James Lankford

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I have a concern. It is not about trade. Quite frankly, trade is one of the things we have done as a nation all along. We were free traders before we were a nation. One of the grievances we had in the Declaration of Independence was the fact that King George was restricting our trade. We have always been individuals in a nation of trade. My issue is particularly with this Preferences bill. Again, it is not about the protections in it; it is about the way we pay for it. Now, as odd as it sounds, while we are doing trade and while we are trying to engage in things, we can't lose track of this simple thing called deficit that is hanging out there as well. We have basic rules on how we actually handle budget issues. For anything that we set out that is going to take several years to pay for, we have basic rules. Those rules include that it has to be deficit neutral in year 6 and it has to be deficit neutral in year 11. The way that is set up and the reason that it is set up is so that you cannot game the system that way. You can't just backload the whole thing and say: We are going to be deficit neutral in the very last year, but every other year we are going to run up the bill and have some pretend pay-fors at the very end. So the way this is set up is to have this basic gap. Halfway through, you are deficit neutral. At the other end of it, you are also deficit neutral. Well, this is what the Preferences bill does. The Preferences bill sets up this unique something called the corporate payment shift. So this is how it works. Six years from now, every corporation that has $1 billion or more in assets has a 5\1/4\-percent tax increase in year 6. In year 7, every one of those companies that has $1 billion or more in assets gets a 5\1/4\-percent tax refund. Let me run that by you again. This is set up, in the way the bill is written, so that 6 years from now taxes go up on every company--that is 2,000 companies in America that have $1 billion or more in assets--by 5\1/4\ percent, and in the next year they get a refund of that same amount. Can someone help me understand why every company in America has to gear up, change the way they do all their tax policies, pay an extra tax that year, and so that the next year they can get a refund? That is additional cost. That is additional expense--only to help this body circumvent the basic rules that we said we are going to abide by. Now, in all likelihood, those companies won't actually do that 6 and 7 years from now because, in all likelihood, this body will come through and will waive the corporate tax shift because it is now not years 6 and 7. Now, it is years 7 and 8, and so it doesn't apply. This is ridiculous. This is a problem--that this body is playing a game in how we are trying to actually accomplish a basic rule. Now, if anyone can stand in this body and say that is a good idea-- that we are going to raise taxes 6 years from now on all these companies and refund the same amount in the 7th year--if anyone can actually tell me that is a good idea, please do. All that this is set up to do is to be able to help us in our CBO scoring. This is what I think we should do. Option No. 1 is to have a real pay-for--not have some pretend and say this is a deficit-neutral bill, when it is not a deficit-neutral bill. We have a $3.7 trillion budget. I think we can find a real pay-for to be able to put it into this bill. If you are lacking for any of those, my office can give you many options that are real pay-fors rather than something fake in year 6 and year 7. This is option No. 2. At least admit that this is not a deficit- neutral bill and that these pay-fors are fake. There is something that this body has called a budget point of order, and it should apply in this sense because this is not a real pay-for. Now, I have had these conversations with staff behind the scenes and with individuals in this body, and I have been told the same thing over and over: This is how we always do it. In other words: You are a new guy here. You don't know this is how the game is played on the budget- neutral deficit, eliminating bills that really don't do that. Yes, that is true. I am the new guy here, and I have heard this is an old practice--and it needs to go away, because no one can defend this. How about this. How about next week I try to go get a car loan, and I try to negotiate with the car dealer for a 5-year loan, and I tell him: I will pay all of my loan off year 4, but I want a full refund in year 5 for all that I have paid off. Do you think I am going to get that car loan? No, I am not going to get that car loan because he is going to say: That is fake. And I will say: I have paid it off completely in year 5. Yes, but we paid it all back in the next year. We have to be able actually to have real accounting at the end of the day. This is not invisible money. This is debt that is being added. And with a $3.7 trillion budget, we can find real pay-fors. This is a practice that has happened in this Congress and in previous Congresses that has to stop. We have the ability to do that. I oppose this bill because it is not genuine in how we are actually paying for it. Saying that we pay for it in year 6 and refunding it in year 7 is not real, and we know it. In the days ahead, I hope we can address this practice and not just eliminate it for this bill, but that we can eliminate it from ever being used again in any bill as a gimmick pay-for. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, it is my honor to represent my family, my neighbors, and the millions of people in my very diverse State of Oklahoma. I am an ordinary Oklahoman. I do not come from a prominent political family or from any kind of political machine. My wife of 23 years, Cindy, is here in the Gallery today. We have walked through life together and have raised two incredible girls who love God and love our Nation. Stepping into this body was a high cost for my family. We took this on together. We have a tremendous staff, both here in Washington, DC, and in Oklahoma, who sacrifice incredible time and energy for the future of our Nation. Every day they work incredibly hard to solve the issues that we face as a nation. I am grateful to serve in this Chamber and for this to be my very first time to be able to speak in this Chamber. There are a few issues that I want to be able to raise and address in our conversation today. I have the opportunity to be able to live in a heritage of distinguished Oklahomans who have served in this Chamber. I serve alongside Senator Jim Inhofe, who has stood for conservative principles in this body for two decades. I am humbled to follow the irreplaceable Dr. Tom Coburn. For those of us who are Dallas Cowboy fans, my coming here is kind of like being Danny White after Roger Staubach. There have been 17 other Senators from Oklahoma, great names such as Don Nickles, Henry Bellmon, Robert S. Kerr, David Boren, and Mike Monroney, just to name a few. I have the honor to sit at the same desk on this Chamber floor used by fellow Republican Senators Tom Coburn, Dewey Bartlett, and Edward Moore. In the 1930s, Oklahoma's favorite son and humorist, Will