Political Quotes

“Mr. President, in March, our country lost a great statesman and my fellow ``squealer,'' former Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. A family physician who delivered more than 4,000 babies, he was known as ``Dr. Tom'' in Oklahoma, but in Washington he was called ``Dr. No'' because of his fierce opposition to adding more red ink to the national debt. Having served just 10 years in the Senate before retiring in 2019, the year I was elected, I never had the honor to serve alongside Dr. Coburn. Nonetheless, his leadership and his efforts to eliminate government waste and overreach continues to be an inspiration to me and to many others. ``If you cannot find waste in any part of the Federal budget,'' he once commented, ``it can only be for one reason--you haven't looked.'' Many of the outlandish examples he exposed are now what I call legendary. Take, for example, the shrimp on a treadmill, and of course there was the ``bridge to nowhere.'' Every Federal agency in Washington feared the notoriety of being called out in Dr. Coburn's annual report of government excess known as the waste book. He led the fight that ended congressional earmarks that were known as pork projects. While others got credit for creating new government programs, Dr. Coburn took on the thankless job of trying to unravel the maze of duplicative, overlapping programs and redundant and inefficient bureaucracy.…”