The senate floor from december 2014. I come to the floor to speak about my experiences in the senate. Unfortunately, this wont be the last time i speak, much to many of your chagrin, as i have some adamant opposition to some of the things that were doing. But nevertheless will try to put in context some of my feelings and thoughts about the great privilege that has been granted to me by the people of oklahoma. We hear a lot of speeches in this place and as members who are elected, it gets reflected on us. But nothing could be further from the truth because the thing that really makes this place operate is the people that work with us, the people that support us, the people that help guide us. Would you please take your conversations outside. The senate will come to order. Sen. Coburn the people behind the scenes who are both brilliant and committed and dedicated to the founding principles of this country. We all have them working for us. And yet theyre rarely recognized. So whether our accomplishments are big or small those accomplishments come through the work efforts and labors of those that join with us as we come here to try to make a difference. So i first wanted to say that there are a lot of people i need to say thank you to. From our parliamentarian elizabeth, to all the staff that works here in the senate, to the people who work at gao. Wonderful people. C. F. s i. G. s, counsel. Literally thousands of amendments for me. They probably have some real mixed feelings about my departure. And then i have personal staff one of which all tremendous. But one of which i found to be a phenomenal brilliant person. His name is rowland foster. Theres not anything hes ever forgotten. You can ask him anything. Hell find it. He knows it. And so i mentioned him. I have hundreds of others that i could equally speak about from my former chief of staff Mike Schwartz who passed away from lou gehrigs disease to those in my office and staff that each know what a difference they make and they did. The staff and the help mr. Duncan on our side. Some on the opposite side. Were only able to function because of all the people that enable us to do that. With those thank yous, i actually wanted to move to really a different topic. And the topic is believing in our country. I tell people wherever i go, we do not have one problem we cant solve. Theres nothing too big for us. Theyre all solvable. And to prove that is my chairman on online security. Hes been a phenomenal chairman. He is not of my party. We dont agree on everything. But the one thing we agreed on was that we were going to Work Together to solve problems and we have. We didnt solve them all. But i would suggest if you look at whats come through this place even in this dysfunctional place at this time you see more coming out of his leadership than any other pieces of legislation. And why is that . Its because this wasnt about him, it wasnt about me. It was about solving the problems of our country. To those of you through the years who i have offended, i truly apologize. And i think whether of that was intended because i actually see things different. You see, i believe our founders were absolutely brilliant, far smarter than us. I believe enumerated powers meant something. They were meant to protect us against what history says always happens to a republic. Theyve all died. Theyve 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 . And i honestly believe we can. But i dont believe we can if we continue to ignore the wisdom of our founding documents. And so when i have offended, i believe its been on the basis of my belief in article one section a. I think we can stuff that genie back into the bottle. E pluribus unum, out of many, one. But you dont have one unless youve guaranteed the liberty of the many and 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 that the benefit of freedom and liberty can be expressed all across this land. Thats when we get back to solving our problems. I think about my father. He had a fifth grade education. A great leader in our country he wouldnt recognize it today, the loss of freedom that we have imposed by the arrogance of an alltoopowerful Central Government ignoring the wisdom and writings 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 if my criticism is directed personally, its because i truly believe that freedom gains us more than anything we can plan up here. And i know not everybody agrees with me but i know our founders agreed with me. They had studied this process before. They know what happens when you dominate from a Central Government. It doesnt mean intentions are bad. The intentional are great. The motivations of people in this body are wonderful but the perspective on how we do it and what the longterm consequences of how we do it really do matter so we see ourselves today with a president that we need to be supporting and praying for, with an economy thats not doing what it could be doing. And we need to be asking the questions why. Theres a fundamental reason and there is. Were too much involved in the Decision Making and 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. Thats where we are. And yet it doesnt have to be that way. Im going to read you some things youve all heard before but theyre worth rereading. We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. All of us, that among these are life Liberty Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And 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 government are instituted among men driving from the consent of the government that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is a right of the people to alter or abolish it. I dont know where we are on that continuum but i know were not where we were intended to be in the vision of our founders and we are suffering no matter where you are in this country as a consequence of it. We established the constitution to try to protect those rights and delineate those rights and we put in there the limitation of the government outline the rights of each individual citizen upon which the government shall not infringe and 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 