Cloture Motion

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, for over a year, I have worked to get rid of a rule that is driving every one of my small businesses in Oklahoma absolutely crazy. A lot of Americans have no idea what the beneficial ownership rule is, but if you own a small business in America, you definitely know.

To set the context for this, next week, we are supposed to take up the national defense authorization. In 2021, a small, little section was stuck in at the end in the large national defense authorization that was called the corporate transparency beneficial ownership act. That little bill was supposed to root out money laundering and fraud. What it has become has been a nightmare for every business owner in my State.

If you are a business owner that has a business that is a small business--let's say less than 20 employees, less than $5 million in total revenue in a year--you now have to fill out this enormous set of forms and turn them in to the Federal Government to show your ownership structure to the Federal Government so they can track it.

I will tell you, there are quite a few business owners that don't own one business; they may own two or three businesses or they may own several LLCs if they are a builder or they are a property developer, if they do all kinds of property construction for small businesses and building for others. They will own several LLCs, and now they have a stack of forms they have to fill out. They have to fill out forms now that talk about their name, their birth date, their address, an ID number, and all of it. They want to know all the reporting for their legal address, their address, the jurisdiction of their information. They want to know all the senior officers of the reporting company. They want to know someone who has the authority over the appointment or the removal of those senior officers. This is my favorite: They want to know substantial influencers over the decisions in the company. No one even knows what that means. Who is your substantial influence in your small business?

All those things all have to be compiled by business owners that literally do their own books, that do their own purchasing, that do their own payroll. They have plenty of other things to do other than the requirement to fill out forms.

Now, it wouldn't be such a big deal if it was just a form that dropped into their box, but it is a form dropped into their box, and it had this little note attached to it: If you don't fill this out or you fill it out wrong, it is a $10,000 fine and up to 2 years in prison for not filling this form out--2 years in prison for not filling out this form outlining who influences you in your decisions in your small business.

When this was stuck into the national defense authorization in 2021, it was supposed to root out fraud and waste, but it has grown through regulations and is now poured out with a deadline that is literally a couple of weeks away.

I have fought for a year. Senator Tuberville has a bill to be able to end this entirely. We got no traction on that. We couldn't even get a vote in this Senate to be able to stop this nightmare. So I brought a second bill to say let's just delay it so it is not happening this year, and we have worked for months to be able to get that delay in, and we have not been able to get a vote on that in this Senate.

While small businesses all over my State are furious about this, we have tried to just say: Somebody needs to show some common sense and to stop asking these questions. Thankfully, in the last 72 hours, a Federal judge has stepped in and has halted this nationwide, has prevented the Biden administration from actually implementing this rule that they created. In fact, this judge called this regulation quasi- Orwellian, also determined this--saying the ``government is unable to provide the court with any tenable theory that [this regulation] falls within Congress's power. [It] appears likely unconstitutional.'' I absolutely agree.

I am grateful this judge has stepped in to be able to stop its implementation, but I am going to still ask this Senate to do the same thing we have asked all year; that is, to stop it entirely.

We should not be asking these questions of every small business in America. That is not our job, to ask every small business owner in America: Turn in who are the influencers on your decisionmaking or we will put you in prison for 2 years.

What in the world?

So I am grateful for the stop, but we also will not stop until we actually pull this entire thing out and say this is not our job. We have plenty of things that are our job that we are not doing. For instance, next week--the national defense authorization, passed on a bipartisan basis through committee months ago, has yet to come to the Senate floor. It is time for it to be able to come, long past overdue. This sets our military strategy and what we are going to do for our vets and for the members of Active-Duty Reserves and National Guard. This should have been done a long time ago.

Those are the things we should already be doing. Going to business owners and telling them ``Tell us who your influencers are'' are things we should not be doing. Department of Government Efficiency

Mr. President, I left a meeting just now dealing with the newly named Department of Government Efficiency, where Members of the House and Senate gathered around Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswarmy and asked questions of each other: What can we do to make government more efficient?

This shouldn't be a partisan organization. In fact, there are Democrats that have joined us in this conversation. I find no one in my great State of Oklahoma who says: You know what I really want from my government? I want them to be inefficient. I want them to waste my money. I want my government to spend money on things that really don't matter for the country.

Every person that I meet in my State--Republican, Democrat, or Independent--all say the same thing: The government should do its job and not somebody else's job. When you spend my money, spend it wisely.

We all know we need roads. We all know we need national defense. We all know we need border security. There are key things we all need to do. But there are some things that continue to be able to pop up where money is being spent that there is great frustration in my State and a great number of people that say: Why are we spending money on that?

We spent money 2 years ago, as a Federal tax dollar, and the people in my State of Oklahoma had to spend their hard-earned tax money on paying for drag shows in Ecuador. We have money that was spent on writing the book about humans, chimpanzees, and climate change in Sierra Leone. We spent some of our hard-earned tax dollars on doing a study about seatbelts and helmet usage in Ghana.

The folks in Oklahoma asked a very simple question. We want the pot holes fixed. We want efficient government. We want education taken care of. We want good schools. Why are we spending our dollars--that are limited dollars--on doing a helmet study in Ghana? Why aren't we doing that in the United States? Why aren't we taking care of us?

It is not that we are selfish; it is just that we all know we are $36 trillion in debt. Every single year, I put out a book called ``Federal Fumbles.'' Every year, I bring it to this body. Every year, we talk about inefficiency and waste in government.

I am grateful that there is a bipartisan conversation finally started that is spreading among this body and the House body and now the new incoming executive branch saying: Let's find areas of efficiency where we can be better at this.

The basic goal is this: Let's have a prosperous Nation that actually has economic growth and an efficient government that matches the efficiency of you our Nation. That shouldn't be an irrational goal. That should be something we could all agree on. Quite frankly, it is just Oklahomans saying: Don't waste my money. Spend it in the way you are supposed to spend it, and let me keep the dollars that I have earned. And when my tax dollars go away, don't make me be embarrassed how they are used.

That shouldn't be irrational. I am going to continue to press on this.

Five years ago, we passed a bill called the Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act. I worked with the Biden administration for the last several years. It has created something called the Federal Program Inventory. As crazy as it sounds, for the first time ever, we are actually building a list of all the Federal programs we have in the Federal Government. Many people don't know that we literally have so many programs that we don't know how many programs we have in the Federal Government. Just try to do an internet search and ask a simple question of AI: How many programs do we have in the Federal Government? It will give you an estimate because there is no master list of all the programs in the Federal Government.

So I passed a law called the Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act requiring Agencies to do something crazy: Make a list of all the programs that you do. Where is our money being spent? And that list is in the process of being built right now that will give us the ability to see where we have duplication in government. It will give the ability from one Agency to look at another Agency and say: I didn't realize we did the same thing.

That is happening all over our government right now.

Again, that is straightforward. But it gives us an opportunity to say: Make a list, prioritize the list, and then draw a line and say these things are not our priorities; these things are. And when you are $36 trillion in debt, we should be talking about doing our priorities and not doing the things that are not a priority. This is what we should do in this body and to be able to have this kind of conversation.

So, for me, it is simple. Let's do the things that we should do. Let's don't do the things we shouldn't do because there are plenty of things that still need to get done.

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