Rogers, said: Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens, and then everybody disagrees. This is my first official moment to join the ranks of those who step up to speak, but I want to speak about a few things that I consider essential to the work ahead for all of us--what I call the three Ds, which I talk about all the time: debt, defense, and directives. Let me take those in reverse order. The directives. People ask me all the time: What do Oklahomans want from their Federal Government? The answer is simple. They want to be left alone. They do not want someone else, over 1,000 miles away, telling them what to do, how to run their business, and how to run their lives. It is not that people in Oklahoma are antigovernment--far from it. We have a strong patriotism that drives us to serve our Nation and honor those who give their lives to public service. Twenty years ago, Oklahoma and the Nation were devastated by a truck bomb in the Oklahoma City Federal building, killing 168 people, most of those Federal employees. We are grateful for people in government who serve faithfully every day. But we also understand that our Federal Government has a task, and it also has a territory. Federal officers should do their task efficiently with great transparency and accountability, but they also stay out of other people's tasks and do theirs with great effectiveness. When I step into a restaurant, I may have an idea for a new recipe. But I cannot just wander back into the kitchen and start cooking and changing the way the restaurant works. Neither can a Federal regulator drift into every business and decide they are going to redo how that business is done. That is not their territory. That is not their job. But today in America, if you want to start or run a business, you will find out that the government has already made most of the decisions for you about how you will run your business. Well, an Oklahoma company recently paid a fine for not reporting to a Federal agency that they had nothing to report. Now, I am fairly confident that the Founding Fathers, when they were envisioning a country of the people, by the people, and for the people, were not envisioning that citizens of the country would pay fines to their government for reporting they have nothing to report. In the past week, I have started a bipartisan initiative called the Cut Red Tape Initiative to try to identify ways to streamline government, to return decisions back to individuals and local governments, and clear the clutter of regulations that benefit the government but slow down business. Just so that people would know that this process is difficult, I have faced weeks of red tape here in the Senate to start an initiative called Cut Red Tape. We will work through that. In the past few years, over 30,000 pages have been added to the Federal Register. Nothing in American life does not face a Federal regulation. To make sure the government considers the cumulative effect of all of those regulations, agencies are required to do a regulatory lookback to evaluate problem regulations each year. But most don't take it seriously. The Department of Labor has 676 regulations and rules. This year, their regulatory lookback includes 4 regulations--4 of 676. That is not a serious review. The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has no accountability to the American people, and it has no limit to its authority. They are becoming a fourth branch of government with no checks or balances. The EPA spends their time looking for gray areas of law in places where they can reinterpret old laws to fit their new agenda. Consent decrees and novel interpretations of statutes have superseded consistent rulemaking and statutory and State primacy of enforcement. Agencies now write rules, interpret their rules, enforce their rules, and establish the punishment for not following their rules. Many people want to blame this administration. I disagree. This administration has become expert at pushing the boundaries; that is true. But the rise in the regulatory state is not new. For decades, the Congress has delegated responsibilities to agencies and given them very few boundaries. Since the 1970s, in the Chevron case, the courts have increased the power of the regulatory agencies by allowing them to have deference to determine their own rules. This is not a Republican or Democrat issue. It is an American issue, which will not improve until this body demands its constitutional authority back and clarifies to the courts that the Constitution states that all legislative authority shall lie in Congress--not in an agency. The American people want to give the Federal Government their own directive: Leave us alone. Now, I am willing to work with anyone who is willing to work on some of these issues. So far this session, I have coauthored or cosponsored bills and worked on ideas with Ted Cruz, Elizabeth Warren, Gary Peters, John Cornyn, Heidi Heitkamp, Dianne Feinstein, Orrin Hatch, Mike Lee, Steve Daines, Tim Scott, Rob Portman, Tom Carper, Angus King, Rand Paul, Jeanne Shaheen, John McCain, Mike Enzi, Kelly Ayotte, Mark Kirk and Ron Johnson, just to name a few. I did not have to sacrifice my conservative values, but I did have to admit that anyone can have a good idea. Just because we disagreed on one thing does not mean I have to belittle people. I told my wife several years ago, when I first came to the House of Representatives, that I had this deja vu moment, thinking I had felt this way before. I have never been in politics or Congress, but I know this feeling. After about 6 months I called her and I said: I finally figured out what this feeling is to be in Congress. It is the emotion you have in middle school lunch. It is that feeling that I get more popular by sitting at my table and making fun of everyone else at everyone else's table. And if I ever say something nice about someone else at another table, my table shakes their head and says: Why would you do that? But if I ever say something unkind, everybody says: Way to go. Welcome to Congress. Only we can turn this around. We will strongly disagree on areas, but we should find the areas of common ground where we do not have to sacrifice our values and be able to find ways to work together. The second issue is defense--directives and defense. Our freedom is foreign to most of the world, and it is a threat to them, not because the United States is an aggressor nation--far from it--but because the liberty we export is so powerful they know well it can depose their dictatorships and weaken their control. Many government leaders around the world would rather keep their people poor and closely managed than allow them to be prosperous and free. Iran is on the rise. Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has exported terrorism around the world. I am convinced that some individuals--even in this administration--trust Iran's words more than they trust history, the facts on the ground or even their own intuition. We cannot allow the largest exporter of terrorism in the world to have nuclear weapons. We cannot do that. Dictatorial governments around the world and totalitarian Islamic leaders consistently test our mettle, probe our infrastructure and computer systems, test our passion for freedom and our resolve for the dignity of every person. By the way, that is one of our core values. Every person--even people we disagree with--is valuable. It is why the issue of race--just as a side note--is so important to us in America-- because we understand that in many parts of the world if you are from the wrong family, the wrong tribe, the wrong race or the wrong faith, you cannot get a job, you cannot get government services, you cannot get housing--all of those things. That is how other places do it. That is not us. We have chosen not to be like that as a nation. Where injustice exists, we want to bring freedom and equality--within our boundaries or around the world. We believe every person is created equal and is endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights--every person. When brutal thugs attack innocent nations, we have the moral high ground to call out the aggressor and to stand with the oppressed. We always work with resolve to solve the issues peacefully. We understand this proverb: ``A gentle answer turns away wrath.'' Our diplomacy leads the way. But when nations and philosophies will not stop their aggression, they learn that we do not bear the sword for nothing. I have the privilege--and I do count it as a privilege--of serving thousands of men and women and their families who faithfully protect our Nation every day in all branches of the military--first responders on our streets, in the intelligence community, at our ports, in the air, training, equipping, and protecting hundreds of thousands in Oklahoma. In fact, without Oklahoma, just so this body will know, our Nation could not sustain our Air Force, train our pilots, rearm our munitions, fire artillery or rockets, talk to our subs, train our young soldiers, refuel our aircraft, control battlefield airspace or deliver supplies. So you are welcome for what happens in Oklahoma every day. Our Guard and Reserve units have fulfilled everything that has been asked of them by their Nation, some of them to their last full measure of devotion. But in Oklahoma our patriotism also challenges us to deal with military waste when it takes money, especially directly from the warfighter. Why would we call waste in defense patriotism? Let's solve it. We want the intelligence community to be well equipped. We want them to be attentive to the issues around the world, but we also want our Fourth Amendment freedoms protected. Remember, Oklahomans like to just be left alone. The third issue is our debt--directives, defense, and debt. Our economy runs on increasing debt. That is how we are actually managing life day to day nowadays. We gamble every year that interest rates will not go up and the rest of the world will still want our bonds. This year we paid $229 billion in interest payments. Think about that for a minute--$229 billion. The highway trust fund is short just $10 billion, and we are spending $229 billion just in interest payments this year. CBO estimates that we will spend over $800 billion in interest payments by the end of the 10- year window. That is more than we spend on all defense spending, education, transportation, and energy combined--what we will do just in interest payments in the years ahead. We need to fix two things in this budget hole: efficiently manage Federal spending and a growing economy, duplication in programs. All these things need to be resolved. Let me take a couple of these things. Efficiency in the Federal Government. We need to deal with the tremendous fraud and waste and duplication. Where we see it, we should go after it. For the past 2 weeks, I have held a bill that funds a grant program for bulletproof vests. I am not opposed to the program. I am opposed to the fact that we have two programs that do the same thing--two different applications, two different sets of processes, two programs that do the same thing. If we see it, we should solve it. Yesterday, we marked up and passed a bill in committee that I authored called the Taxpayer Right to Know Act, which will identify duplicative programs, the administrative cost, the number of full-time staff, and how and if programs are evaluated. It is a commonsense thing to do that, and it passed by a voice vote out of the committee. In the days ahead, I hope we will use that tool wisely to be able to actually identify where we have duplication, and instead of complain about it, we solve it as a body. The goal is to find those and eliminate them. A friend of mine in Oklahoma is a former marine. His name is Hank. Hank runs a small business. Hank is a guy who if you see him, you need to brace yourself because when he shakes your hand you know it. Hank runs his small business from a desk in his unair-conditioned garage. When I think about the way we spend money, I often think of Hank. Hank is not a guy who wants to have our government suffer or our Nation do something weak. Hank is an incredible patriot, but he wants us to spend money wisely, and when we find waste, he would expect us to get rid of it. He does. He would expect that we do. A good example of that may be Social Security disability. It is a difficult issue for us to talk about because we want a safety net for the truly vulnerable, but we all know there is incredible waste in that program, and there are people who are ripping off the system. To have a strong safety net for the vulnerable doesn't mean we allow people to freeload off the top. Disability is designed for people who cannot work in any job in the economy, not someone who just doesn't want to. Let's find a way to protect our vulnerable but incentivize those who are freeloading off the system to engage them back into work. We need people to work. The earned-income tax credit is another one of those. We read the reports every year: a 24-percent fraud rate, the highest fraud rate in the Federal Government. Last year, there was $14.5 billion in loss; one program, $14.5 billion. We have to pay attention to this. We have to get the economy going or we will never fix the debt. We can't just fix it by reducing spending. We all know that well. Tax reform seems to be the elusive dream of our economy. I can only hope that as a body we will not continue to strive for large-scale tax reform and fail to do some things that are significant and possible. Banking reform must be done. Dodd-Frank is choking out lending. Now, I don't want to attack any individual who voted for it, but I am very well aware that there are many unintended consequences that have come down, especially on community banks. People can feel our economy tightening and the lending tightening. They don't know why. Main Street community banks are dealing with uncertain regulations. We have to get our community banks back in business. We can do that by exempting traditional banks from heavy regulatory burdens that complex banks face and replacing simple capital requirements. This isn't controversial or complicated. We just need to work on some simple things while we still work on the complex. Trade. We are a nation that believes in trade. Quite frankly, our Navy was created in the infancy of our Republic to protect our trade. In fact, one of our grievances that we had