Tom Coburn
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Thomas Allen Coburn, M.D. (March 14, 1948) is a medical doctor and a Republican U.S. Senator from Oklahoma.
Early life and career
Coburn was born in Casper, Wyoming to German-American parents, and graduated with a B.S. in accounting from Oklahoma State University. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma Medical School in 1983. He then opened a medical practice in Muskogee, Oklahoma; a suburb of Tulsa, and served as a deacon in the Southern Baptist Church.In 1994 he ran for the House of Representatives in Oklahoma's heavily Democratic 2nd Congressional District, which was based in Muskogee and included 22 counties in northeastern Oklahoma. Coburn initially expected to face eight-term incumbent Mike Synar. However, Synar was defeated in a runoff for the Democratic nomination by 71-year-old retired principal Virgil Cooper. Coburn won by a 52%–48% margin, becoming the first Republican to represent the district since 1921.
Political career
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While he served in the House, he earned a reputation as a maverick due to his frequent battles with House Speaker Newt Gingrich. This was the case with most of the "true believers" in the 1995 House Republican freshman class. Most of these stand-offs stemmed from his belief that the Republican caucus was moving toward the political left and away from the more conservative "Contract With America" policy proposals that had placed the Republicans into power in Congress in 1994 for the first time in 40 years. Specifically, Coburn was concerned that the Contract's term limits had not been implemented, and that the Republicans were continuing the excessive federal spending (also called pork barrel spending) that they had so vigorously opposed when the Democrats were in the majority.[[Citing sources citation needed]]
In 1997, Coburn introduced a bill called the HIV Prevention Act of 1997, which would have amended the Social Security Act. The bill would have mandated HIV testing in some situations and would have made all results of HIV testing available to state public health officials.
Coburn promised to serve only three terms during his first campaign. He kept this pledge, and left the House in January 2001. His district returned to the Democratic fold, with attorney Brad Carson heavily defeating a Republican endorsed by Coburn. After leaving the House and returning to private medical practice, Coburn wrote a book in 2003 about his experiences in Congress called Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders. The book detailed his perspective on the internal Republican Party debates over the "Contract With America" and displayed his disdain for career politicians. Some of the figures he criticized (such as Gingrich) were already out of office at the time of publishing, but others (such as current House Speaker Dennis Hastert) remained very influential in Congress, which resulted in speculation that some congressional Republicans wanted no part of Coburn's return to politics.
Nonetheless, in 2004, Coburn was drafted to run for the Senate seat being vacated by Don Nickles. He faced a bitter primary fight with former Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys (the favorite of the state and national Republican establishment) and Corporation Commissioner Bob Anthony. However, contrary to expectations, he easily won the primary. In the general election, he faced Carson, who was giving up his seat after only two terms to run for the Senate. During the Senate campaign, he said that he favored the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions [link] and said that homosexuality is the biggest threat to America.
The election was one of the most closely-watched of the 2004 cycle. However, Coburn won by an unexpectedly large margin for an open seat, 53 percent to Carson's 42 percent. While Carson trounced Coburn in the 2nd District, Coburn swamped Carson in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area and the closer-in Tulsa suburbs. Coburn won the state's two largest counties, Tulsa and Oklahoma, by a combined 86,000 votes — more than half of his overall margin of 166,000 votes.
After taking office in January 2005, Coburn was selected to serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee, unusual for a first-term senator and a non-attorney.
In October 2005, Coburn, a staunch fiscal conservative, made several attempts to combat pork barrel spending in the federal budget. The best-known of these was an amendment to the fiscal 2006 appropriations bill that funds transportation projects [link]. Coburn's amendment would have transferred funding from the infamous Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska to rebuild Louisiana's "Twin Spans" bridge, which were devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The amendment was defeated in the Senate, 82-15, after Ted Stevens, the senior senator from Alaska, threatened to resign his office if the amendment was passed. Coburn's actions did result in getting the funds made into a "block grant" to the State of Alaska, which can use the funds for the bridge or other possibly more necessary projects.
Coburn is also a member of the so-called Fiscal Watch Team, a group of seven senators led by John McCain, to combat wasteful government spending.
Controversies
Abortion
In 2000, Coburn sponsored a bill to prevent the FDA from developing, testing or approving RU-486. On July 13, the bill failed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 182 to 187. Coburn, a former obstetrician-gynecologist, has admitted to performing two abortions on women with heart disease in cases where he had to uphold his Hippocratic Oath. On the issue, Coburn sparked controversy with his remark "I favor the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life." [link]. Coburn also objects to legal abortion in cases of rape, and he has justified his position by noting that his great-grandmother was raped by a sheriff. In the U.S. Senate confirmation hearings concerning Samuel Alito, before the Senate, Coburn mentioned that his grandmother was a product of that rape.Breast implants
In January 2005, during a Senate Judiciary Committee discussion about class-action lawsuits and silicone breast implants, The Washington Post quoted Coburn as stating:- "You know, I immediately thought about silicone breast implants and the legal wrangling and the class-action suits off that. And I thought I would just share with you what science says today about silicone breast implants. If you have them, you're healthier than if you don't. That is what the ultimate science shows...In fact, there's no science that shows that silicone breast implants are detrimental and, in fact, they make you healthier."
