Below is an excerpt from Senator Tom Coburn's Farewell Address to the United States Senate. Every American should read and understand it.
To those of you through the years whom I have offended, I
truly apologize. I think none of that was intended because I actually see
things differently. You see, I believe our Founders were absolutely brilliant,
far smarter than we are. I believe the enumerated powers meant something. They
were meant to protect us against what history says always happens to a
Republic. They have all died. They have all died.
So the question is, what will happen with us? Can we cheat
history? Can we do something better than was done in the past?
I honestly believe we can, but I do not believe we can if we
continue to ignore the wisdom of our founding documents. So when I have
offended, I believe it has been on the basis of my belief in Article I, Section
8. I think we can stuff that genie back into the bottle. E pluribus unum.
"Out of many, one." But you do not have one unless you have guaranteed
the liberty of the many. When we ignore what the Constitution gave us as a
guideline, to protect the individual liberties, to limit the size and scope of the
Federal Government so the benefits of freedom and liberty can be expressed all across
this land; that is when we get back to solving our problems.
I think about my father--he had a fifth-grade education -- a
great believer in our country. He would not recognize it today. The loss of
freedom we have imposed by the arrogance of an all-too-powerful
Federal Government, ignoring the wisdom and writing of our
Founders that said: Above all, we must protect the liberty of the individual
and recognize that liberty is given as a God-given right.
So my criticism isn't directed personally, it is because I
truly believe that freedom gains us more than anything we can plan here. I know
not everybody agrees with me, but the one thing I do know is that our Founders
agreed with me. They had studied this process before.
They know what happens when you dominate from a central
government. This didn't mean intentions are bad; the intentions are great. The
motivations of people in this body are wonderful, but the perspective on how we
do it and what the long-term consequences are of how we do it really do matter.
We see ourselves today with a President whom we need to be
supporting and praying for, with an economy that is not doing what it could be
doing, and we need to be asking the question, Why? Is there a fundamental
reason? And there is.
We are too much involved in the decision-making in the
economy in this country that inhibits the flow of capital to the best return,
which inhibits the growth of wealth, which leaves us at a standard of living
the same as what we had in 1988. That is where we are, yet it doesn't have to
be that way.
I am going to read some words we have all heard before, but
they are worth re-reading. We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all
Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights...All of us. ...that among these are Life, Liberty, and the
pursuit of Happiness--I look at legislation and say how does that have an impact
on those two things, and too often it has a negative impact.
...That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it. I
don't know where we are on that continuum, but I know we are not where we were
intended to be in the vision of our Founders, and we are suffering, no matter where
you are in the country, as a consequence.
We established the Constitution to try to
protect those rights and to delineate those rights. We put in the limitation of
the government and outlined the rights of each individual citizen upon which
the government shall not infringe. Yet what comes out of this body and this
Congress every day, to my chagrin, infringes those guaranteed rights.
Every Member of the Senate takes the same
oath and this is where I differ with a lot of colleagues. Let me read the oath,
because I think it is part of the problem.
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
Your State isn't mentioned one time in that
oath. Your whole goal is to protect the United States of America, its Constitution
and its liberties. It is not to provide benefits for your state. That is where we
differ. That is where my conflict with my colleagues has come. It is nice to be
able to do things for your state, but that isn't our charge. Our charge is to
protect the future of our country by upholding the Constitution and ensuring
the liberty that is guaranteed there is protected and preserved.
The magic number in the Senate is not 60,
the number of Senators needed to end debate, and it is not 51, a majority. The
most important number in the Senate is one--one Senator. That is how it was set
up.
That is how our Founders designed it, and
with that comes tremendous amounts of responsibility, because the Senate has a set
of rules or at least that gives each individual Member the power
needed to advance, change, or stop legislation. That is a tool that has to be
mentored and refined and wise in its application.
Most of the bills that pass the Senate never
receive a vote. We all know that. It is a vast majority of the bills. They are
approved by unanimous consent. It only takes a single Senator to withhold
consent to stop most legislation.
There are many other rules and procedures a
Member can use. They are often referred to as arcane, but that is only because
they are rarely used. They are not arcane. They were designed to protect
liberty, to secure liberty, to make sure that we don't all follow history and fail.
Every Senator has the power to introduce
legislation and, until recently, offer amendments. No single Senator should be allowed to decide
what the rights of another Senator should be. That is tyranny. It has nothing to do with the history and classics of the Senate.
To exercise the rights we have been entrusted
with, we must respect the rights of others. That is the true power of our Constitution.
That is also the true power of the Senate. It is what binds our Nation together,
and it is what is needed to make the Senate work properly again.
The Senate was designed uniquely to force compromise,
not to force gridlock--to force compromise. One Senator had the power to stop
everything for the first 100 years, but it didn't because compromise was the
goal.
Our Founders understood there were many
differences between the states—in size, geography, economy, and opinions. They
united the states as one country based upon the premise that the many are more
powerful than the one. As Senators, we have to follow this example. I have not always
done that; I admit that freely to you. I should have. As Senators, we must follow
the example, stand for our principles, but working to find those
areas of agreement where compromise can be found to unite and move our country
forward. My colleague Senator Carper has my admiration because he has worked
tirelessly the past 2 years to try to accomplish that.. . .
To know how to reach a destination, you
must first know where you are, and without oversight--effective, vigorous oversight--you
will never solve anything. You cannot write a bill to fix an agency unless you
have an understanding of the problem, and you can only know this by conducting
oversight, asking the tough questions, holding the bureaucrats accountable,
find out what works and what doesn't, and know what has already seen
done.
Effective oversight is an effective tool to
expose government overreach and wasteful spending, but it also markedly exposes
where we lose our liberty and our essential freedoms. I have had some fun
through the years, taken some criticism for the waste vote--and it is opinion,
I agree. Everybody who has seen the waste book has a great defense of why it is
there. But the real question is will we become efficient at how we spend the
money of the American people?
This is a big enterprise. There is no other
enterprise anywhere close to it in size in the world. It is not manageable unless
we all try to agree to manage it and have the knowledge of it.
I think there ought to be 535 voice votes
every year, and then we ought to have the debate about where we are not
spending money wisely and have the information at our fingertips so we make
great decisions because, quite frankly, we don't make great decisions
because we don't have the knowledge. Then what knowledge we do have we transfer
to a bureaucracy to make decisions about it when we should have been guiding
those things.
True debates about national priorities would
come about if we did effective oversight. It is the Senate, once hailed as the
world's greatest deliberative body, where these differences should be argued.
Our differences should be resolved through civil
discourse so they are not settled in the street. Just as the Constitution
provides for majority rule and our democracy while protecting the rights of the
individual, the Senate must return to the principles to bring trust of the
electorate, and it can.
Our Founders believed that protecting the minority
views and minority rights in the Senate was essential to having a bicameral legislature
that would give us balance and not move too quickly against the very fundamental
principles upon which this country was based--and not out of guessing,
but out of thorough knowledge of what had happened in the past. We have to be
very careful to guard both minority rights and the rule of law. . . .
I would end with one final comment. The
greatest power I have not used as a Senator, which I would encourage you to use
in the future, is the power of convening. You have tremendous power to pull
people together because of your position. . . .
Again, I end by saying a great thank you to
my family for their sacrifice, a great thank you to the wonderful staff I have,
and a thank you to each of you for the privilege of having been able to work for
a better country for us all.
I yield the floor.
