Tom Coburn: “the thing that strikes me is the Senator is a wonderful debater, except when he says the appropriators appropriating…”

“the thing that strikes me is the Senator is a wonderful debater, except when he says the appropriators appropriating money on an authorized program--that is great, except the American public needs to know that 22 percent of what we appropriate has never been authorized. Never. So the fact is, we say authorization means something, but it means nothing as far as the appropriations process goes. The real point of this debate is how do we grab hold of this problem, this behemoth of a problem that will face our children and grandchildren in the next 20 to 25 years, and do it in a way that will give us the greatest opportunity for them? My idea--and obviously many people disagree with it--is I think we ought to start looking at every program. We ought to ask a couple of questions: Can we measure its effectiveness? Is there a metric on it that says this program is supposed to do this? Is there a metric there so we can measure it? I am of the mind to say that if you cannot measure something, you cannot manage it. Ninety percent of the programs have no metric in the Federal Government, so we don't know if they are working. No. 2, is it a program that is still needed? We don't ever look at the authorizing level.”