Sooner State News

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) on june 1 announced on the Senate floor that he would oppose the bill to raise the debt limit.

Throughout his time in the Senate and prior to that during his time in the House of Representatives, Lankford has been very vocal about the need to cut spending, spend within our means as a nation, and actually deal with our debt. Lankford has also consistently called out the broken budget and spending process in Congress and offered solutions to fix it, including his Prevent Government Shutdowns Act, which he has offered as an amendment to the debt limit bill. The bill would prevent a government shutdown and continue critical services and operations, while forcing Congress to stay in Washington, DC, until their work is done.

Lankford continues to offer his Federal Fumbles government waste book as specific examples of federal spending we can cut to help control deficit spending and address our national debt.

Excerpts

…This past weekend when I read through the 99 pages of the debt ceiling bill, I would read through a section of it and I would get to the end of that section and be surprised at the “except for” at the tail end of each section. It's not what I expected when I read through the document page after page…

….I get to the fine print and find out actually it increases spending 3.3 percent next year and the year after that it increases spending one percent again. It actually doesn't decrease spending at all. It increases spending, both this year and next year. But then it has the promise of the next eight years after that that it will only grow one percent a year after that every single year, except that's not an agreement this Congress can make. This Congress can only vote on things for this particular session of Congress. We can't commit the next congress to actions of this Congress…

…I have worked with Senator Hassan across the aisle to work on a way to end all shutdowns. The Senator who is the chair of appropriations on the floor right now, she and I have had this conversation. She's committed to doing all 12 appropriations bills. So am I. We need to bring regular order and actually go through the process...

…Quite frankly, as a Congress, I wish we could sit down across the aisle and have dialogue to say, ‘What is Congress' responsibility? What are the policies that are wise policies?’ And not hand authority to the White House, Republican or Democrat, and say, ‘Which is good policy that we need to put in place and do those things?’ We'll get back to that. on june 1 wasn't the day. That's frustrating for me. I'm going to oppose this bill on june 1. But I want us to be able to keep working because we've still got work to do…

Original source can be found here.