"When Coburn disparaged an earmark for Seattle -- $500,000 for a sculpture garden -- Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) was scandalized: 'We are not going to watch the senator pick out one project and make it into a whipping boy.' She invoked the code of comity: 'I hope we do not go down the road deciding we know better than home state senators about the merits of the projects they bring to us.' And she warned of Armageddon: 'I tell my colleagues, if we start cutting funding for individual projects, your project may be next.' But Coburn, who does not do earmarks, thinks Armageddon sounds like fun."I've asked this question before, and I'm sure I will want to ask it again: Which Article 1, Section 8 enumerated power of Congress says Congress has the power to spend money on a sculpture garden in Seattle?
And, then there's this:
"Coburn is the most dangerous creature that can come to the Senate, someone simply uninterested in being popular. When House Speaker Dennis Hastert defends earmarks -- spending dictated by individual legislators for specific projects -- by saying that a member of Congress knows best where a stoplight ought to be placed, Coburn, in an act of lese-majeste, responds: Members of Congress are the least qualified to make such judgments."If members of Congress ever read Article I of our Constitution, why would they even think they should be paying for stoplights?
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