Kingfisher businessman Brian Walter is writing a book on the late Sen. Tom Coburn, M.D.

During coming weeks the Times and Free Press will print chapters of the book on Page 5 of its Wednesday editions.

It’s a system that America’s first president, George Washington, used to publish a book he wrote. Walter has a copy of that book, incidentally.

At the conclusion of Walter’s writing, The Times and Free Press staff will compile the chapters in a book format to be published as one unit.

We’re pleased to say we encouraged Walter to undertake this job, mostly because we thought that Coburn, a strictly ethical and honest man and public servant, never received the appreciation he deserved while he was alive.

Also, Brian is a superb writer and is uniquely positioned to write this book because of his close association with Coburn as Doctor Coburn attempted to put the U.S. Congress on a straight path with his no nonsense fiscal conservatism – so conservative that his own party members were at odds with him almost as much as the Democrats.

Walter is following up on Coburn’s plan to get members of Congress to agree to forego their salaries if they don’t produce a balanced budget each year. Walter, who calls the effort “Unity Above Self for America” is working to get members of Congress to enact a “No Budget, No Pay Act.”

It would require Congressional members to forego their salaries if they don’t pass a budget bill balanced preferably.

Coburn became a pariah in his own party during his all-to brief tenure in Congress because he opposed pork barrel projects that did not benefit the entire nation while also sending the nation’s debt through the roof.

One of the most noxious bills that Coburn brought to America’s attention was one sponsored by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), which called for appropriating $200 million for a bridge to connect an island populated by 50 residents to the Alaskan Mainland.

Coburn dubbed the effort the “Bridge to Nowhere.” That is when Coburn learned what it’s like to buck the Senate power structure.

He had picked a fight over pork with one of the Senate’s most venerated leaders.

Stevens, a 40-year veteran of Congress also happened to be the Senate’s president pro tempore.

In the Senate, these kinds of giveaways are not unusual; members, and especially those in a position of influence, are frequently given millions of dollars for personal spending projects back home, items that bypass the normal review process and are quietly ushered in by their peers (whose own projects get the same deal). But to Coburn, who hadn’t spent 40 years in the Senate and didn’t have any of his own special projects and didn’t particularly care about keeping pacts with his new colleagues, $200 million seemed like a lot to spend on a bridge for fifty people. So he tried to take the earmark out.

An article by Wil S. Hylton in Gentleman’s Quarterly in 2007, who cited Coburn as a “majority of one,” in the U.S. Senate explained, regarding the spendthrift ways of the federal government:

“That’s what Tom Coburn wants you to know. That the members of the United States Congress will spend your money just because they can. That they’ll do it even when they can’t. That every year, they borrow the extra $500 billion from China, raising their own credit limit each time they reach it and then raising it again the next year, for a total of $9 trillion in debt so far.”

Of course, the debt has exploded exponentially since that time. Hylton wrote:

…[A]t the end of the day, when it comes down to a choice between borrowing $200 million from China to build a bridge to nowhere and taking a stand against government waste, four out of five politicians will blow it on the bridge.

Coburn’s position was explained in Hylton’s final paragraph when Coburn compared America’s position with delivering a baby (Coburn’s specialty was pediatrics):

“When you’re delivering a baby,” he said, “and the baby’s getting in trouble, and you can see the baby’s heartbeat, which is normally about 130 or 140 beats per minute, going down to 50 or 60, and you’re standing there watching it go down, you know you’ve got about three minutes to make a decision. You can use a pair of forceps and try to pull it out, you can use a vacuum extractor, or you can leave labor and delivery, put her on the table, put her to sleep, cut a hole in her belly, and take it out with a C-section—but you’ve got to do something, and you’ve got to do it now. That baby’s life depends on what you do in those three minutes. And that’s exactly where we are in our country today. We are in those critical three minutes. If we wait to act, it’s going to be too late. We’re going to lose the baby.”

We can hardly wait to see Brian’s book on Doctor Coburn come to fruition.

You can read along with us while it does…on Page 5A.