James Lankford

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Let's do that then. I have a unanimous consent for an ongoing colloquy, and I would be pleased to have the Senator join this conversation.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I am grateful for this conversation about children.

Mr. LANKFORD. I would advise my colleague from California I have a unanimous consent request under rule XXII. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call under rule XXII be waived.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I wish to be able to continue this conversation because it is extremely important that we continue this as a nation. I wish to make a couple of comments to you as well. I am a dad with two daughters. I had something to do with the birth as well and was also there. I was there during the sonograms. My wife and I are extremely close. As a dad of two daughters, I am very passionate--not only about my own wife but about my mom, who is a cancer survivor. She is a multiple-time cancer survivor. I am passionate about my daughters having every single opportunity. So this is important to us as well. This is not just a women's issue. This is a men's issue as well because this is a family issue, and families are extremely important to all of us. But I would say that community health centers don't serve 3.2 million people, like Planned Parenthood. Community health centers serve 23 million people around the country. There are around 650 Planned Parenthood locations around the country. There are 9,000 community health centers around the country. The Planned Parenthood facilities refer people to go get breast cancer screenings. The community health centers actually do that testing there. They actually do the mammograms there and not just say that you should get one. So this is about women's health. It is also about the efficiency of what we are going to be about. I would also say one other thing on this issue about ObamaCare and the community health centers. The community health centers were funded under ObamaCare, but they long preexisted before ObamaCare. Community health centers are not an invention of ObamaCare. There was a section of ObamaCare that funded some of them an additional amount, but they have been around for decades and decades. They are an extremely efficient form of health care, especially to those on Medicaid. I yield to my friend and fellow Senator from Louisiana.

Mr. LANKFORD. Could we just swap and go straight to the Senator now? Would that be appropriate?

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, this ongoing conversation has happened. I would like to be able to demonstrate what we are really up against and what this really looks like in practical terms. I brought a chart with me here for when we talk about women's health because there is an accusation that is sitting out there that this is about cutting off access to women's health. The chart I have on the right shows all Planned Parenthood licensed mammogram facilities. They would be a dot on this map. If you were looking close at the map, you would see no dots on it. It is clear there is not a single one. The accusation is, over and over, that if women are going to get access to mammograms, they have to be able to get to Planned Parenthood. The dirty secret is they are referred to other locations. They recommend that you go get a mammogram, but Planned Parenthood doesn't do any of them. On the left, these are the 8,000-plus facilities--the dots on the map here--where you can actually get a mammogram. We are talking about taking funding from a location that refers patients to the location that actually does the mammogram. This is about women's health, but it is also about the health of children. I have a very difficult time talking about things such as early childhood education on this floor with individuals who are passionate about early childhood education, but if that child was just a couple of years younger, they would have no issue with them being aborted and their body parts being sold. That is the same child. That is the same child whose early childhood education we are passionate about. That is the same child whom we are passionate about in the Women, Infants, and Children funding to make sure that they get proper nutrition at birth. That is the same child. The only difference between the child in the womb and the child who is a preschooler is time. We just think it is important in this incredibly divisive issue of abortion that we treat this seriously as a nation. What has happened in the last couple of weeks with the Planned Parenthood video coming out is that for the first time in a long time, this is not an invisible thing that is happening somewhere in secret. Now it is something that is actually happening where people can see it. I think our culture, for the first time in a while, is having to slow down and deal with the reality of this: Is it possible that this culture has been wrong, that this really is a child? I spoke last week to a friend of mine. His child was born a year ago at 14 ounces. So 14 ounces was the birth weight. The child was born very, very premature. Their child is now 14 pounds, a year later, and doing extremely well. That 14-ounce child is a child that everyone sees now, but that 14-ounce child is exactly what Planned Parenthood was harvesting, was turning in the womb so they could crush the head to be able to gather the organs to be able to sell them. As a culture, we have to deal with this one simple reality. That child is important. This is not about Cecil the lion. This is not about whales at SeaWorld. This is about children. Maybe we as a culture should slow down and be able to answer that one simple question and at least for this moment with Planned Parenthood to say this to an organization where there are a couple of things that are hanging over them right now that are very serious. One is that it is not legal under Federal law to sell parts of a human for profit. Now, it is still yet to be determined what was done. But it is also not legal to be able to change the timing, procedure or method of an abortion to be able to gather organs to be sold. That is very clear in Federal law as well. So if the method is changed, if the timing is changed, if the procedure has changed, specifically to harvest organs, that is not legal. In the videos, over and over you hear doctors talking about how they changed the method, how they used the ultrasound to turn the child around, how they used a different technique than they would have normally done because they wanted to be able to gather these organs for sale. Those are serious accusations. These are children--children. We think it is entirely reasonable to say let's take the funding that has been committed to Planned Parenthood, which is the single largest abortion provider in the country--40 percent of their revenue comes from the Federal taxpayer, 40 percent. Let's take that funding and let's commit it to organizations that do full women's health--mammograms, testing, contraceptives, and the works--not just recommending it to others and also do abortions, but we would commit it to those individuals. With that, I yield to the Senator from Louisiana in this colloquy. I see my colleague from California as well. I think she would also like to have a moment in our colloquy. Would the Senator like to be able to speak for a moment in our colloquy?