with King George in the original Declaration of Independence was the King was cutting off our trade with all ports of the world. Trade has been a big deal to us as a nation since before we were a nation. Currently, this ongoing debate about whether we will be a nation of trade seems to be a little odd to me. Yes, we are going to be a nation of trade. We always have been. Let's work it out and let's continue to grow our economy. Energy issues. The past 6 years the brightest star in our economy has been energy. If we want to have the economy grow, energy is going to be a major part of that formula. If anyone disagrees with that, I would love to get a chance to meet them because I can show you all the job growth that has happened in America just circled around energy. But we all know EPA policies make energy development harder and increase the energy cost of everything for every person in America. Energy jobs are great-paying jobs, but they are suddenly fading away because of this mixture of low oil prices and bad energy policy. A few years ago, America was led to believe they were running out of oil and gas and our supplies were going away. Now our supplies are at record numbers and we keep finding more. In the past 6 months, America has lost 100,000 jobs because we have stopped drilling because our tanks are full and the prices have collapsed. If we could only sell that oil, what a difference that might make to our economy. You see, we can sell our coal and we can sell our natural gas, but for whatever reason we as a nation are still thinking we can't sell oil. Now, we can sell gasoline, just not oil. It would be kind of like saying you can sell flour, but you can't sell wheat. Currently, we import about 27 percent of our crude. Most of that is heavy oil that is imported. Most of that is done by foreign ownership, foreign ownership of refineries. They are bringing in their own oil. Most of our new finds are in light sweet oil, a different type of oil that our refineries don't need. Do you know who needs this? Mexico needs it, Canada needs it. So, literally, while our storage tanks are at maximum capacity and the prices continue to drop in America, the rest of the world is craving our oil, and we are debating whether that is a good idea. It is the ultimate irony right now that the administration is in negotiations to open the sale of Iranian oil to the world market, and we cannot sell oil from America on the world market. Let's pay attention to American jobs. Let's get our economy going. There are some basic things we can do. All this talk about security, economy, and liberty boils down to one thing, though--our families. Nothing is bigger in our Nation than our families--nothing. We are not a nation of wealth, we are a nation of families. The rise of government is directly connected to the collapse of families. It is not that government is pushing down families, it is that families are collapsing and government is trying to rise to fix that. It will not fix it. Government can't fix a family, but we can make sure there is no marriage penalty in our tax law. We can make sure we don't incentivize broken families and our social welfare programs. We can actually use our moments in our times when we speak to state the obvious. America is strongest when American families are strong. Let's not be afraid to step out and protect what we know works. We don't live in a nation with no hope. We live in a nation of incredible hope. The seeds are all still there. It is a matter of how much we are going to engage in those things, whether we are going to be an exporter of freedom and of our basic values. That is what I think we should do. We should export our freedom to the world. We should export our values to the world. We will do that best as we protect our families and as we rise to speak about the things we know are right. There is a tremendous diversity of American opinion, freedom of speech, but before the Framers even mentioned free speech, they mentioned the free exercise of religion. It is popular culture now for people to be intolerant of people of faith and people who live their faith. You can say you have faith, but you are pushed down if you actually practice the faith you say you have. I served 22 years in ministry before I came to Congress. I have a little different perspective than some on that. I see our Nation with a great spiritual hunger. I don't criticize Washington, though, in the process. Quite frankly, I believe Washington perfectly reflects our culture, and to people who are frustrated with what Washington has become, I remind them, this is who we are as a nation. What we are going to do about it becomes the big issue. What are we going to become? While we beat ourselves up, we lose track that the rest of the world still looks at us, and they still want to be us. Last September, I was in Central America for a few days meeting with some of the leaders there talking about immigration. I don't know if anyone has noticed, but there are a few issues about immigration now. We had this conversation about immigration and started talking about what are we going to do and how are we going to limit the number of these unaccompanied minors coming in and what is actually driving them to come. One of the leaders there said: Sir, I don't know if you have noticed, but you are the United States of America. Everyone in the world wants to go there. There doesn't have to be a driving factor to go to your nation. Everyone wants to be your nation. We do not have open borders, nor should we. But it was another lesson learned that while we argue among ourselves, we have the opportunity to be able to serve in the greatest Nation, in the greatest body in the world. We still lead the world with our values. We should represent that well. That is our greatest export, our values. This is the National Day of Prayer, and I thought it would be entirely appropriate to be able to end this conversation with both a reminder to call our Nation to prayer and to remember Psalm 46:1-2: God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear. So we not only remember that, but let us actually call this Senate to pray. Let us pray. Our Father, I pray for our Nation. I pray that You would give us wisdom and direction. I pray for this body, incredible men and women who have set aside their families, their careers, and their life, to come serve their Nation. I pray that You would give us unity of attitude and diversity of opinion and that You give us the capacity to be able to solve the issues ahead of us. I pray for President Obama, for Vice President Biden, the Supreme Court, for the House of Representatives, for the men and women around the world right now who are serving quietly in ways of intelligence, publically as first responders and leaders, and our military scattered across the Earth. God, would You protect them and would You allow us, as families and as leaders, to represent You and the values of our Nation to a world that needs our leadership still. God, use this time. Use us. As broken as we are, we know that You are an ever-present help in time of trouble, and we will not fear. Thank you, Jesus. Amen. Madam President, I yield back the remainder of my time.

