The earmark favor factory needs to be boarded up and demolished, not turned over to new management that may or may not have a better eye for earmarks with 'merit.'
Tom CoburnThe real debate is we've had an activist court, and the American people don't want an activist court. And the real fear from those who might oppose Samuel Alito is that he'll bring the court back within a realm where the American people might want us to be with a Supreme Court; one that interprets the law, equal justice under the law, but not advancing without us advancing, the legislative body advancing, ahead of him.
Tom CoburnWhen I came to Washington, I was troubled to observe so many similarities between the behaviors of drug-addicted patients and my political colleagues. In Washington power is like morphine.
Tom CoburnWhen we have heartbeat and brain waves, we refuse to accept it as the presence of life - this lack of logic of which we approach this issue because we like and we favor convenience over ethics. We favor convenience over the hard parts of life that actually make us grow.
Tom CoburnTactics and strategies ought to be based on what the real world is, and we do not have the political power to do this. We're not about to shut the government down over the fact that we cannot, only controlling one house of Congress, tell the president that we're not going to fund any portion of [Obamacare]. Because we can't do that.
Tom Coburn