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to have a colloquy with several Members on the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I come to the floor with a happy birthday message today. I come with wishes for a happy birthday for the fifth birthday of the Dodd-Frank regulations. Where are we as a nation with this wonderful 5-year-old running around our Nation right now, pushing out birthday cake across every bank and financial institution across the country? Exactly how is that going? Let me share a couple of things. Everyone in this Nation remembers extremely well 2008 and the financial collapse that happened. We remember Lehman Brothers closing down and causing panic. We remember Fannie and Freddie rules finally reaping the consequences of what the Nation assumed would happen at some point from all of these very low rates and from encouraging people to buy who can't afford to pay back a loan. We knew what would occur. The rise of a conversation, something called too big to fail that we had never heard before, suddenly grows up, and we move as a nation in 2009 from trying to regulate financial institutions to actually running financial institutions. The regulations were considered too small, and for institutions that were big, it was determined that Big Business means Big Government needs to run it. I would have to say there is not a lot about the efficiency of Washington, DC, that we would look across the fruited plain and say this is working so well in Washington, DC, we should run every big company as well. In the days of government shutdowns and $18 trillion of debt and slow decisionmaking, there is a great need for private businesses to be pushed to be able to do things efficiently, to be able to manage our economy effectively. Clearly, there is a need for regulations, but I would also say that, clearly, the U.S. Government should not step into businesses and run them instead of just regulating the boundaries. This is a free market, but sadly, in 2009, the U.S. Government went to running General Motors. We started running individual banks and insurance companies. We have to be able to shift out of that and we have to be able to find a way in the days ahead for that never to occur again. I would say multiple things about this. Now, 5 years into Dodd-Frank, 400 new rules in the process of being promulgated, literally 12,500 pages of regulations that have now been spun out--12,500 pages of regulations--just dealing with 271 rulemakings. So here is what we are up against: 271 rulemaking deadlines have passed. Of those, 192 of them have been met with finalized rules, and rules have been proposed that would meet 46 more. Rules have not yet been proposed to meet 33 passed rulemaking requirements. Of the 390 total rulemaking requirements, 247 of them have been met with finalized rules, and rules have been proposed that would meet 60 more. What am I trying to say with all of that? There is a lot coming out of this, and there is a lot more still to come. I would challenge any person in this Chamber and any person across America that if you are having to run your business, and if as you started to run your business and a government regulator walked in with 12,500 pages and said, I need someone in your company to know all of these regulations, you would not respond with a smile and wish them a happy birthday. You would respond with great frustration and say: Why are you walking into my company with 12,500 pages of new regulations? Now, there are previous regulations this is stacked on top of. They say here is an additional stack of 12,500 pages that you need to know and follow. This is the fruit of the Dodd-Frank regulations. I would say there are a lot of things we need to discuss with this bill, but let me just highlight a few of those. First, let's get some common agreement. Can we all agree the community banks, the smallest banks across America-- most of them in rural communities--did not cause the financial collapse in 2008? In fact, they didn't even contribute to the financial collapse in 2008. The smallest community banks across the country are vital accesses to capital for farmers, small businesses, Main Street folks, and folks who just do deposits to their savings and checking accounts. These are small community banks. For more than 1,200 U.S. counties, with a combined population of 16 million Americans, without those community banks, they would be severely limited to any kind of access to banking. Big banks tend to focus on the biggest loans and in big towns. Small community and traditional banks focus on smaller communities. In my State of Oklahoma, a person can go to every small town and find a school, a gas station, a church, and a bank, and often that bank is a very small community bank. They know everybody in town and everybody knows them. But the rules changed for them after Dodd- Frank, and it wasn't because that bank caused anything. Regardless of the law's merit in any area--and we can have a great conversation about a lot of issues with Dodd-Frank--financial reform was to contain the systemic risk in the financial sector of very large companies, which were called the too big to fail, which I refer to often as the ``too big to be free now,'' because the Federal Government is stepping in to try to run all of these companies and say: You can't have a free market in that area; we are going to have to run you instead. But these small bank failures are not a threat to the economy. They weren't supposed to be a target of Dodd-Frank, but they most certainly are. All of these banks now suffer the consequences. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis found that for banks that have less than $50 million in assets, hiring two additional personnel reduces their profitability by 45 basis points, resulting in one-third of these banks becoming unprofitable. Why would I raise that? Because there are a whole host of regulators who say just hire one or two additional compliance people, and you can keep up with the 12,500 additional pages that have been rolled out. These small community banks can't keep up with that. The Mercatus Center surveyed 200 banks with less than $10 billion in assets, and 83 percent found that their regulatory compliance costs increased by more than 5 percent, and the median number of compliance staff increased from one to two. They all had to add additional folks--not additional folks to make more loans, not additional folks to greet more customers as they walk in the door, additional folks in the back office simply filling out forms and turning them in. Government figures indicate that the country is losing, on average, one community bank or credit union a day now. Alternatively, in the last 5 years, regulators have only approved 1 new bank, as opposed to an average of 170 banks per year before 2010. Let me run that past my colleagues again. We have approved one new bank in the last 5 years since Dodd-Frank. People don't want to go into