Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, years ago--talking like 15, maybe 18 years ago--I was speaking in a town in Oklahoma, and my daughter wanted to go with me, which was great. So we took off. I had reserved a hotel. And so we get there. We were going to stay overnight. And I was speaking somewhere the next morning.

We arrive at the hotel late that evening. When I got there and checked in, I knew initially we were in trouble. You have that feeling when you pull up to the hotel and you think this may not work. Pull up, check in, but there is no one at the desk. And then it just gets harder as we get to our room. It is dark. Lots of light bulbs are out in the pathway to get to our room to check in. And, actually, when I shut the door and the two of us came in, I shut the door behind us, and the crack underneath the door was so large I could physically see the patio and the balcony and everything outside. And it was so loud because it was right next to the highway. I thought, We are in trouble. This is just not going work. So we ended up packing everything up and just going to search and find another place and thinking there is no way we will both be able to sleep.

Why do I tell you this silly story? Well, when we were traveling and heading there, we anticipated one thing, and then when we got there and got to the hotel, it ended up being different.

I have to tell you, this past weekend, when I read through the 99 pages of the debt ceiling bill, I would read through a section of it, and I would get to the end of that section and be surprised at the ``except for'' at the tail end of each section. It is not what I expected when I read through the document, page after page.

I have to tell you, we are a nation that leads the world. We have the world's largest economy. We are to be responsible in how we handle our budget in the process. We are to get it right because we are the United States of America.

And I have been concerned for quite a while with the trajectory of our spending. And it challenges us as a nation to be able to change the trajectory of our spending because we have to start working back to balance. We can't get to balance in a year. It is going to take a long time to get there, but we have to get started in this process.

And my frustration has been that sometimes we seem to start and then we stop again and then we start and then we stop again.

In the several years that I have been here in the U.S. Congress, I voted for some debt ceiling increases because they changed the trajectory, and I voted against some because they were status quo or they didn't. I had higher expectations for this one.

Now, initially, when it came out, it was, this is going to save $2 trillion. And then it slowly got downgraded to it is going to save $1.5 trillion. Then, when we read the fine print and everybody was talking about how much it was going to save, I got to the fine print and found out, actually, it increases spending 3.3 percent next year, and the year after that it increases spending 1 percent again.

It actually doesn't decrease spending at all. It increases spending, both this year and next year. But then it has the promise of the next 8 years after that--it will only grow 1 percent a year after that every single year, except that is not an agreement this Congress can make. This Congress can only vote on things for this particular session of Congress. We can't commit the next Congress to actions of this Congress. Each Congress stands on its own. And everyone knows that.

It sounds good to say it is going to save these trillions of dollars in the next 8 years, except each Congress will actually vote on a budget for the next 8 years, and there is no commitment from future Congresses by this one to do that.

In fact, I have been here long enough to be able to see agreements being made for what a future Congress will do that didn't actually happen.

And so the $1.5 trillion in savings is only a decrease of the increase of how much we were ``planning to spend but actually hadn't budgeted'' because as many people may know, there is not a budget set for the next year of what we were going to spend. So CBO just assumed we were going to increase at least by inflation and any amount less than inflation is suddenly savings when there was no budget that was actually set.

So my first big surprise was, it actually doesn't reduce spending; it actually increases spending.

The next big surprise came when I started looking at how even some of the ``savings'' are actually managed. There is a supplemental piece that is in this or a piece that is set aside where it takes what they call rescissions--I am not going to get into budget gobbledygook that is tough for us all to be able to process. But there is about $22 billion that is taken out of items that were COVID spending that are not going to be spent and pulls it over into the Department of Commerce and leaves it there in the Department of Commerce amount and says we will decide later how to spend it.

Now, I ask the obvious question: Isn't this supposed to go to deficit reduction?

And the answer came back: Well, a few billion went to deficit reduction, but $22 billion actually went over into the Department of Commerce's budget and is being parked there, and they will have other opportunities to be able to spend those dollars in the future.

That is not really a savings on the rescission. There is permitting reform in this, which I am grateful for. Quite frankly, there is bipartisan support for permitting reform in many areas because we can't get lithium and cobalt. We can't move solar and wind power because of permitting, just like we can't move natural gas and hydrogen and CO2 because of permitting issues. We have to do major reforms in those areas to be able to make sure we can actually produce more energy for the future of our country.

So when I saw the permitting issues, then I thought, good, we need to get started on some of these permitting issues--except when I read through it, there seems to be a lot of exceptions to it.

For instance, there is a 2-year commitment to say, if you are doing the more strict environmental impact statement, you have to get it done in 2 years--well, unless the administration declares it complex, and then they have a lot more time; in fact, an infinite amount of time.

It limits you to 150 pages for an environmental impact statement, which is good; that actually brings the paper down--unless the administration declares it complex, and then it is a whole lot more. It limits the number of pages even, unless it is the appendix. If the administration declares actually these can go in the appendix, then there is actually no cap, no limit for that.

It also says that, in this time period piece, that if you get to 2 years from the environmental impact statement and if they don't achieve that--I asked a logical question: If an administration and an Agency doesn't get it done in 2 years, what happens?

The answer is: Well, you have to sue the Federal Government and that Agency to make them do it. And then it has to go through the court system, which, as this body knows, will take 2 or 3 years. If the court finds in favor, then the court can then declare the Agency has another 90 days to be able to get it resolved--unless it is considered complex, and then they have unlimited time.

So the permitting piece, as I read through it, I thought, why are there all these exceptions that are out there that give it an out for every single portion of it?

There is a section of the bill that talks about what is called administrative pay-go. That is a rule that has existed in some administrations before where they will say that if you are going to add a cost to America through an administrative action, you have to look somewhere else to decrease the cost, because by the Constitution, only this Congress can actually increase spending; that is not something the administration has the constitutional authority to do. That is a reasonable rule.

