What’s wasteful spending here isn’t in Oklahoma?

By Karoun Demirjian

Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2010 | 2 a.m.

The Senate’s biggest spending hawk, Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, has unveiled his annual catalog of what he deems the country’s most egregious examples of wasteful spending, and Las Vegas has earned two spots in his Top 10.

Coming in at No. 10, the Clark County Shooting Park (price tag: $15.68 million this year, allocated from Bureau of Land Management funds). And at No. 3: the Neon Museum and Boneyard (price tag: $1.8 million this year).

“With Nevada’s high unemployment rates, would it be more popular to figure out a better place in the state to spend the money?” Coburn asks in his review.

So what’s Coburn got against the history of the nation’s gambling capital? And guns? Well ... probably not as much as he’s got against spending.

Coburn is the Senate’s most staunchly anti-spending voice, for which he is equally praised for his consistency and chastened for what some consider to be his ascetic and unsympathetic approach to government largesse.

So why is he going so hard after Las Vegas? Coburn, of course, isn’t particularly close with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, but he was a C Street housemate and remains a close confidante of Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign, who has been largely in lock-step with the Oklahoma senator’s anti-spending crusade.

To be sure, pointing out that spending almost $2 million in federal funding to showcase signs that are no longer in use by casinos may be an objectively compelling argument. But there’s also the argument that those 150 artifacts represent a unique and important chapter of American history.

That’s certainly the case for other parts of the country, such as the National Route 66 Museum complex in Elk City, Okla.

It, too, has received federal dollars — but hasn’t appeared on the annual lists by the senator from Oklahoma.