banking. This is having the effect we all said it would have; that is, when Dodd-Frank passed, the focus on too big to fail would really mean that you are too small to succeed; that the smallest banks and communities all across the country now cannot keep up with the compliance costs and they will sell out to larger and larger banks. Do my colleagues know what Dodd-Frank has created? Dodd-Frank has created more megabanks and it is pushing more and more smaller banks to sell out. Since the end of the first quarter in 2010, Oklahoma--my State--has seen 33 community banks disappear through acquisition or merger--33 of them. Twenty-nine of those thirty-three community banks that disappeared were under $100 million in total assets. When asked, the most frequent reason they were selling, they said it was the increasing cost of compliance. They could not keep up because they had to have so many compliance people. In Oklahoma, 24 percent of the State's commercial banks no longer offer real estate mortgage loans to their customers because of the litigation and regulatory risks they face under the new ability to repay and qualified mortgage rules. Let me run that past my colleagues again because a lot of people don't realize what is happening. The smallest community banks are selling out. They are disappearing. At the same time, 24 percent of the banks in my State no longer offer home loans. That means in these small towns across America, you can't walk into the bank and get a home loan. People have to drive to some other town or go to some other place to try to get a home loan now. It is not because that bank can't do a home loan--they are a bank, that is what they do--it is because of new Dodd-Frank regulations that make them so scared to function and operate through the 12,500 pages they have just decided they don't have enough staff and enough people. The banker says to himself: I sold my neighbor a home, his dad a home, and maybe his grandfather a home in this community. I can no longer do a mortgage for them. That is absurd. I hope no one would say that was the purpose of Dodd-Frank, but I will tell you this 5-year-old who is running around, these are the consequences. This is happening all across our Nation. These new rules continue to push out the possibility of just doing normal, traditional banking, including savings accounts, checking accounts, home loans, car loans. Dodd-Frank, ironically, favors the largest banks over community banks. I find that the ultimate irony, based on the way it was sold, not to mention the fact that as a banker now, if you have a problem with one of the regulators and you want to appeal and say: How are we going to actually get through this problem--do my colleagues know whom they appeal to now? Literally, a person in the next cubicle from the previous person who gave the instructions. There is no place they can go. There is no judicial review. There is no opportunity to say this regulation that you have given me is onerous or the decision you have made based on this regulation is onerous. If you want to disagree, you disagree with the person in the next cubicle, and then that same group of people will come and inspect your bank next year. And what do my colleagues think happens? I have to say we are in a bad spot. This is not about big city bankers. This is about small towns. This is about small town loans. This is about home loans for individuals in rural areas, and these are real consequences to a lot of families. So how do we solve this now? This is what we have--and we have had for 5 years--and it still continues to grow; it still continues to get worse. What happens now? Let me just talk about some solutions. No. 1, I would say this. We have to deal with one of the big animals in the middle of the creation of Dodd-Frank; that is, the Consumer Federal Protection Bureau. The CFPB was created to be like a fourth branch of government. It is completely autonomous. Its funding comes from the Federal Reserve. It does not have to report to Congress, none of the staff have to report to Congress or turn anything over. There is no requirement for transparency. They only, in a cursory manner, come by and visit Congress every quarter or so and do a report, but they are not required to turn over everything. They have access to every piece of every bit of consumer finance. They are reaching in to do car loans, they are reaching into credit cards, they are reaching into home loans. They can reach in, in effect, and create regulations in any area they choose to with no accountability. We have to be able to resolve this--not to mention the fact that CFPB is completely redundant to other agencies that already existed in this oversight, and this adds yet another layer on every bank and on every consumer financial institution. But they are unaccountable. So let's do a couple basic things. One of the proposals that came out from the Appropriations Committee today is to move from there being one Director to a five-member board. This Senator would say that is pretty reasonable, so that we don't have one person managing all consumer finance for the entire country--one person who is completely unaccountable. Separating them from their appropriations rather than getting their appropriations from the Federal Reserve, getting their appropriations directly from the normal appropriations process like every other agency, including independent agencies--there is no reason to have them be isolated and separate. Quite frankly, the CFPB is completely redundant to all other areas. There is no reason for them to have redundant activities and authorities. Those should be cleared as well to make sure that every bank, when it is making a decision, can make a decision based on knowing whom its regulator is, not thinking ``This regulator is going to say one thing, but what is the CFPB going to say when they come in next?'' and not having a regulator come in and say ``Well, this is not our regulation, but the CFPB has put this regulation down, and so we are going to follow their regulations as well.'' That is absurd. Clear lines of authorities and responsibilities should be delineated. We can do that. It shouldn't be hard, and it shouldn't even be controversial. Secondly, we need to reform Fannie and Freddie. Community banks did not cause the problems in 2008; quite frankly, Fannie and Freddie did. Community banks have had this major pushdown of 12,500 pages of regulations. Guess how much reform has happened at Fannie and Freddie? Zero. So the organizations that actually were the problem have gotten off scot-free because now they are making money again and everyone is looking the other way and saying ``Well, they are doing OK; we will leave them alone,'' while the organizations that didn't cause the problems face tons of regulations. There are major reforms that need to happen with Fannie and Freddie. It is about time this Congress actually engaged and stopped saying: You know what, they are in the black. Let's