the Senate’s mockery of its own PAYGO rules.
“If the majority in Congress had agreed to pay for this bill it would have passed months ago,” Coburn said. “On four occasions, the majority blocked the bill from passing because they didn’t want to set the precedent of actually cutting spending to pay for new spending.”
Coburn pointed to the dishonesty in the action.
“My first motion will expose the Senate’s dishonesty about its own PAYGO rules, which require the Senate to pay for legislation as it goes,” Coburn said. “ In reality, PAYGO has meant ‘you the taxpayer pay and we go spend.’ The motion would require the Senate to post on its own website the fact that it has ignored PAYGO repeatedly and voted to add $266 billion to the deficit once the unemployment extension passes.
“My second motion would simply require the Senate to pay for the extension of unemployment benefits, which we all support, by reducing spending on lower priority items. The American people have to make these choices every day and so should Congress. Blocking efforts to pay these benefits is a defense of the obscene amount of waste in the federal budget from earmarks to Woodstock Museums to bonuses to contractors who have not performed.”
Coburn said it doesn’t make sense to borrow money in a depressed economy for unemployment assistance.
“Borrowing money to pay for unemployment benefits hurts the unemployed and future generations who will have to pay for our largesse,” Coburn said.
“Our debt is as much of a crisis as unemployment. In fact, the size of our debt is already slowing our economy and blocking the creation of one million jobs per year according to estimates from leading economists inside and outside the Obama administration. Paying for benefits is a win-win for the unemployed while not paying for them is a win-win for career politicians who don’t want to do the hard work of exposing and cutting their ludicrous priorities.
“The American people are tired of the phony and mindlessly partisan arguments about obstructing unemployment benefits. No one in public office likes to see the unemployed suffer and it is politics as usual to suggest otherwise. The debate is about whether to pay for these benefits or add to our debt. If Congress continues to ignore the reality that we are on an unsustainable course we will face an even greater crisis in the very near future. The time to make hard choices is now.”
Coburn’s amendment failed by a vote of 54 - 44. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., refused to allow a straight up-or-down vote on the measure and instead required the measure to pass by 67 votes.
“This vote shows a majority of Senators do, in fact, support paying for unemployment benefits by reducing spending in lower priority areas of the budget,” Coburn said. “However, I was disappointed the Majority Leader set an unreasonable threshold for passage that clearly obstructed the will of the chamber. Still, the American people should be encouraged that politicians in Washington are slowly coming to understand that it is no longer acceptable to borrow money from future generations when there is an obscene amount of waste in the federal budget.”
Another Coburn motion, one to require the Senate to publically disclose its abuse of PAYGO rules, failed by a vote of 49 - 49.
Since PAYGO was enacted, the Senate has waived its own rules repeatedly and spent $266 billion in violation of PAYGO.