heres why i differ with a lot of my colleagues. Let me read the oath to you. Because i think its part of our problem. I do solemnly swear and affirm that i will support 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 of which im about to enter, so help me god. Your whole goal is to protect the United States of america its constitution and its liberties. Its not to provide benefits for your state. Thats where we differ. Thats where my conflict with my colleagues has come. Its nice to be able to do things for your state. But that isnt our charge. Our charge is to protect future of our country by upholding the constitution and ensuring the liberty guaranteed there is protected and preserved. The magic number in the senate is not 60. The number of senators needed and its not 51. A majority. The most important number in the senate is one one senator. Thats how it was set up. Thats how our fathers designed it. And with that comes tremendous amounts of responsibility because the senate has a set of rules, or at least did, that gives each individual members the power needed to advance change or stop legislation. And thats 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. The vast majority of the bills. They are approved by unanimous consent. It just takes a single senator to withhold consent, to stop most legislation. There are many other rules and procedures a member can use. Theyre often referred to as arcane but thats only because theyre rarely used. Theyre not arcane. They were designed to protect liberty, to secure liberty, to make sure we dont follow history and fail. Every senator has the power to reduce legislation and until recently offer amendments. No single senator should be allowed to decided what the rights of another senator should be. Thats tyranny. 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. Thats the true power of our constitution. Thats also the true power of the senate. Its what binds our nation together and its whats 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 didnt because compromise was the goal. Our founders understood there are many differences between the states, both 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. Ive 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 compromises can be found to unite and move our country forward. My colleague senator carper, has my admiration because hes worked tirelessly the last two years to accomplish that. Not all of the powers of the senators are exercised on the senate floor. Each member of the senate has a unique role to participate and practice oversight to hold the government accountable and thats part of our duties. Except most often thats the part of our duties that is most ignored. To know how to reach a destination, you must first know where you are and without oversight, effective vigorous oversight, youll 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 doesnt and know what has already been done. Effective oversight is an effective tool to expose government overreach, wasteful spending. But it also markedly exposes where we lose our liberty and our essential freedoms. Ive had some fun through the years taking some criticism for the and its opinion, i agree. Everybody in the west book has a great defense of why its there. But the real question is. Will we become efficient in how we spend the money of the american people. This is a big, big enterprise. Its not manageable unless we all agree to try to manage it and have the knowledge of it. I think there ought to be 535 waste books every year and then we ought to have the debate about where were not spending money wisely and have the information at our fingertips so we make great decisions because quite frankly we dont make great decisions because we dont have the knowledge. And then what knowledge we do have we transfer to a buriescracy 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 worlds grateful deliberative body, where these differences should be argued. Our differences should be resolved through civil discourse so theyre not settled in the street. Just as our constitution provides for the majority rule by democracy, the senate must return to the trust of the electorate and it can. Our founders believed that protecting minority views and minority rights in the senate was essential to having a legislature that would give us balance and not move too quickly against the fundamental principles upon which this country was based and not out of guessing, not out of thorough knowledge of what had happened in the past and we need to be very careful to guard both minority rights and the rule of law. Theres no one who works in the senate that is insignificant. Whether its the people who serve us when we have lunch, to the highest of the high. They all deserve our ear. Each of us have value. Ill end with one final comment. The greatest power that i have not used as a senator that 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. To convene the opposite opinions Chuck Schumer has been great at that for me. When we have a difference, he wants to get together and convene and see how we work. And that power is the power that causes us to compromise, to come together, to reach consensus. So my encouragement to you is to rethink the utilization of the power of convening. People will come to you if you ask them to come. Again, i would end by saying a great thank you to my family for their sacrifice, a great thank you to the wonderful staff ive had and a thank you to each of you for the privilege of having been able to work for a better country for us all. Yield the floor. [applause] announcer former senator tom coburn was a guest on cspans washington journal in 2015, about nine months after he left the senate. He talked about why he left the senate his political philosophy and activities since leaving elected office. And we are back with the former senator from oklahoma tom coburn, represented the state of 2005 2 2015. Sir, remind folks why you left the senate and what youre up to now. Host sir, remind folks why you left the senate and what you are up to now . Sen. Coburn i recognized that the problems werent being addressed