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

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, this is a great bill in many ways. There is a tremendous need. I have family members who are police officers, actually, in small, rural police forces. I have staff members who are former police officers. I understand the situation very well, how much of a difference it makes to so many people. But we have two different programs dealing with bulletproof vests, two different systems of actually distributing bulletproof vests from the Federal Government that in many ways are complementary and in some ways competing. We have two sets of applications with two different sets of personnel to actually approve those applications and two different processes to apply. My goal is that where we find duplication of effort, even if it is a good effort, that we as the Federal Government find ways to be able to streamline that process. Every dollar we spend on bureaucracy here, on a duplicative program, is a dollar less that we actually spend to buy the bulletproof vests and be able to get them out the door. I have had multiple conversations that have been very productive with Senator Leahy and with Senator Graham to talk about this particular issue of how we can combine the application process, how we can combine the administrative process to make sure a good program doesn't lose dollars. We have numerous reports all over the Federal Government on duplication in government. I look forward to the ongoing conversations. I have some assurances that we will deal with some of these issues as we go through the appropriations process in the days ahead, so I am willing to withdraw my objection. I know that we will resolve some of these issues in the days ahead to allow us to be able to move forward. So with that, I withdraw my objection.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas. Mr. Speaker, this vote is not an acknowledgement of the President's plan because we have not seen the plan. Bombing some of ISIS' facilities and training 5,000 foreign fighters is not a plan. If ISIS is a direct threat to the United States, we should treat them that way. Do not make the American people second-guess the threat by saying that the American people will be protected by the Free Syrian Army. While I stand in support of this amendment today, the conversation must not end here. I look forward to the conversation in how the administration intends to constitutionally seek authorization to accomplish the strategy today for the American people and this body.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Speaker, a week ago, the President asked this House to include very narrow language in the continuing resolution that would allow the United States military to train and equip the Free Syrian Army individuals to defend themselves. I can understand why any soldier in any country would want training from the United States military. They are the best-trained, best- equipped, best-disciplined, and best moral fighting force in the history of warfare. Many members of this body and of the administration have asked, for months, for greater training of the Free Syrian Army. If we had not previously trained and equipped the Iraqis and the Kurds, ISIS would have already overrun Iraq and would have already moved against our allies in the region. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to voice the concern though of the people of Oklahoma. We believe this administration has the habit of twisting every bill into what they want it to say rather than what it actually says; so I want to clarify this amendment. This is not an authorization for the use of military force in Syria. The President has not asked for that authority, and the Congress has not extended it. Mr. Speaker, in 2001, this body gave specific authorization to President Bush to ``use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organization, or persons he determines''--now get this-- who ``he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.'' The fighters currently on the battlefield with ISIS were about 8 years old on 9/11. The leaders of ISIS were teenagers. Unless this administration is able to show evidence that a group that did not exist on 9/11 or that 8-year-olds in Syria planned, authorized, committed or aided in the terror attacks on 9/11, the AUMF is not in effect from 2001. This body is willing to deliberate and to engage with the American people in the sobering question of the use of military force, but we are not willing to abdicate our constitutional responsibility. No one in this administration should understand this vote as a request to negotiate with Iran for their cooperation, offering to turn a blind eye or to turn our head while they advance their nuclear weapons program for their help and their cooperation. The world should not have to choose between ISIS or a nuclear Iran. Both are unacceptable. Mr. Speaker, this vote is also not an acknowledgement of the President's plan to defend our Nation from ISIS. We have not seen a plan.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, if I were to ask most Americans, why do we have the Endangered Species Act?, just about all of them would say, so we can protect endangered species and increase those population numbers. But then you ask the question of each specific species, what is the goal? And very rarely now will you hear the goal being to increase population. You will hear things like protection of habitat, expansion of the species and such, but you are not going to hear population numbers. What effect does that have? Well, come to Oklahoma some time. In western Oklahoma, we deal with a beautiful little ground chicken called the lesser prairie chicken. The lesser prairie chicken in the past month and a half has been listed as a threatened species now. So what is the result of that? Well, the first question we ask is: What is the number that we need to have to recover? I don't know. We are just going to try to recover habitat. What that means is they are now trying to block in 8,000 to 9,000 acres at a time of grassland and say no one can do development on these 8,000 to 9,000-acre blocks of land--that is no building, that is no construction, that is no energy, and that is no wind power, blocking it off and leaving it natural, up to 70 percent of that area. Suddenly, private lands have suddenly become the ownership of public lands. The simple question is: How many lesser prairie chickens do we need to have before these restrictions go away? We don't know. The latest survey that just came out showed a 20 percent increase from last year to this year. Is that enough? No. Fish and Wildlife Service is not required to take in that specific study. If it came from a State and from the people that lived there and know it best, shouldn't we take that advice? For some strange reason--I am not opposed to scientists from New York--but if scientists from New York can pop in on Oklahoma and can say, I am going to give you the best science, and when we ask for the data behind it, they can say, no, it is secret and proprietary, and we can't do a thing about it, that doesn't make common sense. Mr. Chairman, this bill fixes that. I encourage the House to pass it and support commonsense legislation.