This is probably not a very popular topic among a lot of conservatives, but I think it is worth examining. Some of the loudest critics of any of the fiscal policies put forward by conservatives usually have one thing in common. They always decry the unwillingness of conservatives to look closely at the defense budget. According to them, we usually want to cut everything else, including social programs, before we even consider taking a knife to the Pentagon’s spending habits. Conservatives normally respond to this by saying the money the Pentagon spends every year is necessary and vital to our nation’s defense. The fact of the matter is, there is truth to both sides of this fiscal argument and neither side wants to admit the obvious.
Oklahoma’s junior Senator, Tom Coburn, has long been known as a staunch social conservative. Something else he is well known for is his strict fiscal policies. To put it mildly, he is a spending hawk and he is not well liked in some circles because of that. I learned today, via The McCarville Report and Politics Daily, that he has set his sights on cutting the waste out of the aforementioned Pentagon budget, and it appears he is going to have some help, in the form of one Andrew Stern. I know that sounds like a very, unlikely pair of compadres, but they are looking to make it work, nonetheless.
The Pentagon budget is much in the news these days, what with Defense Secretary Robert
Gates proposing to eliminate two agencies, a command and 10 percent of military contractors. The spur for the Coburn-Stern alliance was a 10-page letter Coburn wrote in mid-May to Republican Simpson and the other deficit commission co-chair, Democrat Erskine Bowles. Its practical tone and ambitious ideas “got me thinking,” Stern said in an interview, about the potential for finding common ground with Coburn.
At first glance, the only thing the two men share is being chosen to serve on the fiscal commission. Stern is an iconoclastic former union president who has played a major role in Democratic politics. As head of the 2.2-million-member Service Employees International Union, he led several unions out of the AFL-CIO in 2005. Three years later his union spent $60 million to help elect President Obama. White House logs show Stern was the most frequent visitor in the first six months of Obama’s term. He stepped down as SEIU president in April.
Coburn, an obstetrician, is staunchly anti-abortion and helped lead GOP opposition to Obama’s health care and stimulus bills. He has a 98 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union. But Coburn works across party lines on such issues as government transparency and efficiency. Right now he’s co-sponsoring a bipartisan bill to put details of pork-barrel spending online. When Obama was a senator, he and Coburn won passage of a bill to create a searchable database for all government spending. They are, a Coburn aide said, still close.
What struck Stern about Coburn’s letter was its practical, business-like tone — so different from how the Pentagon budget is usually discussed in politics. As Stern put it to me, liberals contend that massive defense spending shortchanges their domestic priorities. If they suggest lower military spending, conservatives brand them weak on defense. Politicians with installations or contractors in their districts, meanwhile, are protective of every project and penny, regardless of their ideology.
I think this partnership may be something worth keeping an eye on. Who knows, they may actually work together to get something positive done for our country. Even if it comes at the expense of a politician’s pet project (better known as pork barrel spending), wouldn’t it be worth the effort to cut as much wasteful spending as possible and put our country back on the road to real and actual fiscal responsibility? I think it sounds like a fine idea and if it takes someone like Tom Coburn working together with someone like Andrew Stern, then so be it.
I think that eliminating waste from the military is a laudable goal. I can’t help but think that they’re still paying $500 for a hammer(remember the 80′s?). I do have concerns with cutting contractors, unless they are completely redundant or guilty of fraud. Otherwise, that would likely cost jobs, especially high skilled technical jobs.
As for Stern, I have to follow my own advice, and never trust a leftist.
Thanks for the comment, Matt. Senator Coburn is one of the staunchest conservatives I know, but he has also been able to work with some of the staunchest liberals successfully. From what I have heard, he is actually friends with President Obama. If anyone can pull this off, my money is on him.
There is no doubt that there is wasteful spending at the Pentagon just as there is everywhere else in the government. If these two men can pull off finding the waste and eliminating it my hat is off to them.
They are an odd pair, to say the least. It may be that it takes such an odd pair to pull this off. If they can work together, which I think they can, good things could come of it.
There are few I would trust to tackle this issue in a responsible way and to hold his own against someone like Stern. While I don’t know a LOT about Coburn, from what I have read about and heard from him, he is one of those few.