Tom Coburn: “again, this is not an amendment about this being a bad idea. I am sure this is a parking lot that is needed. The purpose…”

“again, this is not an amendment about this being a bad idea. I am sure this is a parking lot that is needed. The purpose of this amendment is to talk about priorities. The number of homeless people in Nebraska is 3,268. This is an amendment that spends, I believe, $950,000 to build assets for a private museum that was started in 1931. Again, no doubt this is needed. In this time of $600 billion that we added this last year to our grandchildren's debt, in this time of war, in this time of hurricanes times two in the gulf and one coming to Florida again, the fact that we would spend close to $1 million on a parking facility instead of putting that to the area where we meet more human needs, to me, seems to be the wrong priority. Fiscal year 2004 reports by the Joslyn Art Museum showed they had a net surplus that year alone of $1,998,000. They have assets of $66 million and working capital of $6.5 million. The question I am raising with this amendment is, Is this the right priority at this time? It is not whether this is a legitimate effort on the part of those who are associated with the Joslyn Art Museum master plan in Omaha, NE, to expand. They spent $3.5 million purchasing an additional football field so they would have additional expansion.…”