HuffPo: Tom Coburn Holds The Keys To Obama’s Agenda
Gun Control: Tom Coburn Holds The Keys To Obama’s Agenda
Updated: 04/03/2013 11:15 am EDT
WASHINGTON — As President Barack Obama gets set to barnstorm outside the Beltway in hopes of salvaging his gun policy reforms, the prospects of passing legislation of significance rests firmly on a single Republican lawmaker. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) finds himself at the epicenter of the gun debate as it enters a critical stage in the next few weeks.
Coburn’s unwillingness to endorse a background check compromise has frustrated Democrats, who spent weeks negotiating legislative language with him. But he has conspicuously kept lines of communication open with the gun bill’s chief author, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). In the process, Coburn has become a veritable funnel for legislative activity. Reform advocates feel they need Coburn’s blessing in order to get a significant number of Republican votes, mainly because Republicans are deferring all entreaties to him.
“I think there are a bunch of Democrats who want to get a bill and a bunch of Republicans who don’t want a bill at all,” said Third Way’s Jim Kessler, a longtime gun control advocate who has been pushing background check legislation on the Hill. “And then there are a bunch of Republicans and Democrats who want to do a bill that won’t be as strong as Democrats want. All of them have said Tom Coburn is going to do the negotiations for us. When we visited Republican offices to talk about it a bunch of them have said, ‘We know Senator Coburn is negotiating on this and we will wait to see what he does.'”