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. I thank the gentleman from South Carolina, and the invitation still stands. Come to Oklahoma. We have been fracking since 1948, and I would encourage folks to come drink our water, see the beautiful land, breathe our beautiful air, and understand that you can do this. Oklahoma is one of the places where we do all-of-the-above energy. We have solar. We have wind. We have coal. We have oil and gas. We understand all-of-the-above energy, and we understand all that can work together. For viewers that are on C-SPAN and the lights in this room, we understand that energy drives our economy. We don't interact with anything in our economy, whether it is food, whether it is transportation, whether it is home heating, whatever it may be and however we operate, it operates because of energy. If at some point this administration's policies are fully implemented, we will watch the price of energy, the price of food, the price of everything we do in America go up, simply because of preferences, not because of reality. We can do this in an environmentally friendly way and also build a strong economy. If you want to come to Oklahoma, unemployment right now in Oklahoma is 4.5 percent. We are one of the top energy producers in the country. If you want to go to North Dakota, the unemployment rate is 2.7 percent. In fact, technically, they have a negative unemployment rate. They actually have more job listings than they have unemployment there. Why? Because they are finding a way to be able to tap American energy to produce an American economy that can grow and thrive, and in those places where energy is thriving, the economy is also thriving. Just look at one simple statistic here: from 2007 to 2012, private sector employment increased by 1 percent or about 1 million jobs. In oil and gas, however, they added 162,000 of those jobs and had an increase of 40 percent in employment. Just in that one sector, there was a 40 percent increase in employment. What affect does that have on us? Obviously, that is Americans that have jobs, those are families that are taken care of, but it is also our trade deficit. From 2012 to 2013, just in Saudi Arabia, our trade deficit declined 13 percent. That is oil and gas produced here in the United States, offsetting what we are purchasing from the Middle East. The positive effects of that are overwhelming, and we understand it full well. We understand that, in the 1990s, our economy had a huge boom from the Web. The Internet and the expansion of the Internet created incredible entrepreneurial opportunities and an incredible expansion of our economy. That boom in the economy right now is solely around energy, and the energy development that is happening and the revolution that is happening and the opportunity for people to be able to get good-paying jobs is happening strongly in one sector in our economy, energy. Let's not blow it. Let's expand it. In the days ahead, we should be able to export oil and gas. That should be a prime something that we do. You can send grain all around the world, just like you can send flour, but right now, you can't send oil all around the world. You can only send gasoline or diesel. You have to literally refine the oil before you can send it out. Well, let's fix that. If you send grain, you should be able to send flour as well. If you can send timber, you should be able to also send lumber. It makes basic sense that you can send oil as well as you can send gasoline out. This would help our economy. It would also reduce the price of oil globally. That price would drop because of the competition in the United States, estimated to be about 8 cents per gallon for a gallon of gas, if we get on the world market and start pushing back to bring the price down. The same thing happens in liquefied natural gas, in natural gas. We are talking about the production, just to allow the enhanced production and export of oil and natural gas, around 1 million additional jobs in our economy. Now, in a Nation that is looking for jobs, we literally have the jobs under our feet, and it is time we stand up and provide the opportunity to be able to explore for additional oil and gas, continue to expand our use of coal, to be able to export that worldwide and allow the United States to be the economic leader and the energy leader that she should be.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, I would just close by saying the 2008 financial meltdown was not caused because middle-income Americans didn't have access to retirement funds. This is a way to be able to protect middle-income Americans, protect their retirement, and to encourage them to save in the future, not decreasing the number of options they have out there. I would like to have lots of folks out there encouraging lots of Americans to be able to save in not just the largest investment dealers in the country, trying to go after the largest, highest-income Americans. So this is something that we should support to maintain the regulations that are already in place and not decrease the options for Americans. I yield back the balance my time.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, last year, the FCC published a notice that stated they had greatly reduced their backlog of complaints on indecent and obscene language and images on TV and sought comments on whether they should change their policy on enforcement moving forward. However, they reduced their backlog by 70 percent by closing out roughly 1 million cases that seemed too old to pursue or, as they believed, not within their justification to enforce. The end result was that the FCC unilaterally decided to leave complaints of incidents where TV content was offensive or inappropriate to be aired at times children are likely to be in the audience to be uninvestigated and unenforced. Moving forward, they asked the public if the FCC should make it the official policy of the Commission that they should only investigate the most serious violations of indecency on television. For instance, they wanted to know if a complaint against repeated expletives in a program warrants enforcement, while maybe an incident of one or two expletives does not. To many parents, this is an unreasonable distinction to make. As Chief Justice Roberts has mentioned in some of his opinions on this, this is not an incidence of only having a brief instance of nudity, that that shouldn't be warranted, when extensive nudity is not. While the FCC has not acted to formally finalize this regulation, it is in the public's best interest that they not continue down this road. If they do institute it, it will give the FCC the ability to decide, on behalf of the viewing public, what is indecent and what is not based on the rules that they have now. This is a significant shift away from the standards that have been set, and the American public wants to be able write in and complain about what their children have access to. Many of us as Americans have real concerns about what is happening in television and the enforcement now of existing law. Quite frankly, Mr. Chairman, it is difficult to even allow your children to watch commercials nowadays, much less the television during the children's viewing hour. This is simply a statement to say to the FCC that they should retain and continue the current enforcement they already have. I understand that there are some issues with this amendment. I understand full well there are some issues we need to deal with in the FCC in days ahead. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, this is a study in unintended consequences. This body determined that they wanted to have more oversight over people that are called broker-dealers of investment funds. They would be handled the exact same way as investment advisers that handle high- end, large investments from wealthy individuals across the country. So the two are trying to be merged together. The Department of Labor and SEC are both trying to come up with their own version of a set of rules. Here is the unintended consequence that is coming at America: those folks on the lower end and the middle end of America are about to lose a lot of people that helped them with investment advisers. Here is how it works: Say you have a newlywed couple, just out of school, just getting started, making $26,000 a year combined, as a couple, and determine they are going to do the responsible thing. They are also going to open up a retirement account and get started thinking about decades from now. We encourage that couple to start thinking about their retirement. Would that couple making $26,000 a year, with what they are going to put into retirement--$15 a month, maybe--are they going to be attractive to an investment dealer? No, they are not going to be attracted to them. It is a very small amount; $15, $20. But one of these broker-dealers, that is what they love to do. They sign up couples just like that. The rules coming down from Dodd-Frank will put a new set of standards on those individuals that are providing retirement investment opportunities for people at the very beginning of their investment time. This hits exactly the wrong people, and the benevolent thoughts at the beginning are now coming down to unintended consequences across our country that there will actually be a disincentive to provide retirement vehicles for those with lower and middle income. The middle-income Americans should have every incentive and every opportunity to save. This simply says to the SEC they cannot promulgate that rule. They need to set it aside and keep the same standards that are already in place. This is not an unregulated industry. They are a heavily regulated industry already. Keep the same standards in place, and do not discourage investments for retirement from going into lower- and middle-income Americans. With that, Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Crenshaw).

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, in 2010, the administration put together a working group to monetize the cost per ton of carbon emissions for use in cost-benefit analyses for rulemaking undertaken by all agencies in the Federal Government, and then reconvened this group again in 2013 to further increase what they called the ``social cost of carbon.'' They increased that amount by 50 percent in just 3 years. The process was done behind closed doors and without any public input. The administration refuses to release how much of their deliberations were done in public, how much were done in private, or any of the details of their deliberations. They refuse to release the way they used the scientific modeling or even who actually did the modeling for them, or even something as basic as the list of participants at the meeting--even when it was discussed. Months after releasing the report--and only after sustained pressure--the administration relented, put the document and the numbers up for public comment, a procedure that is routine for the rulemaking process. But the administration has continued to use the calculations that they said they set aside. They use those calculations for the recent EPA rules decreasing emissions by 30 percent for existing power plants by 2030. My amendment would prevent the Department of Energy from doing the same thing. This is a rule that has been set aside. It is a number that has not been agreed to and there was no public comment for. They cannot change a regulatory number without any notice and comment and without any public input. This would prevent them from doing that. The DOE rulemakings using the social cost of carbon have the potential to raise the cost for everyday activities and purchases for all Americans. I would ask that this group join me in supporting the amendment, which would prohibit the flawed and capricious social cost of carbon rule from being implemented by the Department of Energy. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, I would be glad for the Members of this body to enroll in a science class. I would also be glad for the Members of this body to enroll in a world history class and possibly look at the history of the Earth. Do you realize there were glaciers in Ohio centuries ago? If we are talking about weather today, we are talking about a different topic. We are talking about an administration not following the Administrative Procedure Act. If this is about an administration saying they can change rules as they choose to, I look forward to seeing that same standard being applied to Republican Presidents in the days ahead. But when an administration can change a rule without notice and comment and shift the social cost of carbon by 50 percent in a 3-year time period without following the rule, without following the law, so much so that when we addressed it in a hearing, they admitted it, set the rule aside, and then the EPA chose to use it anyway, we are not talking about weather anymore. We are suddenly talking about the rule of law. Now, this is not an area on which we had disagreement--Republicans and Democrats--in committee because it was clear that the administration did not follow the rule of law. This is a simple statement. It is not a statement about climate change. It is not a statement about a future ice age or of a future flood. It is a statement about: Do we choose to follow the law or not? If someone wants to argue that we shouldn't follow the Administrative Procedure Act, I look forward to the day when we just set the entire thing aside and let the administration do whatever it wants to at any point, but I hope that day does not occur and that we do follow the rule of law and require the administration to do the same. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LANKFORD. I can assure you I have great care, Mr. Chairman, for future generations, as I do for this generation and as I do for the United States Constitution. No administration can ignore the Administrative Procedure Act, change it capriciously by 50 percent and say, I have new science, and go into a room and literally not publish who was in the room, not take any public comment, not even disclose what the memos were or all of the models that were even used in the discussion, but just say, I am going to change this by 50 percent because there have been updates, and so everyone's costs just went up dramatically. That is not the way we work things in America. This is not about science. This is about law, though this is the first time I have ever heard anyone, Mr. Chairman, discuss the loss of piglets as being connected to weather, as has been discussed on the floor today. It was a virus that spread across the entire United States. This is not about piglets. This is not about weather. This is just law. With that, I would encourage the passage of this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, I am extremely pleased that the appropriators and this chairman have included a requirement that discretionary grants awarded by the Department of Energy must be disclosed to the House and the Senate