Sen. Coburn Strikes Again
Sigh. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), he of the efforts to add an income test to D.C.'s tuition assistance program and paint WMATA as irresponsible baby killers, is back, this time with an op-ed in the Washington Times. In case you hadn't heard, Coburn feels strongly that the D.C. Metro system shouldn't get another dime from the federal government. In the column, Coburn argues that continuing to allow WMATA to get federal subsidies only removes any incentive the agency has to provide better service:
Metro riders themselves are all too familiar with the system's problems. When trains are late, riders are left standing on the platform not knowing when, or if, it will ever come. Little effort is made to keep escalators working. In 2005, there were typically more than 50 broken escalators on any given day. According to Metro, it would take several months to fix an escalator, forcing people to walk up huge flights of stairs instead while they were inoperable.You get the sense Sen. Coburn has had some of the same annoying Metro experiences that many of us have had over the last few years, and hey, broken escalators and delayed trains are no doubt a pain. But Coburn chooses to ignore a lot about what General Manager John Catoe has been doing to turn the agency around since he took over last year. Both escalator and elevator service have improved, a large budget deficit has been balanced by raising fares, and ridership has increased to the point where we're all busy worrying about increasing the system's capacity.
We also really like how Sen. Coburn implies that his constituents in Oklahoma shouldn't have to see their tax dollars going toward the D.C. Metrorail system because most of them make less money and won't ever come to our nation's capital for a visit. We wonder if they agree with their senator's assessment that they have no interest in ever seeing the White House, the National Portrait Gallery, the Lincoln Memorial, or even, say, visiting their senator's offices at the U.S. Capitol.
Coburn, of course, was one of 57 U.S. Senators who last year voted against a bill that would have given the District of Columbia a voting member in the U.S. House of Representatives. The senator believes the District ought to be treated like an independent local government in some cases (transportation funding) but not in others (having a voice in Congress). If Sen. Coburn thinks D.C. residents ought to be taxed more in order to pay for infrastructure improvements to the Metro system, perhaps he ought to re-think his position that those tax dollars should not also give us the same rights as every other American.