leave them alone. Do you realize that the government funds 71 percent of new mortgages now through the GSEs and the Federal Housing Administration compared to 32 percent just 10 years ago? Let me repeat that. Ten years ago, the Federal taxpayer backed 32 percent of the loans, and now it is 71 percent. Dodd-Frank was supposed to be about trying to get the too-big-to-fail issue out of the way and to get the Federal taxpayer out of having to back up every loan and every business across America. Instead, it is increasing the size of banks and it is increasing the exposure of every mortgage in America to the Federal taxpayer. We have to turn that around. No. 3, Congress has to provide the authority for Federal banking regulators to differentiate the applicability of rules and regulations to various banks based on the bank's operating model and risk profile. If it is a traditional bank, leave it alone; it is a traditional community bank. In fact, FDIC Commissioner Tom Hoenig had a great plan and a great set of ideas that I would bring to this body and say we should seriously consider; that is, separate banks not based on their size but on their activity. If it is a traditional bank doing traditional banking, that would mean a couple of things--first, that it has at least 10 percent capitalization, and second would be that it is not involved in complicated derivatives. If it is involved in complicated derivatives, it is going to have very heavy oversight. If it is not, it is a traditional bank and it is well-capitalized. Banking regulations have always been about safety and soundness. If this bank is well- capitalized and not involved in complicated derivatives, why are we there every day trying to manage every aspect of it? Allow it to be a traditional bank. I don't care how big it grows if it is in traditional banking models. We literally have banks around the country now that are right at about $10 billion in size that are worried they can't get any bigger. We literally have businesses saying: I can't grow because if I grow, I will spring into a whole new set of regulations, and I can't afford more staff to actually do that. This is silly. If it is a traditional bank and it is in good safety and soundness, let it do loans. Let the bank actually engage with its customers in its community and not have to look over its shoulders all the time. Chairman Shelby has actually laid out a proposal in the Federal Financial Regulatory Improvement Act. It is a great place to start, with a lot of small aspects and a lot of commonsense ideas and bipartisan ideas that he has been able to stack all together and put into one piece. It is a good idea to provide some regulatory relief in these areas. I think a fair question to ask is, Are we better off financially as a nation now than we were 5 years ago? Now that this 5-year-old toddler that we call Dodd-Frank is walking around, what has happened? Well, there are some banks that are better capitalized. That is a good thing, but quite frankly we can increase capital requirements without having to go through 12,500 pages of regulations. We have made it harder to get a loan unless it is a government loan, such as a Small Business Administration loan. We have also literally pushed the loan profile out of private institutions and into Fannie and Freddie, the FHA, and into the Small Business Administration. Now we have record exposure to the Federal taxpayer. We have also made fees to the banks higher, as they have been more challenged as to what to do, and we have half as many banks now offering free checking as we had just 5 years ago. That is a consequence the consumer understands, and it is a consequence of Dodd-Frank. We have fewer banks, we have bigger banks, and we have a lot more complication. In a day when America needs more capital access, we have one bank in 5 years that says: I want to join that market. Mr. President, I wish I could say ``happy birthday'' to Dodd-Frank, but I am not sure this set of financial regulations is making a lot of Americans happy right now. It is time we come back and revisit this bill. With that, I yield back.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I wish to take just a moment to speak about a subject that is very difficult for me to speak about and, quite frankly, difficult for a lot of Americans to speak about and hear about. It connects to all of us in extremely personal ways. Let me set some context. Not long ago, a group of animal rights activists gathered around a research facility that was using animals for their testing. The activists gathered around the facility, chanted, and had signs they held up that said ``It is not science, it is violence'' and other signs that said ``Animal lives are their right; we have just begun to fight'' as they protested to protect the lives of the animals that were being used for research in that facility. I understand their frustration, but let me put it in the context of some things that came out this week. We have learned that this week an organization called Planned Parenthood is using children who were aborted and sending the bodies of those aborted children to research facilities--sometimes for sale, different body parts--to be used in research. These are not mice. These are not lab rats. These are children--children who have gone through the process of a horrific abortion. This morning, in an appropriations hearing the Presiding Officer and I both were in, we had an extensive conversation about the rights of orca whales. This protracted conversation went on and on--many people also were connected to this--about the rights of orca whales and about their care. Then we had a protracted conversation about horse slaughter and how horses would be humanely put down. But in the middle of all that conversation that happened today, there were children still being aborted with an instrument reaching into a mother and tearing apart a child but carefully protecting certain organs because those organs would be valuable to sell. Now the challenge we have on this as a nation is the argument that that baby is not really a baby, that it is just a fetus, it is tissue. ``That is not a human baby'' is what everyone is told. ``That is just tissue, and it is up to the mom to determine what happens to that tissue.'' And then on the flip side of it, moments later, they take that tissue and then sell it because it is human organs that are needed for research. You can't say in one moment that it is not a human and then sell it in the next moment as a human organ and now suddenly say it is. It was a human all the way through. There was never a time that wasn't a child. There was never a time that wasn't a human. It seems the ultimate irony to me that we spend time talking about the humane treatment of animals being put down, such as in horse slaughter, and we completely miss children being ripped apart in the womb and their body parts being sold. Here is how it happens. A mom comes into a facility, gives