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Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I don't even know how many times I have come to the floor of this Senate to be able to talk about government efficiency. It is not a shock for me to be able to come back here again today and to say: Let's talk about this. I don't know a single one of the great 4 million Oklahomans that if I went to their house today, knocked on their door, and said: Is the Federal Government the most efficient body in the country, that they would say yes.

This should not be a partisan issue that government should be more efficient. Every single dollar that is spent was taken from an American in tax dollars or was borrowed so that their children would have to pay for it. This should be a straightforward issue.

Every single year I put out a ``Federal Fumble Report,'' and I will put one out in a month or so. And when we release that report, everyone nods their heads and says: Yes, those are areas of inefficiency. And year after year, I highlight things like Federal tax dollars that were spent paying for a drag show in Ecuador.

If the nice folks in Ecuador want to have drag shows, why are my folks in Oklahoma being forced to pay for them?

I highlighted things like we did a research study in Ghana to be able to determine whether helmets made people on bikes in Ghana safer. By the way, I could go ahead and tell you that today without spending any Federal tax dollars. Yes, they will make it safer, but why were the folks in Oklahoma being forced pay for the study in Ghana to be able to study head injuries on folks on bikes and whether they should wear a helmet.

The folks in Oklahoma paid for a study that came out as a book that was analyzing humans and chimpanzees in Sierra Leone and the effects of climate change on them. Again, I am sure there are nice folks in Sierra Leone that are very interested in that. Why are my folks in Oklahoma being forced to pay for that?

I could go one after another after another on things that we have studied over the years, but let me tell you what happens. When we highlight these things and a little sunshine hits them, suddenly people start backing up, and Agencies stop funding some of these things that everyone nodded their head and said: Where did that crazy thing come from?

So because of the reports that we put out, we are not paying for helmet studies in Ghana anymore. We are not paying for drag shows in Ecuador anymore. We are no longer paying for the study on the Russian wine industry that Americans used to pay for. We are no longer funding the 3D puppets that we once paid for. We have been able to put sunshine on those things, and those things have stopped.

The challenge is, how do we actually set this into a process so that we are not having to play Whac-A-Mole all the time to be able to take down one after another after another.

The people of my State, they don't want to pay for those things. They want to pay for border security and they want to pay for good schools and they want to have good roads. They want to have lower gas prices. Those are the things that they want.

So how do we actually get to that? Well, I could outline right now $170 billion in wasteful spending in the Federal Government just today, simple things that most Americans would agree on. We spend $8 billion a year just for Federal buildings to lease them or to do maintenance for them--$8 billion a year. Currently, most of those buildings, because we have so many Federal employees that are teleworking, most of those buildings are 25 percent full. We are spending $8 billion a year on buildings that are mostly empty. Most businesses in America would say that is a waste of money. I am going to find a way to do that less, except the Federal Government doesn't do that. We just continue to be able to lease empty office space and maintain empty office space.

That should not be a partisan issue. That should be an issue everybody in this body looks at and says: There is something that we could do to be able to make this better. Let's be more efficient.

Starting with the new Trump administration, they have launched a new initiative that folks have made fun of, DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency. And I am fascinated by the number of people that step out and they make fun of this initiative, to say: This Department of Government Efficiency--and then I ask them the simple question: Do you know a way the government could be more efficient? And people will say: Well, yeah, should we do that? Yes is the answer.

So the very simple statement is: If we find duplication in government, why don't we highlight it and then eliminate it? If we find areas where there are tax regulations that actually don't make sense that actually slow the economy down rather than actually encourage economic development in the country, why don't we fix that? If we find areas of permitting, where permitting actually prevents government growth rather than accelerates the growth of our economy, why don't we go after that?

Where there is waste in Agencies, where there are empty Federal buildings, where there are Federal projects that really should be done by the State or local government, why don't we make those changes?

That is what this whole concept is about--the Department of Government Efficiency--is to actually create a mechanism to say: Let's stop talking about it and highlighting it a little bit at a time. Let's actually work to be able to make this better in the days ahead.

I am very pleased that a whole group of colleagues are passionate about this as well. They are coming to the floor today to be able to highlight some of these areas of inefficiency and to say: Yes, absolutely. I see it as well.

Because while I do ``Federal Fumbles'' every single year, I continue to also say to all of my colleagues: We should not be the only office doing this, and thankfully we are not. There are multiple offices that their staff are also looking for areas of government efficiency. And for the first time in a long time, we have built enough momentum to say: Let's get these done. Let's not just show them so we embarrass Agencies not to do it next year; let's actually set a process in place.

So today I have invited multiple colleagues, including my colleague sitting at the dais today, to be able to find a moment in their very busy schedules to be able to come and highlight areas where the government can be more efficient, where we can be more effective at protecting taxpayer dollars, and where we can stop throwing American's dollars out the door for things that everyone would recognize as wasteful.

When we have almost $2 trillion in debt, it is definitely the moment for us to say: Let's work on being even more efficient in the days ahead because we desperately need that.

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Mr. LANKFORD. I am especially grateful for all the work you have done.

Mr. President, I would like to introduce a fellow colleague, Senator Joni Ernst from Iowa. She is the founder of the DOGE Caucus and has been the one who has been very passionate about trying to find the waste in government. I ask that she be recognized to speak.

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, as this body knows well, for the past hour, we have had multiple colleagues who have come to this floor to be able to talk about how do we make the government more efficient. They have been talking about, out loud, what they are working in their offices on, what their staff are working on, and what we plan to be able to implement. This is a public conversation, but there is a lot of private, behind-the-scenes work because the focus is not just what we talk about. It is what we actually get done.

There are a lot of areas of government efficiency that need to get done. This is a target-rich environment. Literally, you can pull out of this building and look in any direction you want to any number of Agencies and get started there.

But the focus that we need to have as a body is not what we do to talk about government waste but what are we going to do to get it done.

We are looking forward to President Trump's inauguration in a week and a half. We are looking forward to beginning to implement both on the executive branch and through legislative action real changes that can actually get our government toward more efficiency.

Now, I have to warn everybody: It is going to take a while because there is a lot to get done. But the good news is, we are not just talking about it; we are actually going to get something started.

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