Like a young coordinator taking over for a campus legend head coach, Sen. James Lankford is attempting to adapt Tom Coburn’s blitzing fiscal playbook for use in a modern era.
In a new report, Federal Fumbles: 100 ways the government dropped the ball, Lankford channels Coburn’s annual Wastebook, a thorough collection of excess, misuse and spending lowlights.
Though what qualified as true “waste” was up to Coburn’s own interpretation, his book was full of government ribbings that were often blunt and chuckle-worthy.
His last Wastebook, in 2014, highlighted a $10,000 project to monitor “how grass grows” and a $331,000 grant toward understanding the “hangry” phenomenon.
Will Lankford’s Fumbles fill the Wastebook void? Few successors ever see the success of the original. Just ask Texas.
Lankford’s initial report calls out the overregulation of a llama farm and a more than $2.5 million weight-loss program for truck drivers.
Lankford has shown he can call the plays, but is he willing to jump in the scrum pile himself?
Print Headline: New playcaller
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