Executive Calendar
Floor Speech
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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, typically, when we talk about Federal employees or a Federal Agency, the story starts something like this. There was a mixup in paperwork for our constituent who had Social Security Administration retirement benefits. She ended up not having Part B Medicare coverage until later, and there was a lapse in coverage.
Everyone gets frustrated over the mixup, the dropped paperwork, the problem, and they never hear the story of Amber Craft, who works in the Tulsa Social Security office. She chased the whole issue down. She did everything possible with the payment center to get inputs switched on the Medicare application and ended up getting the constituent's coverage to begin in the desired month to be able to get them taken care of. They were taken care of on their medical bills because a Federal employee saw the gap, ran to the need, and helped somebody in our State.
This is Public Service Recognition Week, and I want to take a little bit of time because in this body, as with many people in the Nation, we catch ourselves at times complaining more than we praise. There are a lot of people who are scattered around the Nation right now serving their neighbors as Federal employees. We have a lot of those in Oklahoma, and there are some pretty remarkable folks who are my neighbors whom I get the opportunity to meet with.
There are over 93,000 Federal employees, both active and retired, both Federal and on the Postal Service side--93,000 just in my State in Oklahoma--and that doesn't include the many teachers, firefighters, first responders, and other folks who work with public agencies on the city, State, and county levels as well. We are grateful to those folks because they make an incredible difference.
There are folks like Martha Gibson, who works in the VA center in Muskogee. She works in the benefits office, taking care of trying to get benefits for our veterans when there are problems--and there have been problems at times. Martha works incredibly well with our team. As we get a call from a constituent and try to chase down the issue to be able to help figure out how we can resolve it, Martha is typically the one we call in the Muskogee office, and Martha, quite frankly, pretty often gets it solved--not just helping us but helping other Oklahomans.
Alexandria Hyatt is another good one to be able to talk about. She works in the Enterprise Services Center at the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center with the FAA in Oklahoma City. She is an exceptional example of a Federal employee who not only works incredibly hard--not just for the FAA but for other Agencies, as well, that the FAA serves through the Enterprise Services Center--but she is one of those folks who we are glad is our neighbor.
You see, she is a Federal employee, but she also, just last year, in 2018, gave 850 hours away of her volunteer time serving with welfare agencies, working on weekends, and using her own leave. She is a licensed journeyman for HVAC. So she finds places where she can use that skill to serve other people, including putting in duct work and insulation, working on mold remediation, first aid, and teaching.
After Hurricane Katrina, she spent 3 weeks roofing and providing mold remediation in the Hurricane Katrina area. In 2015, she spent 6 weeks in New York City insulating and inspecting HVAC supply vents on residency floors. After Hurricane Irma, she spent 2 weeks repairing and installing roofs.
She is a Federal employee. She gives away her time, not just in her day job but in serving people on nights and weekends and taking her own vacation on this.
We have Donald O'Connor, who spent 50 years as a civil servant. He also served Active Duty in the Air Force and in the Air National Guard for 30 years. He is a pretty remarkable servant with a pretty long legacy.
Bryan Whittle is another FAA employee and an Oklahoma National Guardsman. He served very faithfully both for the Oklahoma National Guard and the FAA. It was last year when he walked into a restaurant in Oklahoma City and heard and saw a gunman who was opening fire in a restaurant. Bryan was one of them who actually ran toward the shots, and in a historic work and in a heroic act, he stopped a shooting at a restaurant in Oklahoma City, because this Federal employee and Guardsman actually engaged to be able to serve.
We have Lieutenant Wayland Cubit. He is from the Oklahoma City Police Department. He has a program that he actually works very actively in called the Family Awareness and Community Teamwork program, or FACT. He spends a lot of time working with students trying to help to engage people with police officers, because a lot of times kids grow up in neighborhoods and communities or maybe in families where they don't hear positive things about their police departments. So he is constantly reaching out to help people. He is active in mentoring programs.
This statement was written about him:
On any given week, Cubit and fellow officers will work with up to 100 children. Once a week they hold a character- building night in northeast Oklahoma City. Another night they host the same program in south Oklahoma City. First-time offenders come for a juvenile intervention program one night a week. FACT hosts a youth leadership academy once a month.
He is a police officer, but he is also a mentor and an activist to help the next generation of people.
We have folks like Casey Farrar. He is a lead engineer on the B-2. Now, we don't think about the B-2, other than we are very grateful that we have the B-2. But here is what is interesting. Mr. Farrar was directly responsible for saving the U.S. Air Force--therefore, the U.S. taxpayers--$63 million in 2018. His work on several projects, including replacement of electrical cables on the rotary launcher system, as well as upgrades to those rotary launchers, improves the B-2 capabilities way into the future and will make an incredible difference and save the taxpayers a lot of money. At times, we hear about things that actually waste dollars, and we lose track of folks like this, an engineer, who just saved the taxpayer $63 million.
Matt Lehenbauer works as an emergency management director for the city of Woodward and Woodward County. He has been very influential working through the fire seasons that we have had in northwest Oklahoma. He is one of those folks who is actually helping to protect his neighbors by working with emergency management.
He has folks working alongside of him who are traveling down the roads, like Trooper Austin Ellis in the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. He was on a routine patrol but was shot last August--just another day for him. He was able to withstand the bullets and recover, despite a fractured rib. And, by the way--as he would want me to say to you--they got the guy.
