Coburn’s Awesome Victory for Taxpayers

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) rocks! In what amounts to an awesome victory for taxpayers, the Senator managed to roll a $1 million earmark right out of the H.R. 3043, the FY 2008 Labor-HHS-Education and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. The earmark was targeted at the Bethel Performing Arts Center Museum in New York, which includes a tribute to the 1969 Woodstock Festival. Coburn got the votes to transfer the $1 million to the Maternal and Child Health block grant program. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a sponsor of the earmark along with Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), attempted to table or kill the amendment, but was rebuffed 52-42. This is the congressional earmark that made for maybe the funniest moment in Sunday night’s Republican Candidate debate on Fox News Channel, when Sen. John McCain made light of it in order to criticize Sen. Clinton and tout his own record as a long-time Senate pork-buster.

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste supported Coburn’s Bethel Museum amendment as well as three others, including one to eliminate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Entertainment Education program, an ombudsman program, and prevent the CDC from purchasing additional rotating pastel lights, zero-gravity chairs, or dry heat saunas for the agency’s fitness center.