Tag Archives: Tom Coburn

Do We Actually Have A Southern Border?

Posted on by

On Saturday, the Washington Times posted a story about the latest Congressional oversight report on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This was Senator Tom Coburn‘s final oversight report. CBN News also reported a similar story today.

The article in the Washington Times points out a few highlights in the report:

Less than 3 percent of illegal immigrants will ever be deported, and more than 700 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border remained unsecured as of 2014.

…The report also said corruption is a serious problem in the Border Patrol, but said agency officials actually told internal affairs investigators to cut down on the number of cases they were pursuing, according to the former division head.

In another finding Mr. Coburn’s staff on the Senate Homeland Security Committee found mission creep to be a problem: agents at one immigration agency spent time cracking down on women’s lingerie that they believed infringed on Major League Baseball’s officially licensed logos. The agents raided a lingerie store in Kansas City, Mo., flashed their badges and confiscated 18 pairs of underwear marked with an unauthorized Kansas City Royals logo, Mr. Coburn’s investigators found.

The article at CBN News reported:

“Ten years of oversight of the Department of Homeland Security finds that the Department still has a lot of work to do to strengthen our nation’s security,” Coburn explained. 

“Congress needs to review the Department’s mission and programs and refocus DHS on national priorities where DHS has a lead responsibility,” he added.

Coburn also says 700 miles of the southern border is still unsecured.

The agency also has problems protecting itself from online attacks, even though it’s supposed to protect the country from them.

Needless to say, the DHS had a different take on the oversight report (as reported in the Washington Times):

Homeland Security Department spokeswoman Marsha Catron thanked Mr. Coburn for his report, but said it didn’t capture the extent of the work her department does.

“Dr. Coburn’s report on DHS overlooks much of the concrete and recent progress we have made over the past year to improve homeland security and the manner in which DHS conducts business,” she said.

You will have to excuse my skepticism. I think it’s time to reevaluate the mission and success of the DHS and consider more effective ways to guard America’s security.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

Posted on by

CBN News posted an article today about the release of Republican Sen. Tom Coburn‘s annual “Wastebook” report, which lists 100 examples of wasteful government spending totaling $25 billion.

The article reports:

Examples of wasteful federal spending include the following:

$10,000 to watch grass grow at a Florida reserve

$19 million in paid vacations for government workers, about a third of whom were placed on “administrative leave” for disciplinary reasons, including criminal offenses

$350 million to build a launch pad tower that was mothballed immediately because the rockets it was designed to test had been scrapped years ago

The report also found the State Department used part of its $3 million counterterrorism communications budget to debate terrorists on Twitter.

Why are we debating terrorists on Twitter? Why not use their smart phones to located them and deal with them in a way that prevents terrorism (use your imagination)?

This is another reason we need a new Congress that will put a stop to this foolishness.

A Reasonable Alternative To ObamaCare

Posted on by

Yesterday Forbes posted an article about the Coburn-Burr-Hatch (CBH) proposal called the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility, and Empowerment Act.

The article reports:

CBH would repeal Obamacare, and replace it with a set of more market-oriented reforms. One key point right at the start: the authors “believe our proposal is roughly budget neutral over a decade.” That is to say, for all the reconfiguring it does to the health-care system, it doesn’t substantially reduce the deficit. It may modestly reduce the amount of federal spending and taxation. The Senate trio aims to have their proposal fiscally scored by an outside group of economists, most likely Doug Holtz-Eakin’s Center for Health and Economy.

The proposal includes a lot of aspects of ObamaCare that are popular, but it includes some common sense changes that will make ObamaCare much less of a burden on the American taxpayer. The proposal encourages tort reform, it makes changes to the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored coverage in order to subsidize policies for the uninsured.

Please follow the above link to the article to see the details. This proposal may be the first step to putting health care back in the hands of patients and doctors and taking it out of the hands of the government.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Your Tax Dollars At Work

Posted on by

CBN News is reporting today on the annual release of Senator Tom Coburn‘s “Wastebook.” The book details some of the government programs funded by taxpayer dollars in the past year.

Some of the examples listed in the article:

…the U.S. State Department spending $630,000 to attract followers to its Facebook and Twitter accounts.

…a study on angry wives allowed the government to spend $300 million to learn that women would find marriage more satisfying if they could calm down faster during arguments with their husbands.

…in Nevada, $17 million in tax exemptions went to brothels. Deductions ranged from breast implants to promotional free passes to bring in new customers.

…Fort Hood shooter Nadal Hassan collected $278,000 in military benefits because the military Code of Justice doesn’t allow a soldier to be suspended until they are found guilty.

It is disturbing that this spending is continuing while the retirement pay of our military is in danger of being cut. If Congress can’t deal with this spending before cutting in places that will actually do harm to Americans, we need to elect a new Congress.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Some Suggestions For Cutting Government

Posted on by

Yesterday Fox News posted a story that provided some perspective on the current sequestration debate.

