Tom Coburn

If you look at Thomson Reuters and several others who have studied the health care field, the estimate for defensive medicine costs is $250 billion a year. It is not just that we order tests that protect us from frivolous lawsuits, but…

If you take this money, here is what you have to do to comply.

If we are not going to do sub-awards and sub-grantees, there is no reason to have the site in the first place.

But part of not complying with the law is explaining to us why you are not complying with the law.

I would like to see as much emphasis in fixing the Transparency and Accountability Act as the Administration plans to put on these other wonderful areas of transparency...

I applaud President Obama for wanting to make more steps towards transparency, but I would caution him...

If it is a law, it ought to get done and it ought to get followed.

I do not doubt that, but what you just told me is you choose to do this rather than follow the law.

As a matter of fact, this will be the second year that we do not have a report.

The whole idea behind sub-awards and subcontracts was for everyday citizens could actually see what is going on.

We have actually eliminated a bunch of highly effective teachers in Oklahoma to meet the requirements of what the Federal Government has said you have to meet.

I think it is a very noble attempt to try to put better hands on the stimulus. It is interesting to note that when we had the first hearing with the IG who is overseeing the stimulus, he said, regrettably, $50 billion would be wasted; that…

What this amendment says is, where we violate our own rules in terms of pay-go, we will actually publish both the number of times and the amount of dollars we do that. It is about transparency of the Senate, being honest with the American…

This is an amendment that discusses the amount that the Secretary of the Senate will put up on our Web site, the amount of new programs; that we publish the total amount of spending, discretionary and mandatory, passed by the Senate that…

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and due to being a little bit under the weather, I think I will just ask that my opening statement be made a part of the record.

Is it always going to be possible for U.S. companies to operate in ways that support a global open Internet?

Senator Coburn is right on point in my opinion in saying that we have got to stress the government-to-government part.

There are times for entities that we deem as standard risk, and when we know that customer or we know that entity, we will not gather that information.

You see the fact of the theft of property from some of the poorest people in the world to live in luxury at the expense of their demise.

I think that any additional information that is required, Senator, to open up bank accounts is, I think, business would deem a burden.

The whole project is a, quote, 'misplaced priority'.

What the American people are asking is, Why aren't the three nursing programs combined so you have one set of overhead to administer all three programs? That is what they are asking. This does not cut any money for the homeless. What it…

It is remarkable what length we will go to defend our budgets. The fact is, the assumption Senator Durbin made is that we are efficient. The fact is, we are not. Everybody in here could turn back at least 10 percent of their budget if they…

This amendment rescinds our increase for our operations. We increased our budget 5.8 percent at a time when there was no inflation last year, zero. The year before that, we had increased our budget in excess of 10.9 percent, which means we…

Is the Senator aware that the foreign ops appropriation increased by 11 percent in 2009 and 33 percent last year? Yet the Senator is saying we can't trim 5 percent from that budget? Am I hearing the Senator correctly? We increased it 46…