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Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, there are many days that I come to this floor to talk about a lot of different policy issues and things we need to get done--and there are a lot of things needing to get done. Our list is long here in the Senate.

I did just want to take a moment of personal privilege to not talk about policy for just a moment but to talk about some people.

I have got two staff members that are leaving my team that my State and the Nation may or may not know their name, but they have been exceptionally impactful in what they have done.

Jesse Mahan has been on my team, as he reminds me, so long that when he first came on the team, he was issued a BlackBerry when he first came on the team.

He came on writing letters and doing background work. He led Indian Affairs. He is a Tribal member. He was a terrific hand in a lot of different areas, and he ended up leading a lot of my budget work and then eventually tax work.

He has led through a lot of really complicated issues over the years, and every single time--whether it is Tribal law or whether it is tax law, which both of them are very complicated--he thrived. He did his homework, and he helped this Nation.

There were significant areas of the Working Families Tax Cut last year that we got over the finish line because of his work with some of the staff behind the scenes to be able to explain some of the complexity and to be able to convince some people this is actually good for the economy. He did a terrific job through that process.

Unfortunately, we are losing him in the next week, and he will be dearly missed on our team.

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