WASHINGTON — Is it good for the republic that serving in Congress must be treated as a full-time job?
Newly elected Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma thinks not. And Coburn, who is also a physician, has already announced he will challenge a long-standing rule that bars him from continuing to practice medicine once he takes the oath of office Tuesday.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday January 06, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 42 words Type of Material: Correction
Revolutionary War financier -- In an article in Monday's Section A about the quest of U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to continue his medical practice while in office, the name of Revolutionary War financier Robert Morris was misspelled as Robert Morse.
A conservative Republican, Coburn has always been a maverick in public life: During six tumultuous years in the House, where he served from 1995 to 2001, he cultivated an image as an angry renegade and a citizen legislator who scorned professional politicians.
But this time, he does not stand alone.
A significant number of conservative political thinkers agree that the country would benefit from a return to the tradition of the public servant who also remains a private citizen. That, it is argued, is the model handed down by the Founding Fathers.
George Washington continued to operate his Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon, while commanding the Continental Army and serving two terms in the White House. John Hancock, a wealthy Boston merchant, did not abandon his business interests because he signed the Declaration of Independence and worked to establish the new nation.
And Robert Morse, the New York financier, explicitly stipulated when he took over the challenge of financing the American Revolution that he would continue his private business dealings as well.
That is the pattern Coburn hopes to follow, and he argues that it will make him a better public servant.
"He does want to continue seeing patients while he's serving in the Senate, and he is hoping to come to an accommodation with the Senate ethics committee," said Michael Schwartz, Coburn's chief of staff. The senator-elect was vacationing with his family and unavailable for comment.
"He believes he is a more effective legislator if he is able to relate to constituents in a nonpolitical context, if he is able to listen to what ordinary people are thinking," Schwartz said of Coburn. "He believes that Congress is better off if we have citizen legislators."
Seven new Republican senators are scheduled to be sworn in Tuesday. And neither Coburn's critics in the Washington political establishment nor his admirers in conservative watchdog groups are surprised that he plans to begin his Senate career by challenging the rules.
Coburn said he delivered 400 babies while serving in the House, a feat accomplished by traveling back to his district to tend to patients nearly every weekend and during congressional recesses. To do so, he reached a compromise with the House ethics committee that allowed him to practice medicine, with the restriction that he could earn enough only to pay his medical malpractice insurance and his overhead.
Now, Coburn says, he will do the same in the Senate -- even if that means winning an exemption from Senate ethics rules and getting around a federal statute that forbids senators from practicing certain professions, including medicine, and limits the income they can earn at other professions.
Conservatives who agree with Coburn that full-time politicians are inimical to democracy are hoping his decision to buck the establishment, even if it fails, will at least raise the question of why serving in Congress should preclude holding down other jobs.
"I think Congress should change the law," said Cleta Mitchell, a partner at the Washington law firm of Foley & Lardner who has represented members of Congress before both the Senate and House ethics committees.
Mitchell, formerly an activist for term limits, said she found it "abominable" that the unearned income of members of Congress was not limited, while earned income was held to less than $23,715 a year above the annual $157,100 salary.
The system, Mitchell said, favors millionaire lawmakers. "If you are a working stiff or a practicing physician, the law says you're not supposed to be allowed to continue earning income" above the limit, Mitchell said. "What Coburn is trying to do is very laudable."
But some watchdog groups said they found Coburn's decision to challenge the work restrictions alarming and symptomatic of a willingness by Republicans -- who control the House and the Senate -- to try to bend the rules.
"My feeling is: The law is the law," said Frank Clemente, director of Congress Watch for Public Citizen, a nonprofit organization. "If they are going to encourage people to be citizen legislators, there should be public hearings about it. He is paid a handsome salary to represent his constituents, and that should be his first priority."
Some historians also challenge the comparison to the Founding Fathers.
"It is a false analogy to look at the world of 18th century America and say it ought to be the standard for 21st century America," said John K. Alexander, a specialist in early American history at the University of Cincinnati.