in a timely manner, and they must include information about where these funds are going. This is a very positive step forward towards greater transparency and greater ability for this body to have oversight over agencies in the millions of dollars that are being spent on grants. Mr. Chairman, this amendment that I am offering perfects that information about those grants and their ability to be disclosed. In addition to the money, where it would go, and whom it would go towards, it is critical that we know how many entities actually competed for these awards and how the winner was actually selected, so that we know the full transparency of the process itself. Agencies have a tremendous amount of discretion, and they provide millions of dollars to grantees. It is incredibly important that Congress fulfills their responsibility of oversight. Shining a light on how these decisions will be made will allow for critical independent assessments of how the DOE spends its money. Mr. Chairman, these additions I suggest are relatively minor, but it will go a long way to giving Congress greater data on how the Department of Energy functions with their grant process. I applaud the committee for acknowledging how important disclosure is for this agency and for all accountability, and I hope that this is a positive sign of how we will handle oversight for all agencies and for all grants. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, I would say this is not about Alaska. Alaska is a tremendous State that I have personally visited. I have not had an opportunity to live there, as my colleague has, obviously. But this is not about Alaska; this is about duplication in government efficiency and how we actually deliver services to these agencies. In 2004, President Bush's Office of Management and Budget wrote that the Commission's activities were duplicative of other Federal programs that address the same needs and provide the same types of assistance. In 2009, President Obama's OMB referred to the Denali Commission as duplicative, redundant, unnecessary, and stated there was no evidence that the Denali Commission's job training programs improve employment outcomes for participants. The GAO found the Denali Commission's activities to be duplicative of other Federal programs. The Congressional Budget Office examined the Denali Commission and they said that they failed to find any evidence that they have achieved success in these areas in large part due to the overlap of the Commission's activities in other Federal programs. And in October of 2013, the Office of Inspector General said that the Denali Commission was a middleman, that it was an experiment that had run its course and argued that these funds could be appropriated and be put to better use. Put the funds towards Alaska. Put them actually in direct grants rather than a program that is a middleman around it. There are ways to be able to determine this, but we as a Nation have to find ways to be able to eliminate duplication, and this is one of those moments. Are we going to listen to the inspector general, the Congressional Budget Office, the GAO, two different Presidents' Offices of Management and Budget, or will we ignore all of those? With that, I encourage us to deal with a transition, continue to take care of the needs of rural Alaska but find a more efficient delivery system to do that.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chair, earlier this year, there was a bill that authorized the Corps' projects that was passed in the House and the Senate and signed into law. It also included into that a study that would allow the Corps of Engineers to be able to evaluate their projects. As simple as this may be, the Corps of Engineers has a tremendous number of things on their inventory that they are doing operation and maintenance for. The study required them to be able to go through all the different projects that they have nationwide and just do a simple evaluation of which projects met the simple focus of the Corps of Engineers and which projects might not meet the central focus. It allowed them to be able to make a simple determination of what, if you will excuse the pun, are the core projects of the Corps. There are projects that are all over the country. There may be boat ramps, picnic pavilions, or in Oklahoma we have a place called Lake Optima that was a lake built in the 1970s that has never had more than 5 percent water in it. It was a project that did not work effectively as it was originally planned but the Corps still has to maintain because it is on their inventory. This study would allow them to be able to look at all of their inventory and develop what is the core focus of that. This amendment just ensures that the Corps would have the money necessary to be able to fulfill that study. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. LANKFORD

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Speaker, today, I just want to come and reflect for just a moment on a lady that I met a few weeks ago on Loyalty Day. Many Americans don't know about Loyalty Day. It is still recognized by the VFW--still. It is a day of remembrance around May 1, a celebration time. It is a remembrance and a time to recognize the freedom that we have in America. This lady, Zona Cockrell of Shawnee, Oklahoma, stood and talked with me about not only Loyalty Day, but about her husband and about her husband's passion that people would not forget those that are missing in Korea still. You see, Zona Cockrell's husband, Charles Cockrell, served in the United States Marine Corps. He served in Korea from 1951-1953. He led a group of people; eight of them did not return. They were never found. They were considered missing in action. Many Americans still, today, do not realize that we have 7,883 people still officially listed as missing in action from the Korean war. His passion was that his buddies would never, ever be forgotten. Mr. Cockrell died 2 years ago, and he passed on that legacy to his wife and said: Don't let anyone forget my buddies that never came home from Korea and were never found. Last year, she had installed, at her own expense, a black granite bench in Shawnee, Oklahoma, at the Woodlands Veterans Park. She spent her own money--$2,500--to be able to put that granite bench there. That bench just reads, ``Let us not forget those left in Korea.'' Mrs. Cockrell is still carrying out her husband's wish. She is still challenging the Nation not to forget, and when I met her that day, that was her one emphasis: do not allow them to be forgotten. Officially, we still have missing there. They are missing, but not forgotten. When her husband grew sick and that legacy passed on to her, she turned to me and asked me to pass it on to the Nation, which I will fulfill today. Ladies and gentlemen, let me just remind us of a statement that she made. She said: They gave me my freedom. These people gave their heart, their soul, and their blood, so we could be free. Today, in Washington, D.C., not far from here, there is a man standing with a rifle in front of the Tomb of the Unknowns. He will pace back and forth in honor and in recognition of people who will not be forgotten. Memorial Day is not just a single day in America. Memorial Day is every day in America for those who choose not to forget. We do not. We are grateful, as a Nation, for their incredible sacrifice and our ability to live free here because they stood for us.