No, Dr. No
Coburn loses on resource bill

By World's Editorial Writers
Published: 1/15/2009 2:33 AM
Last Modified: 1/15/2009 3:01 AM

On Sunday the U.S. Senate broke the one-man logjam that had prevented more than 160 public lands, water and natural resources bills from moving forward.

On a 66-12 vote, the Senate decided to move ahead on an omnibus package of proposals that had been blocked by U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.

Coburn had been preventing progress on the ideas with the threat of filibuster. The rare Sunday vote broke through his obstructionist tactics.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said the bill "reflects possibly the most significant conservation legislation passed by the Senate in the past decade."

Among other things, the bill would designate more than 2 million acres of wilderness in nine states, establish three new national park units, a new national monument, three new national conservation areas, more than 1,000 miles of national wild and scenic rivers and four new national trails, according to the Campaign for America's Wilderness.

Does this signal the end of Dr. No's reign as the Senate's one-man majority?

Coburn has made it his habit for years to prevent bills that weren't to his liking from ever being considered by threatening a filibuster.

He has blocked proposals to find better treatments for paralyzed people, address high suicide rates among veterans, fund breast-cancer research and create a national Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis registry. In each case, the measures had broad congressional support, but Coburn refused to allow them to progress. Without a 60-vote supermajority to break a filibuster, the bills had to hang fire.

With the likely swearing in of Roland Burris as the junior senator from Illinois, Senate Democrats will have 58 votes. If Al Franken prevails in Minnesota, that becomes 59 votes and it will take only one Republican vote to break a filibuster.

As much as it galls Coburn, the Democrats may soon have the votes to force him to acknowledge a new concept: majority rule.
By World's Editorial Writers

http://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/ar...4_Oudyte158197