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By Andrew Taylor, CQ Staff
It’s not every day that a freshman senator takes on a president from his own party, his party’s Senate leadership and the powerful Appropriations Committee — and comes close to winning.
But that’s what happened Wednesday when Tom Coburn, R-Okla., tried to remove $486 million of the money in the Iraq war supplemental spending bill (HR 1268) for a new U.S. embassy in Baghdad. The bill contains $592 million for construction of the embassy, but Coburn said Congress should provide just enough to start the project. The rest of the money, he said, should be considered later through the regular appropriations process.
Coburn is staunchly conservative and won a reputation as an instigator during three terms in the House. He contends that the appropriations process is seriously out of control.
The $81 billion supplemental represents many of the practices Coburn wants to prevent, especially the practice of using emergency spending bills to fund things that are not emergencies in order to create more room in the regular appropriations bills. “It ought to be designed for emergencies, true emergencies,” Coburn said.
Typically, taking on the leadership and the appropriations hierarchy does not win a lawmaker many friends. Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., an archetype “Old Bull” of the Senate, confidently asked senators to kill Coburn’s amendment.
But Coburn worked the floor, winning votes from conservatives, especially the junior ones. He even lobbied Democrats including Ron Wyden and won the Oregon senator’s vote. Eventually, Cochran made his own way to the front of the chamber to ensure that the unthinkable did not happen, and senior appropriators including Pete V. Domenici, R-N.M., set about twisting arms.
At one point, Coburn appeared ahead. But in the end, the Senate tabled his amendment on a 54-45 vote. Domenici said he persuaded two Republicans to switch their votes, but said Coburn nearly pulled off an upset with support from the “ultra-right” and Democrats who hoped to hand President Bush a defeat.
Coburn had less success with two amendments to strike “pork barrel” projects from the spending package. He offered but withdrew an amendment to remove $10 million for flood damage at the University of Hawaii. And the Senate defeated on a voice vote an amendment targeting a provision championed by Arlen Specter, R-Pa., that would ensure that a Philadelphia-based company would benefit from $40 million in earlier appropriations to operate high-speed cargo vessels out of the Port of Philadelphia.
Coburn took care not to cast aspersions on his colleagues, and observed the usual senatorial courtesies. Still, he vowed to scrutinize every spending bill and report that comes to the floor during the appropriations process.
“There isn’t going to be an appropriations bill that I don’t go after,” Coburn vowed.
In that quest, Coburn will join self-styled “porkbuster” John McCain, R-Ariz., who has been doing the same, invariably futile, scrubbing of appropriations bills for years. “He did good,” McCain said Wednesday.