Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

Did anyone happen to see Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) on MSNBC this morning? He was berating the political condition in the Congress, saying that virtually no legislation in either house of Congress can even get put up for a vote because either one party or the other doesn't want to lose the vote and provide campaign fodder that might cost them a seat in either the House or Senate in the upcoming 2012 elections. He asserted that Congress is totally frozen and devoid of any leadership from either political party.

Coburn used as an example a small amendment that he attempted to have attached to a bill in the Senate that would close all the schools being operated on military bases here in the U.S., reducing spending by about $1 million per year. We are spending $51,000 per student per year for the operation of schools on military bases. (That's more than the cost of attending Harvard, Yale or Stanford for a year.)

Coburn proposed closing the schools and providing $12,000 per student in funding to the local school districts where the bases are located, some of which were far more highly-rated schools than those on the bases. What was the vote on the amendment? Sorry, it was never brought up for a vote on the floor of the Senate, frozen "in committee".

I agree with Coburn's conclusion, amazing for a sitting U.S. Senator...."we have to get rid of all the people currently serving in the House and Senate. Our political process is totally dysfunctional and needs to be fixed by new people who might have the motivation and leadership abilities to fix what is so badly broken."