Tom Coburn: “I will happily vote for that. But what we have to do is deauthorize something else. I know you disagree with my thoughts…”

“I will happily vote for that. But what we have to do is deauthorize something else. I know you disagree with my thoughts on increased authorizations versus offsets. I believe we have a commitment. I believe we have a treaty obligation. I believe we have a moral obligation. But I also believe it has to be balanced with the obligation that Members of Congress refuse to do, which is to make judgments about priorities. An empty promise to authorize that is not offsetting some authorization somewhere else without coming around and doing it; tons of bills go through this place authorizing things so we can send a signal out there that we did something, knowing that we never intend to fund it. Right now we have over $8 trillion a year in authorizations. It can't be hard to find $2 billion to deauthorize to increase the authorization for Indian health. We have to have a vote, and we have to decide what that is. I will commit to the chairman, I will vote for that, as long as we are decreasing somewhere else. I am willing to go find where that is for the chairman. I will commit that I will offer an amendment to increase the spending for this in our budget. I also will commit that when the appropriations come through, although I may not vote for the whole appropriations bill because it is not going to just be for Indian health care, I will vote for amendments that will increase the amount of money that goes to Indian health care as long as it is within the budget.”