consent to have an abortion, makes that request. After that request is made, to some moms--and we don't know exactly how they choose which moms--to some moms they then ask consent for their child, after it is aborted, to be used for research purposes. From the video that was put out this week, they said that was actually comforting to some moms, that as they know how traumatic the abortion is, at least some good would come out of it, that those body parts would then be used for research to hopefully save other children--which again comes back to the ultimate irony that we literally tear one child apart in an abortion with the assumption that hopefully that would actually help some other child in the future, missing out on the significance of the child who is right there who could be helped by protecting their life. Then the doctor in this particular video gives the details of how once they get that consent from the mom, they would be careful to reach in and actually crush the head of the child to kill the child in the womb so they could preserve the rest of the organs because the kidney has value, because the liver has value, because the lungs have value, and because the muscles in the legs have value. I would tell you that child has value and that every single adult who can hear me right now was once 20 weeks old in the womb. We can look at each other and understand that the difference between that child in the womb and any of us now is time. That is a human being we are talking about, and it doesn't bring me comfort to know that one child is torn apart so that maybe they can do research on the child's organs so that at some future moment, it may help a different child. Not every woman is being asked if her aborted child can be used for research, and we really don't know the why. Maybe they are looking for particularly healthy moms. Maybe they are looking for very mature, healthy babies. Maybe it is a situation where a particular mom couldn't afford to have the abortion procedure, and so they swap off and say: If you can't afford the abortion procedure, maybe we can cover the costs by then possibly selling some of these organs. We don't know. But I think maybe the question needs to be asked why this Congress would spend time today debating horse slaughter and debating orca whales, and yet we have become so numb to children that the other debate doesn't seem to come up. Maybe we need to start again as a nation asking a basic question: Is that a child? In our Declaration, we said every person, we believe, is endowed by our Creator to life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Maybe we need to ask again as a nation, do we really believe that? Let's start with some basic things. How about a child of 20 weeks who we know scientifically can feel pain cannot have their limbs ripped apart in an abortion. There are only seven countries in the world that allow that. We are in a prime group--like North Korea and China--of nations which still allow abortions that late. We should ask that question again: Is that really who we are as America? Maybe we need to ask the question again to Planned Parenthood, to which we give half a billion dollars in funding. Maybe this is not a good idea. Other organizations that serve people all over the country raise their funds separately and don't do it with Federal funds. Maybe that is a legitimate question we need to ask. We have hard questions to deal with as a nation--budget, regulations, the future direction we are going. Why don't we add to the list? Do we really care about children or not? And on a day that we passed an education bill, before we pat ourselves on the back saying how much we care about children, let's make sure we are dealing with a compassion for children at every age, not just at certain ages. Have we really become this numb? And how do we turn it around? With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, in the 1960s the Johnson administration led Congress to start allotting a small amount of money--of Federal funding from the Federal taxpayers to target schools and reach out to the poorest of the poor in America and try to help beat back poverty. Five decades later, we have an education policy in America that reaches out to every single school district in America--millions of kids--that continues to fail them, to fail their parents, and that still has not solved the poverty issue. What we have is an ever-increasing Federal bureaucracy that has reached well beyond what it was designed for in the 1960s and, I would assure you, reaches well beyond what it was originally designed for-- something that would help the poorest of the poor or take care of kids on military bases and those on Indian tribal lands. No Child Left Behind passed in 2001, authorizing education policy that was even more expansive. The goal was good--make sure that every child in America has the opportunity for success, that every teacher has teaching qualifications, and that every school has accountability. It was approved through 2008, and it still continues today. Math, reading, and science are now measured in adequate yearly progress for each school, and it has become the slow-rolling disaster. The problem was the source and the goal. Parents, local districts, and States should set education policy--I would think that is something we should agree on--not a massive, centralized, controlled bureaucracy-- the bureaucracy that is here, made up of a lot of nice folks who do care about kids; it is just that most of the folks who are here in this bureaucracy dealing with education have never been to Oklahoma, and the folks in Oklahoma don't know their names and don't know why they are managing their district. The goal should be progress for each student, not each school, but the annual yearly progress demanded by No Child Left Behind really managed the progress of the school, not the child. I can assure you that the parents at home are not trying to figure out if the school is better; they are trying to figure out if their child is better in a particular subject. Annual yearly progress and the Federal mandates have put my State in the untenable position of playing ``Mother, may I'' with the Federal Government and asking for a waiver every single year and having the national education board determine what our schools in Oklahoma can and cannot do. That has to change. We want our students in Oklahoma to be college- and career-ready. We want accountability to the parents and the community. We want less burden on the educators who give their lives and their time to the task of helping parents and their children. We want that. As surprising as it may be to some in Washington, DC, we actually do care about our kids. We want the best for them. So we ask a simple thing. Allow Oklahomans to manage education for Oklahomans and just take this assumption: We do love our kids. We are going to work hard to make sure they are taken well care of. My mom was an educator for