Tom Coburn and Ethics
It hasn’t been a month since Senator Tom Coburn of Muskogee was complaining that an ethics bill before the US Senate was ‘weak’. In a Newsok.com report, dated January 20, and titled “Coburn finds ethics bill still weak”, Senator Coburn, one of only two senators that voted against the bill, was quoted as saying:
Any conference report on this bill that includes a ban on $20 meals but doesn’t include a ban on $100 million earmarks that financially benefit politicians, their families or their staff members will be an insult to the intelligence of every single taxpayer
Then something happened.
On February 1 came a report that the Federal Election Commission says Senator Tom Coburn’s 2004 campaign violated federal campaign laws. A spokesman for Senator Coburn was reported as saying the campaign did not contest the findings and that the campaign would comply with federal laws.
On February 6, a Tulsa World report titled, “Coburn might spurn re-election”, report that the ethics bill that recently passed the U.S. Senate is so burdensome that Sen. Tom Coburn says he won’t run for re-election if it becomes law.
That article quoted Senator Coburn as saying during a C-SPAN interview:
If this becomes law, I will guarantee you I won’t run again. I’m not about to put what I’ve work for for 35 years as a physician and a businessman at risk so I can represent the people. I will say ‘I’m cashing it in. We’ve just imploded ourselves.
The obvious question is of course, how does an ethics bill go from being one Senator Coburn considers weak to one that causes Senator Coburn to “cash it in” and refuse to run for reelection if the bill becomes law? The bill did not change between January and February. So what did change?
One can only speculate about what happened in the meantime to change the Senator’s view and result in the sudden about face and “cash it in” mentality. Odds are it is something that really put the fear into Senator Coburn and maybe, just maybe, it involves election laws and ethics…
