Tom Coburn Rankles Harry Reid in Senate Farewell

It takes a certain kind of senator to single-handedly block a bill that supporters say would save veterans from committing suicide.

But that’s exactly what Sen. Tom Coburn did last week, facing down withering pressure from veterans groups and insinuations from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that he will have the blood of veterans on his hands because he’s refusing to let the bill through.

The Oklahoma Republican also held up an energy conservation bill, released a road map for reforming the Social Security disability system, tried to undo one of Mr. Reid’s nuclear option-fueled rules changes and battled with Mr. Reid to try to pass a legacy-building transparency bill that would have forced the executive branch to produce a list of all its programs — all part of one of the busiest weeks any departing senator has ever had.

He cast his final vote as a senator Tuesday night, and was the first to flee the chamber floor, returning to the citizen part of “citizen legislator.” By Wednesday afternoon he was back in Oklahoma, driving to his home in Muskogee.

In his farewell speech last week, Mr. Coburn made the case for individualism.

“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,” he told several dozen of his colleagues who had come to the floor to hear him speak. “The Senate has a set of rules that gives each individual member the power needed to advance, change or stop legislation.”

He also read his colleagues the oath of office they take, in which they pledge to defend the Constitution. He urged them to pay attention: “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 to your state.”

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