Tom Coburn Quotes
Congress is lazy.
Tom Coburn, U. S. Congressman & Senator (Republican, OK, Town Meeting, Tulsa Community College, August 16, 2011
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This was a parody on the adage, “You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.”
In the early years of the Obama Administration, the minority leader of the Senate declared that the object of the Republicans in the Senate was to prevent Obama from being reelected. Therefore, the Republicans used the filibuster to block virtually all legislation. In 2010, the Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives and would not pass any legislation that the President favored lest he get credit for accomplishing something. It had gotten so bad, that even when the President proposed Republican ideas about which everyone agreed, that too was blocked.
At the time, most members never read the bills they voted on, though some tended to read earlier versions. The bills were very long—sometimes as long as 2000 pages. Usually a few members of Congress worked with Congressional Staffs and lobbyists to finalize bills. It was believed that the lobbyists were the only people who read the entire bills in all their versions.
Thomas Allen Coburn was an American politician and physician. A Republican, he was a United States Representative and later the junior United States Senator from Oklahoma.
