Senator Tom Coburn Filibusters For Transparency

From Associated Press: 

WASHINGTON - The Senate ground to a halt Wednesday in a display of what an individual senator can do to protest his treatment by some of Capitol Hill's most powerful barons. 

Instead of passing a $33.5 billion measure funding energy and water projects and then moving on to other business, the chamber slogged through a 30-hour protest by Sen. TomCoburn, R-Okla., who halted further legislative business after one of his pet ideas was dropped from the bill. 

At issue is one of Coburn's top issues — greater transparency in government — as well as his sworn enemy, the powerful Appropriations Committee. Coburn had added to the energy and water bill a provision requiring reports that agencies are required to send to the appropriations panels be made available to other lawmakers and to the public. It's part of his drive for greater transparency in government. 

You just gotta love this bias left wing reporting, because they consider transparency a “pet idea”.  Never mind that accountability in government has shot up to one of the top concerns of the American people.

What is funny is that Democrats are hell bent on doing things behind closed doors.  These are the same folks who flailed themselves silly over transparency if Bush so much as turned his head to sneeze. Where did that go?

Coburn asked the perfect question when his filibuster was blocked: 

Coburn's amendment won routine Senate approval in July but was dropped during House-Senate talks last month. Under Coburn's plan, reports such as one on the Energy Department's financial balances and a Nuclear Regulatory Commission report on barriers to building new nuclear power plants would have to be posted online right away. He's added similar language to several other bills. 

"What is it we don't want the American people to see," Coburn said. 

And Dingy Harry had a dingy answer right at hand: 

"It's wasted time," griped Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "We spend hours, days on this floor doing nothing." He said the Senate could have instead worked on extending unemployment benefits or passing a popular Defense Department policy bill. 

Perhaps some of that wasted time could best be spent READING the G-damn legislation they are trying to shove down our throats! 

Via: Memeorandum

Via: Associated Press