Tom Coburn: “so here we have a bill, the Labor-HHS bill, and it has over $400 million in earmarks--some good, some priority, some are…”

“so here we have a bill, the Labor-HHS bill, and it has over $400 million in earmarks--some good, some priority, some are high priority, probably should be there, but many are not high priority. When are we going to do what the American family has to do every year? What they have to do is say: Here is how much money we have coming in. Here is what we have needs for, and here is what we have available. What they do is make choices based on priorities. This debate is about making choices. If we had different rules, this debate would have been eliminating the earmark plainly, and several others. But because of the Senate rules, the money is going to be spent, so we have to figure out a higher priority place to spend it, and maternal and child health is certainly the place to do it. The real question the American people are asking us, the 89 percent of the American people who don't have confidence in this institution are asking us is, when are we going to get it? When are we going to start doing what they want us to do? When are we going to start playing for them and their future, rather than playing for us and our future? That is the real question. There is no question that the desirability of what this earmark supports is probably great. I don't have any problems with it. What I have a problem with is that we have a $9 trillion debt. This Senator has never voted to raise the debt limit.”