decades. She started teaching elementary school and then went into a library and was an elementary school librarian and then a high school librarian and then moved into the black hole of education that is the administration building downtown, where she worked in a burnt-out position in school administration for a district for years. She is passionate about kids. She passed that on to me. I started out my first year in college as a business major. I thoroughly enjoyed it for probably a week and then shifted the next year to secondary education--the thing that I fought against because my mom was in education, so surely I should not do the same thing, but I loved being with students. I spent 22 years of my life serving students after college. It is a passion in my family. There are multiple educators in my family, both at the college level and in the schools. We believe in education. I will never forget the student teaching time that I had in college, interacting with those kids for the first time, stepping out of a college setting of being the student to now suddenly being the student teacher and having a classroom and understanding for the first time that it is my responsibility to help those parents educate their children; that I am not now the parent for this child--this child has a parent, and that parent has the responsibility to be able to raise their child well, but I have a responsibility to come alongside that parent and help. Allow us to have that. This is what I want. I want greater flexibility for States. I want greater authority and responsibility to be placed on parents in education. The people in Oklahoma want the freedom to be able to make decisions about their own children, their own families. That is why I voted for the A PLUS Act. I tried to add that as an amendment to this bill. Steve Daines from Montana and I and multiple others supported the ability for States to have even more control if they choose to, to have both the responsibility and the authority for all areas of all parts of education. We did not win that amendment, but it was a blanket ``We want everything to go back to the States if they choose to have it.'' We will continue to have that fight in the days ahead. Lamar Alexander brought out an amendment that would have been great to have. It allowed parents to choose their school regardless of whether it is public or private. Education union leaders had kittens about that, saying: The public schools are getting better, and so we don't want to take funds away from those public schools; we want to keep all of the funds in the public schools. The parents are saying: I understand that school is going to get better someday, but my child is there right now. Certain leaders in schools will say: We cannot have Federal funds moved to follow the child. I would say: Would you allow the parent to help that child have the one shot they are going to get to get an education and allow them to choose where they want to go? That is why I am also a supporter of things such as the DC opportunity scholarships that will allow children in Washington, DC, to be able to choose the school they attend. The President has fought adamantly against that. So have the education unions. Quite frankly, the parents here in DC want to have the option to send their child anywhere they choose to send them. I would like to see more reductions in duplication of education programs. There is real reduction in that in this particular bill, but I would like to see even more. We have education programs in the Departments of Defense and Ag and Health and Human Services and multiple other places scattered around the bureaucracy. We need to be able to shrink all of those different programs and to be able to make sure that we are not feeding the bureaucracy but that we are actually helping kids. I would actually like to see more in this bill dealing with options for those who are homeless. This bill helps us get a better count and better insight on the educational quality and the graduation rate for homeless and foster children. But I would like to have greater flexibility built into this bill, which I did not get. I would like the parents and the people in the local district to be able to have better decisionmaking capability. What did I get? There are some things we won in this bill. There are no common core mandates. I can assure you, in my State of Oklahoma, most every person in my State stands and cheers when they find out one thing: that there are no common core mandates in this. There are no Federal tests at all. States--my State in particular--will have absolute control over standardized testing and the results of those tests and how they apply the information gained from those tests. The leaders in my State will manage that, control that, and make sure that is accurate for us. There are no Federal education standards. There is no Federal curriculum. There are reductions in some of the education programs. I am glad to see that, although, as I have already mentioned, I would like to see more of that. It breaks down some of the funding silos. Do you realize right now that if there is money available in one silo dealing with kitchens, for instance, and nutrition for school, they may allot Federal dollars and say, ``You can have those Federal dollars if you want to buy a new oven.'' But if a district says, ``We don't need more money for ovens; we need money for special education,'' the Federal Government currently says, ``No, you can't do that. You have to buy a new oven.'' That is dumb. Why don't we allow the districts to make that decision? This bill begins to break down some of those funding silos, and it gives them the opportunity to be able to make decisions on that. What I would like to see and what I did get was more local control of education, dramatically increased local control, in fact, local authority and additional local responsibility. That is the way it should be. Inhofe and I even had a bill on local school board flexibility. We got good downpayment on that bill. There is more to go on that. We need to get a chance to see additional things, but those are things we were able to win. Can I tell you the one big thing we really won? It is that my State, after this bill passes--if we can get this bill done, my State will no longer have to crawl back to Washington, DC, every year and beg for a waiver in education to maintain the education funding--which, by the way, came out of our State. Literally, the Federal taxpayers pay in with their tax dollars, and the State of Oklahoma has to come crawling to Washington, DC, saying: Can I please have those dollars back to our State? Right now, we have to do that every year. My State actually lost Federal control because we chose not to do common core. The Department of Education said: If you don't do this, then you are going to lose your funding. For months we lost control of that funding, but that was our choice because we were setting our own standards. We have now won that waiver back. In fact, just a few weeks ago, that waiver was renewed again. I am already sick to death of our State having to come beg for the Federal dollars that we put into the system and to get permission from someone in DC. This bill finally fixes that. Does it go as far as I want to go? No. I have been pretty clear about that. But it is the first step taking in our long journey towards taking us back in the direction where we need to be--our schools, our parents making decisions for our kids. Again, I remind you, Oklahoma parents do love their kids, and Oklahoma legislators are doing a great job of trying to turn some things around in a very hard situation. Let's give them the ability to be able to do that. I encourage this body to pass this education bill, and let's get going again towards educating our students and doing the right thing. I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the Senate as in morning business for 10 minutes.