Josh Barro, Columnist

Against an Olympian Tax Break: Tom Coburn

August 8, 2012 at 7:08 PM UTC

Josh Barro is the lead writer for the Ticker, Bloomberg View's blog on economics, finance and politics. His primary areas of interest include tax and fiscal policy, state and local government, and planning and land use. Previously, Barro was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a commercial real estate banker at Wells Fargo. He holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Harvard and lives in Queens, New York.

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Senator Marco Rubio's bizarre proposal to exempt Olympic winnings from federal taxes has taken Washington by storm, garnering endorsements from both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, in addition to Dave Camp, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee in the House of Representatives.

I'm pleased to see that at least one elected official opposes the proposal: Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. His spokesman John Hart emails: