Tom Coburn, the poster child for the merits of repeal of the seventeenth amendment, is currently holding up funding for a suicide prevention program for vets:
Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn continues to single-handedly block the Clay Hunt SAV Act, otherwise known as the Suicide Prevention for America’s Veterans Act. His reason: it will cost $22 million, and that's $22 million he doesn't want to spend.
via Daily Kos
I don't have Dean Baker's handy calculator, so I can only guess what percentage of the budget $22 million represents, but it's way below .01 percent.
It certainly is a mystery why Coburn is doing this, but it's not really a mystery that interests me. Here's the mystery that interests me: People like Coburn, Cruz and their ilk are constantly doing this, and constantly getting away with it. The people running the Senate can't ever seem to find a way to get around them. Yet when a Democrat, particularly a liberal, tries to do something similar, it seems there's always a way. I recall years ago Chris Dodd tried to stop FISA legislation. Harry Reid swatted him aside like a fly. Just another of life's little mysteries.
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