Senate's 'Dr. No' Spurs Showdown Over Spending

Inevitably, his stance has created conflict with some colleagues. While most senators say the 60-year-old Oklahoman is personally gracious, some contend that he is confused about the legislator's role in government.

"What do the constituents in your state expect of you? I believe they expect me to get some things done. I don't believe they're looking for 'no.' They're looking for 'yes,' " said Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who fought Coburn last year over an earmark for a Nebraska-based military contractor.

"We all have our different interests, our different styles," said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who backed Coburn's primary opponent in the Senate race.

A self-proclaimed "citizen legislator," Coburn was elected to the House in the GOP landslide of 1994 but imposed a six-year limit on himself. In 2001 he returned to his medical practice in Oklahoma until he won the 2004 race.

Coburn quickly learned the complex rules of the Senate, which is sometimes called the "cooling saucer" of the legislative process. Unlike the House -- where the majority can rule with an iron fist even with a one-vote edge -- the Senate acts on a vaguely accepted concept of "unanimous consent."

Without all 100 senators in agreement, it can take a series of deliberative actions and votes to move ahead on legislation.

Consider the Emmett Till Unsolved Crimes Bill, named after the 14-year-old black child from Chicago whose 1955 slaying in Mississippi remains unsolved. The bill, which the House approved 422 to 2 last year, would create a post for a new prosecutor in the Justice Department to investigate unsolved killings from the civil rights era.

Coburn supports the idea of creating a new federal prosecutor -- but only if there are other cuts in spending within the Justice Department to finance it.

Because of Senate rule changes in the 1970s, Coburn is not required to stage an old-fashioned filibuster, which once required personally occupying the floor and talking a bill to death. Instead, he can play a different stalling game that makes leaders reluctant to eat up a week or more of floor time to debate noncontroversial legislation.

For Reid to get around Coburn's hold, he would need to file a motion to proceed to the bill; if at least 60 senators vote for that motion, it would take another two days of debate before Reid could call another vote on a motion to close off debate, called cloture. If at least 60 senators support that, a final vote on the bill is scheduled, but only after another 30 hours of floor debate.

Since January 2007, Coburn has used his senatorial "hold" to block more than 80 pieces of legislation, which means Reid knows that Coburn will object to unanimous consent on those bills.

So instead of filing all those motions, Reid leaves it up to the legislation's sponsor to try to negotiate with Coburn. But the normal legislative give-and-take has no appeal to him. Coburn does not accept earmarks, the spending for pet projects that lawmakers insert into bills. And because of a self-imposed two-term limit, Coburn has no aspirations to become a committee chairman or party leader, so he does not need to do any favors for colleagues.