Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, Senator McCaskill and I rise to have an opportunity to pass a bill and for the Senate to do some work on a bill that has been around for several years and just hasn't been able to go over the finish line. We would like to see that finish today.

It is a bipartisan bill with a very straightforward concept. Right now, if any agency head or any sub-Cabinet individual or any individual within the government wants to see what another agency is doing, they have to go to the Office of Management and Budget. They would do a study--and get it back to them--to find out if the program they are doing exists somewhere else.

If any Member of this body or of the House wants to find out about an agency and such straightforward things as how many employees they have, what programs they are doing, if they measure those programs, how are those programs measured--if we want to find out those very basic things, we have to go to the GAO office to make a request, and 18 months later, we will get an answer back on that specific thing.

This is something that every agency either already has or should have but that the American people can't see, the Congress can't see, and, quite frankly, the individuals within the agencies also cannot see.

This is a straightforward concept. We call it the Taxpayers Right-to- Know Act, and it is something Senator McCaskill and I have worked very hard on. It is something that passed out of the Homeland Security Committee unanimously. This is a bipartisan bill. In fact, to show you how bipartisan it is, this passed in the House of Representatives last session 413 to 0. Not a single House Member voted against this proposal, but it wasn't able to pass in the Senate. So Senator McCaskill and I brought it up again this year. It came unanimously out of committee; it also has been through the House of Representatives. In January of 2017, it passed unanimously in the House of Representatives again. This is not a controversial piece of legislation.

What is interesting is that Senator McCaskill and I did a lot of work with President Obama's Office of Management and Budget to make sure there were no concerns. They had some concerns, so we made some changes, and President Obama's Office of Management and Budget signed off on this and said it would be a helpful document.

We have now worked with President Trump's Office of Management and Budget, which also signed off on this proposal and said that this would work.

We went to the Government Accountability Office, the entity we asked to help us find duplication, waste, and inefficiency in government, and in a hearing we asked Gene Dodaro, the head of GAO, a simple question: Would it be a help to have the Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act? You have the ability to see all agencies. Would this be a help to you? His exact response:

I would urge the Congress to complete passage of that bill-- meaning the Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act-- and send it to the president for signature. I think that it would make a huge difference in identifying overlap, duplication, fragmentation in the federal government and provide a better accountability tool to the Congress and the agencies. It's severely lacking.

That is from the head of the Government Accountability Office, the one we have asked to help us find these things. He is saying that he needs this tool. We need this tool. The agencies need this tool.

President Obama's team signed off on this. President Trump's team has signed off on this. It has passed unanimously out of the House of Representatives.

We bring it to the floor today to ask unanimous consent to move this across the floor of the Senate today, to be able to get in place what President Obama asked for, what President Trump has asked for, what the Government Accountability Office has asked for, what all Members of the House of Representatives have asked for, and what Senator McCaskill and I are asking for.

With that, I yield to Senator McCaskill.

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I could not more wholeheartedly agree with my colleague from Missouri.

What is surprising to me is that Senator Schumer's objection to the taxpayers right-to-know bill was that the taxpayers would actually find out information that he doesn't want them to find out. That is the surprising part.

I am grateful to be able to get his answer because over the last 6 months, our staff--Senator McCaskill's and my staff--has worked with his staff every month. We have made 27 changes and 6 revisions over the last 6 months. In the last month, we have gotten radio silence--nothing from Senator Schumer's staff. So we finally brought it to the floor and said ``What is the problem?'' because we can't seem to figure out what the problem is. We learn today that the problem is that he doesn't want the program inventory to be public because if the American people and the Congress and the Office of Management and Budget see the programs, they might actually do things with efficiency. That seems surprising to me, but if you read the transcript, that is what he just said. The fear is that they will actually find out what the Federal Government does in the programs.

Surely that is not his objection. Surely no one in this body would say: I hope the American people and the Office of Management and Budget never find out what the Federal Government does.

Here is what this bill does. The reason we could not have a good listing--Senator Schumer mentioned that there is no way to do a list right now--is because there is no definition for a program. The Federal Government has struggled with that simple definition, so this bill fixes that. The reason that inventory doesn't exist gets solved with this. So literally Senator Schumer's objection as to why we shouldn't do this is nonsensical.

The second issue with this is the fear of OMB and Mick Mulvaney actually trying to slash programs. OMB and Mick Mulvaney have no authority to take down a program. Congress does that, and Senator Schumer knows that better than anyone in this body. While OMB can make recommendations, Congress has to actually vote to act on those recommendations. He can't just slash programs. He can recommend it. He can say: Here is an issue of inefficiency. It is the exact same as the Obama administration could have done, the exact same as any future administration could do, but Congress must act on that.

It seems exceptionally shortsighted to say: I don't want the American people to know what the government is doing, because of the current administration and someone I don't like.

In a few years, there will be a different administration. That may be in 7 years, or that may be in 4 years, but in a few years, there will be a different administration, but this problem will still remain. Agencies can't see what other agencies are doing, this Congress can't see what the agencies are doing, and the American people cannot see what the agencies are doing.

I would say that for the benefit of the taxpayers--not the benefit of Washington bureaucracies but for the benefit of the taxpayers--we should allow this information to go public. I hope we can continue to work with Senator Schumer's office, after making 27 changes that his staff recommended, to finish this document.

Yesterday, Senator Schumer was caught in the hallway and was asked what the problem is in the Senate, and his response to a reporter was that the Senate needs more comity. I would agree.

The House approved this unanimously. Our committee approved this unanimously. It has come to the floor and has but one person who believes that the American people should not have access to the information on the programs they pay for.

I would love to see more comity in this body and for us to work this out.

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