Global warming
During his run for the U. S. Senate, Coburn was quoted as saying that there was, "....no hard evidence to support global warming." Coburn called global warming "just a lot of crap." [link]Homosexuality
According to The American Prospect, during Coburn's 2004 senatorial campaign in Oklahoma, Coburn remarked that in the town of Coalgate, Oklahoma, lesbianism was "so rampant in some of the schools...that they'll let only one girl go to the bathroom." School officials have denied his statement. [link] Coburn has also been quoted as saying:- "The gay community has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power... That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalization for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That's a gay agenda."
Schindler's List television broadcast
As a congressman in 1997, Coburn protested NBC's plan to air on national television the R-rated Academy Award-winning Holocaust drama Schindler's List during prime time television. Coburn said of NBC that, in airing the movie without editing for television, television had been taken "to an all-time low, with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity." He also said the TV broadcast should outrage parents and decent-minded individuals everywhere. Coburn described the airing of Schindler's List on television as "...irresponsible sexual behavior...I cringe when I realize that there were children all across this nation watching this program."Many people disagreed with this statement, including a number of fellow Republican Congressmen who criticized Coburn in their speeches. Coburn later apologized "to all those I have offended" and clarified that he agreed with the movie being aired on television, but insisted it should have been on later in the evening. In apologizing, Coburn said that at that time of the evening there are still large numbers of children watching without parental supervision and he stood by his message of protecting children from violence, but expressed it poorly. He also said, "my intentions were good, but I've obviously made an error in judgment in how I've gone about saying what I wanted to say."
He later wrote in his book Breach of Trust that he considered this one of the biggest mistakes in his life and that, while he still feels the material was unsuitable for a television broadcast, he handled the situation poorly.
Sterilization controversy
A woman alleged that Coburn sterilized her without her consent during an emergency surgery to treat a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy in 1990. Coburn contends that he had her oral consent, but he did not obtain written consent. A resulting civil malpractice suit was filed, but ultimately dismissed with no finding of liability on Coburn's part.
The Roberts confirmation hearings
On September 14, 2005, during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, Coburn began his opening statement with a critique of beltway partisan politics while, according to news reports, "choking back a sob". Coburn had earlier been completing a crossword puzzle during the hearings and this fact was used by The Daily Show to ridicule Coburn's pathos. Coburn then began his questioning by revealing his confusion regarding the various legal terms bandied about during the previous day's hearings. Proceeding to questions regarding both abortion and end-of-life issues, Coburn, who noted that during his tenure as a general practitioner he had delivered some 4,000 babies, asked Roberts whether the judge agreed with the proposition that "the opposite of being dead is being alive."
You know I'm going somewhere. One of the problems I have is coming up with just the common sense and logic that if brain wave and heartbeat signifies life, the absence of them signifies death, then the presence of them certainly signifies life. And to say it otherwise, logically is schizophrenic. And that's how I view a lot of the decisions that have come from the Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. And I won't pressure you on this issue. I know you can't. But for the listeners of this hearing, if, in fact, life is the presence of a heartbeat and brain wave, it's important for everybody in the country to know that at 16 days post-conception, a heartbeat is present; and that at 41 days, right now, we can assure ourselves that brain activity and brain waves are present. And as the technology improves, we're going to see that come earlier and earlier. I make that point because so many of the decisions of the Supreme Court have been made in a vacuum of the scientific knowledge of what life is, when personhood is, when it begins, when it doesn't, when it exists, when it doesn't. And it belies the scientific facts and medical facts that are out there today.
Federal Budget Restraint and Earmarks
Recently, Coburn (along with Arizona Senator John McCain) have introduced legislation to attempt to reduce overall federal government spending by requiring U.S. Senators to vote, individually, on federal budget earmarks. Coburn and McCain recently noted that the practice of members of Congress adding earmarks (and thus, increasing government spending) has risen dramatically over the years (from 121 "earmarks" in 1987 to 15,268 earmarks in 2005, according to the Congressional Research Service). The U.S. Senate has yet to take action on the legislation.References
External links
- [Senator Coburn's official web site]
- [Coburn campaign website]
- *[Video of the 2004 Walt Haskins campaign ad] (via Google Video)
- ["The Senate's Dr. No"], George Will, Washington Post, February 12, 2006
- [Senator Tom Coburn's Article Concerning Earmarks in the Wall Street Journal]
- [record maintained by the Washington Post]
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