Tom Coburn

Republicans have an opportunity for a get-out-of-jail moment with the fastest-growing slice of the electorate, Hispanics. An immigration bill is likely to pass the Senate by the end of the month. The size and shape of the measure and the tone of the...

Would you turn down a job paying $227,000 if all you had to do was look at animal photos in the National Geographic magazine? Of course not. And if you did, you'd be a certified moron. There can't be much stress in staring at animal photos, even of...

President Obama pleaded with Congress last week to remember the victims of December's schoolhouse shootings in Connecticut and tighten the nation's gun laws. "Shame on us if we've forgotten," he said. "Don't get squishy." But four months after the...

The attempted seduction of Sen. John Cornyn by immigration reformers is akin to my effort to get Neil Patrick Harris, the best emcee ever of any awards show, to sing at my next birthday. No matter how much I offer him, he'll turn me down. That's the...

The proposition that entitlement curbs are the key to maintaining national solvency is widely accepted, though not by many congressional Democrats. President Barack Obama, however, has endorsed it on various occasions. And he could make it happen. If he...

President Obama took a posse of Republican senators to dinner last week, and this week he's giving Congress the unusual courtesy of no fewer than four presidential visits to Capitol Hill. Can a flurry of presidential schmoozing change Washington from...

Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is a real-life Murray Blum. Blum, played by Charles Grodin, is the president's accountant in the comedy "Dave," which I think of every time we have one of these spending dramas in Washington. In my favorite scene...

Here's what is most maddening about the "Perils of Pauline" fiscal crises that President Obama and Congress have led us into during the last year: Both sides have known from the beginning what the final deals would look like, but neither side has been...

OK, so Congress hasn't managed to pass a budget, fix the tax code or avert the automatic spending cuts of the dreaded "sequester." Are they getting anything done on Capitol Hill? Yes, and you'll probably be surprised to hear where progress is being...

WASHINGTON -- Chuck Hagel's confirmation as secretary of defense ended as it began -- with a smear. "Senator Hagel has accused Israel of quote 'playing games' and committing, quote, 'sickening slaughter,'" Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said before...

Grover Norquist is losing his grip. It once seemed as if Washington's most powerful anti-tax crusader had the Republican Party firmly in hand. Signing Norquist's public pledge not to raise taxes was almost mandatory in GOP politics. Nine of the 10...

Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is a very conservative Republican, so his report last November cannot be dismissed as the mere ravings against wealthy people by some bleeding-heart liberal Democrat. (You may recall Coburn from last September, when he made...