Oklahoma delegation quietly backs "fiscal cliff" capitulation

Have seen only one press release so far from our congressmen and senators on the "compromise" they approved yesterday. Both Oklahoma senators and four out of five congressmen voted in favor of the Senate version of the bill, which raises income taxes on individuals and small businesses, does not extend the payroll tax cut, and does not cut spending, instead adding $4 trillion more to our national debt. Only one Oklahoma congressman, James Lankford, voted with the majority of House Republicans against the bill; Sullivan, Boren, Lucas, and Cole voted in favor. This appears to be the final roll call for Sullivan and Boren.

Here's the statement from Tom Coburn's office:

While this bill is far from perfect, it does prevent massive tax increases while making tax cuts permanent for 99 percent of Americans. Congress and the president, however, have a lot of work to do to address our long-tern spending problem. Our debt - which is 120 percent of our economy if you count federal, state and local debt - is still the greatest threat to our national security. We will never address that threat until Congress and the president acknowledge that the only way to save entitlement programs is to change them.

MORE: Jim Inhofe defended the bill on KRMG, describing it as a choice between the compromise with its flaws and the cost of doing nothing.

Has anyone heard any comment from the two incoming Oklahoma congressmen, Jim Bridenstine and Markwayne Mullin?

UPDATE 2013/01/03: Jim Inhofe tells Human Events that he's now Mitch McConnell's biggest fan:

"Why any conservative could not look at this bill and rejoice is beyond me," the senator told Human Events--in fact, phoning us early Thursday morning from a Midas muffler shop in Tulsa where he was having work done on his car. Inhofe had just finished with more than a dozen interviews on Sooner State talk radio on the bill and, as he told us, "one of our popular talk show hosts here in Tulsa, Pat Campbell, had been a vigorous opponent of the measure but I think I turned him around."

"When 99 percent of the taxpayers get a very large reduction in their taxes, you can't say it's not a conservative victory," he explained. "I think that many were upset because the bill didn't have spending cuts. Well, this was a tax bill and cutting spending is the next step, along with dealing with sequestration, so we don't disarm America. We'll deal with that shortly."

Inhofe cited the high income threshold on the capital gains rate, the limitations on the imposition of the death tax, and the fix for the Alternative Minimum Tax as far better than the alternative with the expiration of the George W. Bush era tax cuts.

For his part, Pat Campbell, host of the morning show on 1170 KFAQ, wrote on Facebook about Inhofe's comments: "Now this takes balls!" Campbell also wrote, "I still think this deal is a disaster!"