Sen. Dick Durbin's racially fueled crack that Republicans' stall of Loretta Lynch's confirmation as the first black woman attorney general is like making her "sit in the back of the bus" is a lie, but typical of the Illinois Democrat, former Sen. Tom Coburn tells
Newsmax TV.
"I got used to Dick Durbin's statements. Dick is a nice man, but that's the kind of statement that isn't true," Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, said Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show."
"He knows it isn't true, but it's political and partisan."
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Lynch, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, was nominated by President Barack Obama to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder and cleared by the Senate Judiciary Committee last month.
But Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said her nomination will not move forward without progress on a human-trafficking bill, which Democrats insist first be stripped of anti-abortion language.
In his controversial remark to fellow lawmakers, Durbin said: "The fact is, there is no substantive reason to stop this nomination … Loretta Lynch — the first African-American woman nominated to be attorney general — is asked to sit in the back of the bus when it comes to the Senate calendar. That is unfair. It's unjust. It is beneath the decorum and dignity of the United States Senate."
Coburn, a ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, blames the ongoing gridlock in Washington on "too many people who have been there way too long with no real experience before they got there."
"The reason you don't get rid of $800 billion worth of grants every year … is because people want to keep it that way so they can have a constituency that's depended on," he said.
"Even though it doesn't fit within … what was constitutional or what is appropriate, smart or cost-effective. I would expect that from Dick Durbin. There are Republicans who would say the same thing. It's not partisan.
"The American people got to understand that people are in Washington too long, and they shouldn't go to Washington until they've had 30 years of real-life experience."