Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I want to be able to talk about a couple of subjects today, but I want to be able to set the context on these with the recognition of Women's History Month. A lot of fairly remarkable ladies in Oklahoma have set American history and world history into a different pace based on what they have done in the past.

I can't help, when I am talking about Women's History Month, to be able to talk about my own mom, who is a pacesetter in her own leadership. She was a student, librarian, and mom. She went through elementary school librarian and high school librarian and then became the director of libraries for a very large school district.

She led the way for our family and community. She even led the American Association of School Librarians around the country. She was a pacesetter there.

There are other pacesetters that I would highlight who are Oklahoma pacesetters. The first is Claire Luper. Born in Okfuskee County, OK, in 1923, Claire Luper was the first African-American student to enroll in the History Department at the University of Oklahoma. She was a civil rights leader. She led Americans at lunch counters in 1958 as she was seated there and helped to train youth to be seated at lunch counters to break through the racism that was existing in Oklahoma City and in Oklahoma.

Claire Luper herself was arrested 26 times for just eating lunch--for just leading for the rights of what every single human being should be allowed to do in our great country.

After 26 arrests and the breakthrough leadership that she experienced, she now has been recognized with over 500 different awards and honors in her lifetime. She taught in the Oklahoma City area for 41 years, was a senior adviser for the NAACP Youth Council in Oklahoma City, and is now a member of the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.

Another great leader from Oklahoma is Shannon Lucid. She was raised in Bethany, OK. In 1979 she became an astronaut in a time period when ladies did not become astronauts. She set the pace. She was the chief scientist at NASA from 2002 to 2003. She served as the capsule communicator for numerous space missions. She was the first woman to receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Jeane Kirkpatrick is another Oklahoman. Born in 1926, she was the first woman appointed to serve as a Permanent Representative to the United States for the United Nations. She served from 1981 to 1985. She served on President Ronald Reagan's Cabinet, was a political science professor at Georgetown University, and was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. She made Oklahoma proud.

Let me tell you about a current one now. LaRita Aragon. LaRita Aragon was born in Shawnee, OK, but she was raised in the big town of Dale, just outside of Shawnee. She became the first woman to hold the rank of brigadier general in the Oklahoma Air National Guard and the first female commander of the Air National Guard.

Before her military career, she was an elementary school teacher and a principal. After retirement from the military, she returned to education. She served as the director of advanced programs in the University of Oklahoma College of Continuing Education. Then, in January 2011, she started serving as secretary of veterans affairs for the State of Oklahoma. She is a remarkable military leader from our State and a tremendous role model for people in our State--boys and girls.

Maria Tallchief was born in 1925 in Fairfax, OK. She was a member of the Osage Nation. At age 17, she did a crazy thing. She moved to New York City to pursue her dream of becoming a dancer. As her career began to take off, people tried to persuade Maria Tallchief to change her last name so that she wouldn't face the prejudice of being Native American. She refused to do that. She continued to work and to prove herself. In 1947 she became the first American to dance with the Paris Opera Ballet. She led the way, and she set the pace.

Oklahomans are proud of these ladies and many, many others who have done great work and made remarkable advances. We are proud of them.

Long-Term Budget Planning

Mr. President, from recognizing Women's History Month, let me make a comment on something currently happening in the Senate. Right now in the Senate, the Senate Budget Committee is continuing to work on a budget.

The President turns in a budget. As many people know, since 1974, the President's budget has been just a document of ideas. The Senate and the House agree together on a budget, set a number, and then do appropriations bills. That is how we actually do the spending for the Federal taxpayers' dollars. Since 1974, it has typically begun with a budget document from the Senate and from the House.

They are working on that budget document right now in the Budget Committee, but here is the difficult thing. In all likelihood, that budget document that will come out of committee will never come to this floor and will never be voted on because of the difficulty we face right now in our deficit and the challenges the budget will have in order for it to move through the process. In all likelihood, this body will deem a budget number, where there will be no real plan. It will just set a budget number and then move on and start heading toward appropriations.

Layer upon layer of debt and deficit will be added to where we are as a nation. Our simple challenge is, how do we get around this?

Last year, 16 Members met--eight Senators, eight House Members; eight Republicans, eight Democrats--to try to strategize how we could change the budget process. Though I commend Chairman Enzi of the Budget Committee and his remarkable work, thought, and incredible staff, once again that document will not make a difference on this floor, and once again it will not set us on a long-term path to getting back to solvency. We have to change the process of what we do.

These 16 Members met all last year to establish a set of ideas of how we could change the process, but it failed in December. I am challenging this body to step up to it again and to reengage on some simple sets of ideas of how we can get our budget back in balance and how we can do better planning. Though we do budgets and though we will do the deeming of a budget number, there is no real plan for how things can get better. We have to get better at planning, so let me give you some simple ideas that were birthed out of the conversation last year.

We hold debt ceiling votes, which are supposedly to limit our debt, but they never do. They did decades ago, but they have not for decades. We will have 12 appropriations bills in some form and in some way so as to actually do the spending in the next several months, but there will be no bill to deal with how we can reduce spending.

A simple idea that came out of that conversation last year was this: How do we add a 13th bill?

As simple as I can say it, we have 12 spending bills. In every single Congress, the 13th bill would be set aside for how we will reduce our deficit. We have a structure with which to do that. It is the reconciliation process. It will certainly take work to reform this. We have a process in place right now that we could use but that we don't. What if we mandate it each year? We would have our 12 spending bills in whatever form they would take, but in every single session of Congress, we would have to have some conversation about what we would do to reduce spending or to fix our deficit. It is not an unreasonable proposal. It is an opportunity for us to sit and plan, to actually think about things, and to work things out.

Senator Maggie Hassan and I also have another idea for working through the process. How do we end government shutdowns? How do we stop the perpetual cliffs of budgeting issues? There is a simple way to do that.

The simple way to do that, as odd as it may sound, is for Members of Congress and our staffs, as well as for members of the staff within the Office of Management and Budget from the White House, to not travel if you get to the end of a budget year and the budget is not done. You can't leave until the work is done, is as simple as I can say it. That may sound overly simplistic, but I guarantee you, if this body has to work through 2 weeks, no one would have the opportunity to travel. Everyone would have to be here days and weekends. There would be no official travel. There would be no opportunity to head back and see your family. There would be no codels or staffdels or any kind of other opportunity to leave. Each day, we would also have to have a quorum call and be here until the work gets done. Then we would solve this.

Last December, we had this protracted shutdown that began when Members of Congress left for Christmas. They just left with there being an unresolved budget issue here. If Senator Hassan's and my idea were to pass, we would have finished that work last December, and Americans would never have experienced that protracted government shutdown.

We have differences of opinion. It is who we are as Americans, and that is what we represent in the U.S. Senate, but we should not punish Federal workers and the American people because we have not worked out our differences here. We should stay until the work is done, and we should keep negotiating until we are finished. That is a simple, straightforward way to resolve this.

With our adding a 13th bill to enable our having to plan for how we will actually deal with debt and deficit, there will be some moment created every year to compel us to actually be here until our work is done as well as having a more systematic structure of how we are going to do budgeting. All of these are simple ideas, but they are ideas that will help us get on top of a $22 trillion debt and an approaching $1 trillion yearly deficit. It is as if we have lost the importance of this, and we cannot.

My challenge to this body is to make the budget mean something again. Let's actually do long-term planning, and let's figure out how to make a process work for the taxpayers. We can figure this out, and we can work together to do it.

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