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, in the next couple of days, the Supreme Court is going to rule on a case that will have a long-lasting impact not only on just what health care is going on in this country but a long-lasting impact on how the law is to be interpreted. This is a law called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It was hurried through Congress before anyone had time to read it, and it contained multiple mistakes and contradictions. Already this administration has unilaterally changed this law over 30 times to try to make it work, including completely rewriting a section about who gets the subsidies and who lives underneath the mandates. The law says the States that set up an exchange as a State exchange are under the subsidies and also have those mandates, but the administration claims that, no, it was intended for everyone. Within days, the Supreme Court will release their opinion on this matter in a case called King v. Burwell and basically answer this one question: Does the law mean what the law says or does the law mean what the administration interprets it to mean? This is not a political problem; this is a health care problem for millions of people. These days, the discussion seems to circle around on who is to blame. Well, people and families were hurt in the ObamaCare chaos because of the way this law was written. They are not worried about blame; they are worried about the issues facing their family in the days ahead. I have the obligation to do whatever I can to protect the people of my State from the harmful effects of this law, and there are many. The people in my State distinctly heard people say 5 years ago: If you like your health care, you can keep it, except for the people who were forced off the State-run exchange that already existed in Oklahoma and were pushed out--ObamaCare, that is 5 years old, came after Insure Oklahoma, which is 10 years old--except for the people who have higher deductibles in my State, except for the people who now have higher premiums in my State. In Oklahoma this year, the requested rate increase for health care is between 11 and 45 percent, depending on the plan and the county you live in. This year's rate increase is between 11 and 45 percent. In addition, physician-owned hospitals are trapped in time, not allowed to grow larger than what they were 5 years ago. Many people in my State like the physician-owned hospitals, and they want to see it succeed, instead of being slowly bled to death. People struggle to find a job in places in my State because of this 40-hour requirement that hangs over them. They now have to find two jobs, each having about 28 hours, so they can keep up the amount of pay. Those individuals were hurt in this process. Higher premium costs in the plans will soon come to those in unions because they have too good of health care insurance. In the short days ahead, union members who have premium health care policies will now get a penalty for having insurance that is too good for this administration. By next year, the Independent Payment Advisory Board kicks off its work. Its sole responsibility is to find areas to be able to save money by cutting options for patients. This is not a mess that can be fixed with one sentence--unless that one sentence says ``the bill is repealed.'' So how do we solve this in the days ahead? Let me lay out a couple of ideas before the Senate because very soon we are going to be confronted with this when the Supreme Court actually responds. First, do the basic things: Do no harm and stop the existing harm. We need to transition out of the subsidies and mandates of ObamaCare for millions of people who will lose their subsidy when the Court rules in favor of the American people and the law of the United States--the clear text reading of the law. Those individuals who were forced into ObamaCare are not the problem. We are not angry at those individuals. They are trapped in a mess that was made around them that they were forced into. I will never forget a conversation I had with a Democrat in my State who was participating in a plan called Insure Oklahoma--who liked their insurance plan. It was a subsidized plan from our State. They pulled me aside 5 years ago and said: Is there any way I can keep the State-based plan I have now? And all I could do is look at him and say, no, you can't, actually, and that is not my decision. The Affordable Care Act which was passed and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and HHS forced the people in my State out of a State-based solution for health care and into the larger national solution. Many Oklahomans lost their health care coverage and were forced out of it. It was already a subsidized system, and now they were taken from one plan and pushed into another. Let's do no harm, and let's try to help those individuals to be able to find their way back to a plan they like and help in that transition. The second thing is pretty straightforward: States should have the freedom to choose any path to help their citizens. States should not have to check in with the Federal Government to ask permission to take care of their neighbors and citizens. How ridiculous is that; that a State leadership would have to go to the Federal Government to say we want to develop a plan to be able to help our own citizens, and the Federal Government says, no, they have to check in with us instead. This is basically a repeal option for all 50 States. For those States that like it, we would say, if you like your ObamaCare, you can keep it, and for all the States that don't, they have their own way out to be able to take care of their own citizens. The tax money that is being supplemented for those came from those States. Why shouldn't it be returned to those States and give the States the ability to be able to speak to that issue for their own citizens. We have to stop this mentality that only the people of Washington, DC, love the individuals in each State and want to care for them and be