GOP Senator: This Obama-Congress Lovefest Must Stop

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Here’s a theory about Washington you won’t hear very often.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) decried the level of dysfunction in the House and Senate, between the Democratic and Republican parties, between Congress and the White House, and so forth. What’s the news? you might ask. Unlike most people, Coburn blames Washington dysfunction on too much compromise. “Members of Congress and the administration agree on too much,” he said.

Here’s the full quote:

“Washington is dysfunctional, but it’s dysfunctional in a dysfunctional way. Members of Congress and the administration agree on too much. We agree on spending money we don’t have. We agree on not over-sighting the programs that should be over-sighted. We agree on continuing to spend money on programs that don’t work or are ineffective. Basically we agree on too much.”

Here’s the video of Coburn’s comment:

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Now, this is not to say Coburn is wrong on highlighting the government waste out there. He and his staff are among the best sleuths of nonsensical government spending (a 100-year starship program? A study to see if men look taller holding a pistol versus a caulk gun?). But on the issue of D.C. dysfunction, Coburn may be just a bit out of synch with the public.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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