Tom Coburn: “this morning we have heard about a lot of good causes and a lot of good bills. But what we have been asked to do is to…”

“this morning we have heard about a lot of good causes and a lot of good bills. But what we have been asked to do is to pass bills without any debate, without the opportunity to amend, and we just heard a Senator say we could agree to a UC and not have to vote on it. Agreeing to a UC is the same as voting yes. The fact is, we have had plenty of time to bring up all these bills, put them on the floor, debate them and have great debates so the American people become informed, and offer amendments. I will say for many of these bills, I am the Senator objecting. Senator Harkin knows I am objecting to the two bills he just raised. The point is, our debt is rising $1 million a minute. When you authorize $100 million for the Realtime Writers Act, what you are saying is, I intend to get the money out of the appropriations process to develop training for something that the market should already be inducing through increased wages. If in fact there is a shortage, why is the market not taking care of it? Is it because the pay is too low? Maybe the pay ought to be higher. Maybe people ought to go into it. Instead we are going to inject $100 million of American taxpayers' money into something that will be solved through the market. If it is not, then the pay is entirely too low and the market will eventually adjust to it. But to say we are going to authorize something with no intent to ever spend, that is not the intent of an authorization.”