able to manage what is happening in that State. That State leadership deeply cares about their own citizens. Let's let them step up and lead. Third is probably the clearest of all of them: People should have the freedom to choose any health care plan they want. What a radical idea, to actually hand people freedom, to hand people opportunities. Free of the mandates and the penalties, patients should be able to pick their own doctor and their own plan for their own family. I have to say, it is ironic. I hear people call this law either ObamaCare or the Affordable Care Act. I am fascinated with that because the law's name is the ``Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.'' Over the last 5 years, the words ``patient protection'' seem to have disappeared from every part of everyone's vernacular in this. I would only have to say, I agree. When did we stop saying to the patient: You have no ability to make your own choices. I will tell you when. When ObamaCare passed and everything became about affordable rather than about patient. We have seen the consequences of this. In the days ahead, the Supreme Court will rule on this, and I believe strongly they are going to rule for the plain text of the law, not just about ObamaCare but because they have to make the decision as the Supreme Court: Does the law mean what the law says or can any administration on any law in the future reinterpret it based on their preferences? If there is one area that would be a great path for us to follow, it is in the days ahead that we get back to the government is about the law, and we follow the law because we are a nation of laws, not just a nation of leaders. The law is to be king in our Nation. So let's interpret it the way it is written and let's give people back the freedom they want and need. Let's put the patient back in health care. That is the next step I think we should take in this U.S. Senate. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I understand there are three bills at the desk due for a second reading.

Mr. LANKFORD. In order to place the bills on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I object to further proceedings en bloc.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of H. Con. Res. 43, which is at the desk.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, trade agreements are about a set of values and beliefs. Do we believe the American workers and American products can compete with the rest of the world and provide answers and products the world needs? It is an overwhelming yes. When we trade, we not only exchange goods, we exchange ideas and values. Our greatest export is our American value--the dignity of each person, hard work, innovation, and liberty. That is what we send around the world. It has the greatest impact. What we wrote into our Declaration of Independence is not just an American value statement; we believe it is a statement about every person. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men, not just men and women within the United States but that all people worldwide are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Governments were created to protect the rights given to us by God. We believe every person should have the protection of government to live their faith, not the compulsion of government to practice any one faith or to be forced to reject all faith altogether. That is one of the reasons Americans are disturbed by the trend in our courts, our military, and our public conversation. It is not the task of government to purge religious conversation from public life; it is the task of government to protect the rights of every person to live their faith and to guard those who choose not to have any faith at all. Thomas Jefferson, in one of the pinnacle works of his life, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, states: Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness. With that backdrop, I worked for 2 years with my colleagues to place language into the negotiating language of this trade bill to push our negotiators to consider religious liberty in their negotiations. I have been told over and over again that we don't talk about religious freedom in our trade negotiations. I have just asked, why not? We should encourage trade with another country when that country acknowledges our basic value of the dignity of every person to live their own faith. Our Nation is not just an economy; our Nation is a set of ideas and values. We believe each person has value and worth. It benefits every person from each nation in the trade agreement if we lead with our values and not sell out for a dollar people who have been in bondage as a prisoner of conscience for years. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recently recommended that the United States should ``ensure that human rights and religious freedom are pursued consistently and publicly at every level of the U.S.-Vietnam relationship, including in the context of discussions relating to military, trade, or economic and security assistance, such as Vietnam's participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, as well as in programs that address Internet freedom and civil society development, among others.'' When people have freedom of conscience and faith, they are also better trading partners. Their country is stable, their families are stable, and their economy will grow. With that, I encourage this body to do something new. Let's start exporting the values we hold dear, not to compel other nations to have our faith but to have other nations recognize the power of the freedom of religion within their own borders. I have a simple amendment to the trade promotion authority asking the trade negotiators to take into account conditions relating to religious freedom of any party to negotiations for a trade agreement with the United States. It is not complicated. It is a simple encouragement, and it is a step toward us exporting our value. I ask for the support of this body as we consider our greatest export--freedom. With that, I yield back.

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I also ask unanimous consent that Senator Vitter be added as a cosponsor to my amendment.

Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment No. 1237 be modified with the changes at the desk.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order, following the remarks of Senator Portman for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m., Tuesday, May 19; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following leader remarks, the Senate be in a period of morning business for 1 hour, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided, with the Democrats controlling the first half and the majority controlling the final half; further, that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 1314; finally, that the Senate recess from 12:30 p.m. until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly conference meetings.