The article reports:

The sequester is expected to take a $85 billion bite out of the fiscal 2013 budget, though only half of that impact is expected to be felt this year.
But lawmakers say the government already has $45 billion in unspent money which could be used to offset the shortfall.

Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. introduced legislation on Tuesday that would require the director of the White House budget office to rescind funds that haven’t yet been obligated.

The article further reports:

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn has also identified several programs at the Pentagon he’d set aside, including a video called “grill sergeants” in which the instructors show their favorite recipes; money for a plan to send a space ship to another solar system; funds to find advancements in beef jerky from France; and $6 billion on questionable research, including what lessons about democracy and decision-making could be learned — from fish. 

I have enough input into my decisions–I have no plans to consult my local fish.

Please follow the link above to see some of the places where money is available and government spending can be cut. The upside of this discussion is that it will bring attention to government waste. Hopefully we can learn from our past overspending and cut our spending in order to reduce the credit card bill we are handing our children.

Enhanced by Zemanta

A Concise, Honest Statement About The Fiscal Cliff

Posted on by

Yesterday Real Clear Politics posted a video and transcript of a statement made by Senator Tom Coburn on Face the Nation.

This is the statement:

SEN. TOM COBURN (R-OKLAHOMA): The characterization is no matter where we raise taxes, what’s going to happen wit the money? We’re going to grow the government with it. We’re not going to reduce the deficit, because we refused to solve the bigger problems like saving Medicare, insuring Social Security Disability (SSI). We’re not going to use that money to do anything except continue to grow the government.

So, the characterization is that we’re wanting to protect — what we’re wanting to do is to make sure we have a dynamic economy. And I have no problems, I’ve been out there for a long time with saying those who are making more ought to contribute more, but where does that money go? And what do you do with the money? Do you do something with the money that will actually get us further down the road and fix our ultimate long-term problem, which is we’re bankrupt? And we went off the cliff two years ago when we covered 90% of our debt-to-GDP? And by the way, if you actually look at it the way every other country [does], our debt-to-GDP right now is 120%. Not 90%, not 100%, it’s 120%.

So, if you look at that, what’s ultimately going to happen — one last fact, the average Greek citizen‘s debt, for their country, is $36,000; we’re at $51,000 per person in this country. We’re becoming Greece, and we have a government where we’re willing to pay the taxes for 65% of the cost of it. We need to change that. We need both, we need to do both.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Where Your Tax Dollars Went…

Posted on by

The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday featuring Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn‘s “Wastebook 2012.”

The highlights:

The annual list of 100 of the most wasteful projects and redundancies includes everything from a $300,000 initiative to market caviar, $516,000 to create a video game simulating a high school prom night, a government funded study to find out if golfers perform better when they imagine a bigger hole, $947,000 spent on studying what food people could eat on Mars, and part of a $325,000 grant spent on a robotic squirrel.

Coburn also points out tax loopholes for professional sports that list themselves as non-profit organizations, pointing out that that status affords the NFL, NHL, and PGA  receive $89.9 million in de facto government subsidies. The report also delves into the mismanagement of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — or food stamps — which has resulted in $4.5 billion spent on things like Starbucks, alcohol, guns, and junk food.

After reading this, I wonder if we should be more concerned about taxing the NFL, NHL, and the PGA instead of all this talk about millionaires and billionaires. Guess what, even if all profession sports were taxed more, people would still pay outrageous prices for tickets.
Please follow the link above to the article. Based on this article, any Congressman responsible for these expenditures needs to be given a different job in November. I strongly recommend that those Congressmen should be asked to live in the private sector economy they have created.
Enhanced by Zemanta

Why We Need More Tea Party Members In Congress

Posted on by

 

Official portrait of United States Senator (R-OK).

Image via Wikipedia

Dr. Tom Coburn released his report on wasteful government spending today. The report is entitled “Wastebook 2011.”

Here are some of the highlights:

• $75,000 to promote awareness about the role Michigan plays in producing Christmas trees & poinsettias.

 • $15.3 million for one of the infamous Bridges to Nowhere in Alaska.

 • $113,227 for video game preservation center in New York.

 • $550,000 for a documentary about how rock music contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

 • $48,700 for 2nd annual Hawaii Chocolate Festival, to promote Hawaii’s chocolate industry.

 • $350,000 to support an International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy.

 • $10 million for a remake of “Sesame Street” for Pakistan.

 • $35 million allocated for political party conventions in 2012.

 • $765,828 to subsidize “pancakes for yuppies” in the nation’s capital.

 • $764,825 to study how college students use mobile devices for social networking.

We need to elect people to Congress who will stop the wasteful spending. The problem is on both sides of the aisle. There is a Washington political establishment that believes spending is power and will continue to wildly spend until they are voted out of office. All Americans need to pay attention during the next year to see who the spenders are and who is trying to shrink the government and its spending. Then we need to vote accordingly.

 

Enhanced by Zemanta