In remarks on the Senate floor Friday, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) spoke about government shutdowns.
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NewsTranscript
00:00President, we are in the 10th week of the first 10 weeks, obviously, of the Senate's
00:06session. It's been exceptionally productive during this time period. We've not only moved
00:11more nominees into confirmation for President Trump than any Senate has done in more than two
00:16decades, we passed bills like the Lake and Riley Act, which will absolutely help us in trying to
00:24be able to remove criminal aliens out of the country. We rolled back a lot of Biden's last
00:29minute regulations that he literally threw in in the final hours that did not have the oversight,
00:35did not have the appearance, and they obviously didn't do it in the first three and a half years
00:39of their term. They stalled it to the very end on that for a reason, because it was unpopular
00:44with the American people. Those have been rolled back, many of them, and we still have several to
00:48go. Today, we're finishing out a bill called halt fentanyl. The fentanyl epidemic is raging in our
00:56country. If you go back to just 2019 and compare that to 2023, in that short period of time, in my
01:06state of Oklahoma, in 2019, we had 50 people that died of fentanyl. Fast forward four years to 2023,
01:15the last year that we have complete records on, that is actually 730 people died.
01:23In 2023, across the country, we had 74,000 Americans that died from fentanyl overdose.
01:32Again, go back to 2019, only about 10% of the opioid deaths in my state had fentanyl connected
01:39to it. Fast forward to 2023, 90% of the fentanyl deaths are related to fentanyl. What the Mexican
01:48cartels are doing and what Chinese precursor chemicals coming into our country are causing
01:54is the death of our fellow citizens as they slip it into different fake pills, as they slip it into
02:00methamphetamine, as they slip fentanyl into cocaine, as they slip it into different places
02:06to have someone who's using a drug or someone who never intended to use that drug
02:12to take their life. It has to stop. Even worse, the cartels not only know what they're doing,
02:21but they're trying to find specific ways to be able to avoid our loss. Fentanyl has a very
02:25specific definition in science of exactly what makes up fentanyl. And so what the cartels are
02:31doing is they're changing that chemical makeup ever so slightly in what they call an analog,
02:38and so it's really not fentanyl as a definition, meaning law enforcement, when they see it on the
02:43street, it has the same effect. It still kills you, but it's actually technically not fentanyl,
02:50so you can't be prosecuted for it. This bill that we're bringing to the floor today
02:56opens up the fentanyl definition to deal with fentanyl and the analogs of fentanyl,
03:01so the cartels can't continue to be able to bring in these deadly drugs into our country
03:06to take the lives and increase addiction in America and get away with it. This puts in the
03:12hands of law enforcement, where they've been disarmed in that area, enforcement priorities
03:18so they can actually enforce the law on these cartels and on the drug dealers, and so we can
03:23identify it for what it really is. It's a killer drug. The Hall Fentanyl Act is incredibly important,
03:30and I'm fully aware in a week where our country is talking about, are we going to have another
03:35government shutdown, it's going to slip through and people aren't even going to notice it,
03:40but law enforcement will notice it, and families in the future will notice it.
03:47Folks aren't dealing with this same addiction, as we're putting one more piece out there to be able
03:52to take this on. Now, Mr. President, as we talk about the government shutdown looming tonight
03:57at midnight, I want to remind you and this body again, this is something I've spoken out on for
04:04years. Years ago, I sat down with my Democratic colleagues and said, how do we take government
04:11shutdowns off the table? How do we end this? There's been proposals for literally decades
04:16to be able to end government shutdowns. Republicans have had a proposal for decades that said,
04:21well, if we get to the end of the fiscal year and we haven't passed all the bills,
04:24we'll just cut spending 1% every month and that'll force us to come to the table,
04:29and my Democratic colleagues have said to me over and over again, you guys are so crazy
04:33about reducing federal spending. You'll never reopen the government. It'll just cut funding
04:37every single month, and it's easy. Never going to vote for that. But Democratic colleagues
04:41literally have a bill to say, we'll end government shutdowns by every single month
04:48that we don't have a bill passed on it. We'll increase funding by 1% every single month,
04:54and Republicans have looked at our Democrat colleagues and said, you've lost your mind.
04:58You want to increase spending every single month anyway. You'll never pass another bill.
05:02We're never going to do that. There's a bill that sat out there for a while that sounds great
05:06called no budget, no pay that says if we don't pass our budget, we don't get our appropriations
05:11work done, then members of Congress won't be paid. And a lot of people say that's a great idea.
05:18I smile at folks back home and I say, I hate to be blunt, but do you know how much
05:24most members of the Senate are worth? Their congressional salary for many of my colleagues
05:29is a rounding error to their investment portfolio. They're really not worried about
05:34their congressional pay to be able to make ends meet at the end of that month. In addition to that,
05:39constitutionally, you actually can't change a member's pay during the time that they're actually
05:45set. So all it would mean is they wouldn't get their paycheck for however long it took to
05:50negotiate it, then they'd still get their money. That's really not going to make a difference.