Tommie Nicholas works for USCIS, or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. Ms. Nicholas reviews and makes case determinations, provides technical and administrative advice, and assigns work based on priorities. She has worked for USCIS for two decades and is one of those folks who is always ready to assist.
She has helped in situations where there is an individual with a pending immigration case who needs to travel to be with an ailing relative overseas or when someone who needs urgent proof of status to work for their family, and she is the one who steps up and goes above and beyond to help to take care of folks' immigration issues and needs.
You see, again, folks at times push back on people dealing with immigration issues, and they forget that there are great folks who are out there serving their neighbors all the time.
Jim Lyall began his tenure with the Community Service Council in 1980 as a help line program director and became associate director in 1991. He created Oklahoma's first 2-1-1 call center, which allowed Oklahoma to be the first to achieve national accreditation, and helping 2-1-1 to become a statewide service. At the Community Service Council, his leadership in the creation of Tulsa's Heat Emergency Action Plan and the Tulsa Weather Coalition air conditioner loan program has contributed significantly to the health and well-being of many Tulsans. He is another one of those folks serving every single day.
We can't forget our teachers, who are out there constantly helping the kids in the next generation. Ms. Annette Cain teaches second grade at Spring Creek Elementary. On the second day of school, this past school year, she saw one of her students struggling to read. She quickly connected with the reading specialist, the principal, and the parents to discuss how to help this new second grader. Her concern was that he might need to go back to first grade or that he might be behind in second grade and was just going to need some additional help in reading. That little second grader is now caught up and has now had the ``most improved reading'' award. That is good for him, but it is good for Annette Cain, who saw the problem and who responded to the needs of that child.
It reminds me of stories, day after day after day, of folks like that who are in Elgin, OK, like Don Myers, and all the crew that is there doing special education and so much work to be able to help kids with the greatest amount of need in Elgin; just like in other programs around the State, where those teachers work with the parents, work with other educators, and work with a child to help that child way behind get caught up or to help them in their own development.
I am grateful that this week we get to honor public service because there are millions of public servants doing amazing work to help their neighbors all around the country.
Of all States and of all places, I remind this body often that Oklahomans pause every April 19 and remember a domestic terrorist that parked a truck bomb next to the Federal building and killed 168 people out of his hatred for public servants in the Federal Government. We in Oklahoma remember that public servants get up and go to work every day to be able to serve their neighbors, and we, as individuals, still push back against those who just blindly hate government and blindly hate people who serve in government and serve each other.
We don't blindly hate. We deeply appreciate and are grateful for what they do. We as a State will never forget the 168 lives that were lost 24 years ago of public servants taking care of their neighbors. We are grateful.
If you are a public servant and you hear this, please accept my thank you. Well done. I am proud to be your neighbor. Ex-Im Bank
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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, we had three extremely well-qualified people come before this body this week who were nominated to the Board of the Ex-Im Bank, the Export-Import Bank. It is an entity that most individuals across the country don't even know about. They don't even know what the Ex-Im Bank does. But it gets caught up in a lot of politics here.
These extremely well-qualified people were confirmed, and they are now on their way to serve our Nation in that area. I had to vote against them, not because of who they are and their qualifications-- they are clearly qualified--but because of my own frustration that this body has not been willing to take on the most basic element of reform of the Ex-Im Bank.
The charter of the Ex-Im Bank requires the Bank ``to seek to reach international agreement to reduce government subsidized export financing.'' That is in their charter. The problem is, that is not being fulfilled. There has been a push for a while to try to reform the Ex-Im Bank. That push to reform it has failed so far.
My encouragement to the new quorum that is in the leadership role at the Ex-Im Bank is to push to fulfill their requirements to reduce government-subsidized export financing, not expand it, and to take the actions necessary to do that--not only with our Ex-Im structure but working with other countries to reduce theirs. The common phrase is ``We have an ex-im bank because other countries have an ex-im bank.'' Well, you know what, other countries have a Communist structure--like China. We are not trying to model that either. Should we take on every single subsidy other governments do? Let's try to find a way for them to fulfill their charter.
In the meantime, I have proposed a set of reforms that can be done to the Ex-Im Bank to make it better. Some are fairly obvious.
One of them is reducing taxpayer exposure by prohibiting the Bank from issuing direct loans.
I have also pushed very hard to have this basic statement: a sense of the Senate that the Bank is a lender of last resort, not the first place to go to. That, again, should be a no-brainer for them.
Here is the clearest and easiest reform. Ex-Im Bank brags about how many small businesses use the Ex-Im Bank services, but the next question is not asked. How does Ex-Im Bank define a small business? With chagrin, they will say that their definition of a small business is any business with 1,500 employees or fewer. That is not a small business. So 1,500 employees or fewer is a small business, according to Ex-Im Bank. There are very few companies in America with 1,500 employees.
The most basic thing we can do is have Ex-Im Bank use the same definition the Small Business Administration uses for what a small business is and then put the same requirement on Ex-Im to also use small businesses and engage with them.
We should also prohibit the Bank from providing financing services to foreign and state-owned entities. Why are we financing another government in what they are doing? Why are we actually providing competition for our own companies, as Ex-Im does? They give loans and subsidies to countries and companies that compete against American companies.
All of these ideas are basic reforms.
My push is not to abolish Ex-Im; it is for Ex-Im to fulfill its charter and to do its basic responsibility and to have the most simple reforms that I think are needed.
This is not just talk for us; we have this legislation. We have pushed for this before, and we will continue to push for basic reforms at Ex-Im in the days ahead.
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