It puts in this administrative pay-go to say, if spending is going to increase based on a regulation, it has to decrease somewhere else. That sounds great--until I get to the very end of it, and it literally says: unless the Director of the Office of Management and Budget considers the additional spending necessary. No restrictions.

If it is considered necessary, then they have an unlimited amount that they can do. Even that restriction actually goes away on January 1, 20 days before President Biden's term ends, so it is not even all the way through the last 3 weeks. Even that restriction goes away. And I can't figure out why, suddenly, it gives 3 weeks of home base without a restriction like that. And why, if we are going to put a restriction in there, why end it in 2 years anyway? If it is a good idea, it should be a good idea for every President, not just for this one. Why would there be, suddenly, an out clause in it?

There is a 1-percent sequester that is across the board if appropriations are not done.

Now, I have to tell you, I worked with Senator Maggie Hassan on the other side of the aisle to resolve a way to end government shutdowns and actually do appropriations. We should do all 12 appropriation bills. The Senator who is chairwoman of Appropriations is on the floor right now. She and I have had these conversations. She has committed to doing all 12 appropriations bills. So am I. We can bring back regular order and actually go through the process.

We don't all agree on everything here in the body. Welcome to America, where 320 million Americans don't agree on everything. OK, well, let's talk it all out. Let's have the debate. Let's have the vote and go from there. We haven't had that ability in years.

Senator Maggie Hassan and I have a bill dealing with ending government shutdowns and pushing us towards doing the 12 appropriations bills. That is not a bipartisan bill. Frankly, it is a nonpartisan bill. I don't find anyone here who doesn't actually want to get us back to regular order. So we are trying to find a logical way to be able to do it.

But the way this bill sets up the sequestration to put this towards those 12 appropriation bills, it says that if appropriation bills are not done by April 1 next year, there is a 1-percent, across-the-board cut that will happen in the current year spending in the last 5 months of the year.

That is a pretty big spending. Except it really only hits defense because the way it is set up is nondefense will actually go up and defense will actually be cut by 1 percent from last year's amount.

What in the world? Why would it be structured that way?

No. 1, why would we set up a sequestration piece at all as an incentive? No. 2, why would it be designed in a shape where it hits defense and not nondefense in the way it is actually set up? And, No. 3, when there were other options, like Senator Hassan and I, through our proposal to deal with ending government shutdowns and to get to actual appropriations, why wouldn't we do something like that that is nonpartisan, that is simple and straightforward to be able to do?

The student loan suspension. There has been much publicity on the right about, well, this ends the student loan suspensions, except it ends it on July 30, when President Biden already says he is ending it on August 30. In fact, CBO looked at it and said this doesn't save any money at all because it was already going away. It doesn't really change anything. It literally moves it forward a month but doesn't change a thing.

Then there is a work requirement process. I have to tell you: I am a big believer in work requirements. Not everybody here in this body is on that. I think work is dignity. I think work encourages families and brings dignity to a family and an individual unlike anything else that a family can bring. I think it is great for kids to grow up in a community where the adults around them work and set that example, and they build on that. There is just a unique dignity in work.

Quite frankly, some of that just comes from what I have seen, and some of that comes from my faith, because when I look at even scripture, there was work in the Garden before the fall. Work is not a consequence of the fall. Work is a gift from God that gives us purpose and meaning and helps us set the next example. Anything we can do as a culture to encourage a culture of work, I think, is beneficial to people in families.

I understand full well there are those who are disabled, those that have kids. There are situations where it can't be done. I completely respect that. But in this particular bill, the incentives for work requirements has a little caveat stuck in the back of it that says all of this applies to these States and they can't take all these waivers where they pull away work requirements--they can't do those things unless Secretary Becerra--the Secretary of HHS--declares that that State is doing good work to try anyway. There are no restrictions on it. It just says solely that if Secretary Becerra decides that, it gets waived.

So as I look at the bill, I see a lot of good intentions in the bill, but I see a whole lot of exceptions. And I see a whole lot of ability for the administration to waive that, waive that, waive that, waive that. That undercuts the purpose of the bill.

Quite frankly, as a Congress, I wish that we could sit down across the aisle and we could have dialogue to say: What is Congress's responsibility? What are the policies that are wise policies? And not hand authority to the White House--Republican or Democratic--and say: Which is good policy that we need to put in place and do those things? One day, we will get back to that, but that day wasn't today. And that is frustrating for me.

I am going to oppose this bill today, but I want us to be able to keep working because we still have work to do, as one side knows as well. I know Congress is focused on this today, rightfully so. The American people expect us to get this resolved. Tulsa Race Massacre

Mr. President, can I just tell you a little heartbeat issue for me? It is June 1. That may not mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but for those of us from Oklahoma, today is the 102nd anniversary of the worst race massacre in American history.

It happened in Tulsa, OK, May 31, overnight, to June 1. And 102 years ago today, Greenwood was a smoking heap of rubble after an all-night violence and massacre on hundreds of Black Americans in North Tulsa.

It is a stain on our Nation. It is a stain on our State.

And 102 years later, I hope we still pause and remember as a State and we continue to learn the lessons and continue to be able to work towards being a more perfect union.

Today, the Greenwood Rising museum is open. Folks are coming in and out, talking about what happened 102 years ago. Folks at the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation are engaging in conversation. There are community groups all over North Tulsa, meeting with people just to be able to talk and to say: What have we learned 102 years later? How can we still be better as a Nation still?

We learned a lot. We have grown a lot. But it is unfinished business for us.

So on June 1, I remind us as a body, there was a massacre 102 years ago today. We shouldn't ignore this moment to remember how we take tragedy to triumph.

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