05:56When I sat down with my Democratic colleagues several years ago and said, what's the one
06:00pressure point that we all feel, that we can hold the American people harmless,
06:05but actually get our work done? It's the same thing. Rich or poor, live far away, live close.
06:13All of us have the same precious possession that we're all attentive to, and it's time.
06:20We all have the same amount of time in a day, and we all fight our calendars because they're full.
06:27So our simple solution to end government shutdowns is, if we get to the end of a fiscal year,
06:32like we are at tonight, and we haven't got our work done, like it's happening so far,
06:40government stays open, same year's level as last year, nothing changes on it,
06:46the American people are held harmless, all the agencies are held harmless,
06:50but members of Congress, both House and Senate, we stay in session seven days a week.
06:57We have a quorum call at noon every single day, and we can't move to any bill other than
07:03appropriations. In other words, if you don't have your work done, you've got to stay until
07:08your work's actually done. And we can't go do something else, we have to stay here to be able
07:14to get it done. I guarantee you, if this body was in session seven days a week for two weeks,
07:20by the end of the second week, we would all be staring at each other saying,
07:25I want to go see my family, I want to be able to do the other things that are responsibilities
07:29that a senator has, I need to be able to do those things, let's get this resolved.
07:35If you remove all of our time, it puts the pressure on us to be able to actually get our
07:40work done. If I can say it just as simple as this, my mom, when my brother and I, and I know
07:47it may be shocking to some people that my brother and I didn't always get along every day growing
07:52up, but when my brother and I would get into a fight, my mom would send both of us into one of
07:57our rooms and say, you guys stay in that room, fight it out, when you're done, then you can
08:03come out to the rest of the house. But go settle it in there, but make sure it's settled before you
08:08come out here. As silly as it sounds, this government shutdown prevention bill that I've
08:13brought year after year is just as simple as my mom's advice. Don't make everybody else have to
08:18listen to the fight. Members of Congress should get in the room, fight it out, settle it, and when
08:25we're done, we come out and actually vote for it. But in the meantime, the rest of the country
08:31shouldn't have to suffer because we didn't get our work done on time. That seems pretty
08:35straightforward to me. It's had wide bipartisan support, and there've been lots of moments we've
08:41been very close to passing it. There's no trick in it. There's no anything else. It's just,
08:46why do we have these crazy government shutdown fight moments that the rest of the world looks
08:52at us as Americans and says, why can't the Americans get their act together? And the rest
08:57of the country looks at us and says, we have to work out all the details. Why don't you guys have
09:02to work out all your details? Those folks are not wrong. We will one day solve this. Apparently,
09:10it's not today. Today, there's still a fight over whether we're going to keep the government open
09:16for tomorrow. Federal workers that are already dealing with a lot of tension in their life,
09:22quite frankly, they've gotten emails and messages. They're hearing about downsizing in federal
09:30agencies. They're anxious right now. And there are a lot of folks in my state, and quite frankly,
09:36around the country that say we need to reduce the size of the bureaucracy, which we do. The last
09:43time we had a major reduction in the size of the bureaucracy was under Bill Clinton. When Bill
09:48Clinton was president, he declared we're going to reinvent government. And under Bill Clinton's
09:52presidency, they reduced the federal workforce by 400,000 people. That was a big reduction in
10:00federal workforce. That's the last time that's occurred decades ago. We've grown now to a massive
10:08size that we've got to reduce again. Everybody knows it. But if you're a federal worker or a
10:14family member or a next door neighbor, you go to church together, you know how agonizing this
10:18really is. The last thing those federal workers need is one more thing hanging over their head of
10:25a government shutdown at the same time. But it's being debated right now. And my Democratic
10:32colleagues are trying to determine if we're going to go into shutdown tonight still.
10:38I would simply say, let's get our work done. We disagree on many issues, okay? That's what
10:44grownups have. We have disagreements. Let's settle our disagreements. Let's keep us operating.
10:53Let's take this off the table for good at some point so we don't have this threat hanging over
10:58us and some countdown clock on 24-hour news, here's how many minutes it is until we have a
11:03government shutdown. Let's take that off the table and let's get our work done. We have a
11:10giant deficit. Giant. Two trillion dollars in overspending this year. We should have budget
11:19fights. We should be more efficient. We should allow DOJ and some of those folks to be able to
11:25go after some of the wasteful spending. I don't have a lot of people back in my state that are
11:30contacting me and saying, I really want to make sure that we're still spending all that money for
11:34the grants to go to the transgender opera in Colombia that USAID is funding, or the DEI
11:42initiatives in Serbia that USAID is funding. No one's calling me and saying we need to make sure
11:49we keep doing those things. Everyone looks at it and shakes their head and says, what in the world?
11:54I want my tax money to go to education and I want it to go to roads and I want to go to national
11:58defense. Don't do that. So let's find ways to be more efficient. Let's find ways to be able to
12:04reduce waste and fraud. But let's also have the fight during office hours so the American people
12:13don't have to feel the effect of a government shutdown. Clock's ticking today. My Democratic
12:19colleagues have got to determine if we're going to have this vote today. Let's pass it. I yield
12:27the floor.