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Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, in Oklahoma, if you were to go to any house anywhere in the State right now and ask them how their money should be spent, they would probably smile at you and say: I would like to decide that, not somebody else.

That would be a pretty common conversation, I would bet, in most every State.

For a lot of folks in my State that make $55,000, $60,000--make enough to be able to get by, work hard, take care of their kids and their family--it is a challenge for them from day to day, so every single dollar counts to them. They think about how every single dollar is spent or saved.

That is why it is surprising, in all the dialogue right now about government waste--there is a big dialogue about how do we handle waste and how do we cut back and how fast should we cut back and what should that look like.

But Oklahomans that I talk to are not offended that we are actually cutting back on waste. Now, they may have questions about how it is done and the speed and where it comes out. Those are all reasonable questions we should have a national dialogue on. But when Oklahomans hear that USAID last year did a grant of $32,000 to create a comic book about transgenders in Peru, they would say to me: Hey, I would like to be able to spend that $32,000 myself rather than the transgender comic book in Peru. If the folks in Peru want that comic book, maybe they should pay for it, not American taxpayers.

The folks in Oklahoma, if I were able to talk to them about the same issue, would ask me questions about the $2.5 million grant that was given to Vietnam to be able to fund the construction of electric vehicle battery recharging stations--which, by the way, $2.5 million that was given by USAID to Vietnam to do that created one charging station which so far has saved a total of 260 gallons of gas equivalent--$2.5 million. It might have been cheaper just to send them 250 gallons of gas than it is to send them $2.5 million to be able to do that.

Now, if I were to talk to Oklahomans, they would tell me they want to be able to be more in charge of that money, not sending it to do that.

They would do the same thing when they find out that $10 million in food aid that was supposed to be going to Syrian refugees was actually diverted to a terrorist group linked with al-Qaida, and they would want to ask USAID why that was done.

They would ask some basic questions: why almost $1 million was sent to a group linked to Hamas just the week before the October 7 attack was actually done.

All those things are reasonable conversations to have that are really, honestly, not partisan conversations in this room. I don't find anyone that thinks that is a partisan issue. Everybody just says: How do we go after that waste, and what do we do to be able to stop it?

For the last 10 years, I have stood in this room and I have talked about my ``Federal Fumbles'' book. We just released the latest version of my ``Federal Fumbles'' book today. The ``Federal Fumbles'' book that we put out each year is not trying to be overly critical of government. We have released it under Republican and Democrat Presidencies and Congresses. We have said: Why don't we spend time--quite frankly, as I ask every year--why doesn't every single Member of this body assign their staff to go look for areas of waste and regulatory inefficiency and just ask some very basic questions: How could we do this better?

Every business asks that question all the time. They ask the question: How can we be more efficient? How can we do things better?

But we in government ask more ``What can we do next?'' and very seldom stop to evaluate what has already been done. That is all ``Federal Fumbles'' is saying: This is the money that was allocated. How was it actually spent?

Over the years, we have engaged in things to be able to identify some areas of waste and to be able to put a stop to them. We stopped the funding that was going toward drag shows in Ecuador that we used to fund in American tax dollars. That is not happening anymore. We stopped the funding that was being sent to France to help preserve the secret language of French Parisian butchers. We used to fund that. We don't anymore. We stopped the funding that was going to research the Russian wine industry after we exposed that. We even stopped the funding that was going to the border to be able to fund Shakespeare all along our border. There might be other ways to be able to spend our money better at the border other than doing performances of Shakespeare with Federal tax dollars.

This year, we are spending some time actually focusing in on what can we do better; what has already been done that the money has gone out the door or how can we do things better. One of them, interestingly enough, has been one of the areas that are being talked a lot about more that we have already focused on, and that is FEMA and disaster relief. Now it has suddenly become a big topic of conversation over the last couple weeks. But we ask a very simple question: When a community experiences a hurricane, a tornado, a flood, and they want to engage with the Federal Government for disaster relief, this is what they confront: 30 different Agencies, 30 different processes for aid coming to their community, most of them having a different way to actually sign up for them, different deadlines, different information that is needed, and also different percentages. Some of them pay 90-10. Some of them pay 85-15. Some of them pay 50-50. They have to know this intricate set of rules in the middle of cleaning up from their disaster to be able to get relief.

This is a disaster, and it shouldn't be a partisan issue for us to be able to look at it and to say: We can do better. When a small, rural community faces a devastating flood, why are we asking the mayor of that community to figure this out to be able to get aid? They won't be able to. They are trying to help their neighbors dig out. We can do better on this.

So we exposed the 30 different Agencies and the spaghetti map of how to be able to get aid and to say: Let's work on this. We exposed some of the inefficiencies that are out in our Federal Government right now, even for things like permitting.

We all talk about energy production, and I know we have differences of opinion on where that energy should come from, but when we start talking about the permitting to go get energy--whether that is lithium or whether that is natural gas--we get into a conversation about how do you permit to actually go get that resource.

Well, right now in the United States of America, it is taking 29 years to go from the beginning process where a critical mineral is mined to actual production. We are on the same international ranking for efficiency of regulations on mining as Zambia.

If we go into our northern border, to Canada--now currently, apparently, referred to as the 51st State--if you go into Canada, it takes 3 years for them to be able to permit a mine. And they go through all their environmental reviews. They go through their legal challenges. They do all those things in 3 years, what is taking us 29 in current structure, if it ever gets done at all. We can do better on that.

If we want to increase our use of American-made minerals and our American-made production on that, we as the Federal Government, we as the U.S. Senate, have to be able to reform the way we are doing our permitting processes so that we can produce that American energy.

If we have some belief that China or Central Africa or the Middle East is producing energy cleaner than we are, we are kidding ourselves. We will produce it cleaner if we can get to it at all.

In this ``Federal Fumbles'' book, we walk through a lot of areas of waste we have identified and said: Hey, let's find some common areas of agreement that we should all be able to look at.

Let me raise one that is controversial: the SNAP program. I don't know a person in this room that would say they want to end the SNAP program. That is food stamps, for some people that still use the old term. But over $10 billion was actually allocated in the SNAP program last year of what they called improper payments; that is, we don't know if they qualified or not for the program.

Now, a lot of folks in Oklahoma would say: I don't mind people getting some help when they need it, but for folks that don't qualify, why are they actually getting access to that?

We have the same issue in the Medicare and Medicaid Program. We don't want to do anything to be able to hurt that program. We have a lot of things we need to do better in that program to deliver. But over $100 billion in Medicare and Medicaid last year was designated as improper payments; that is, we don't know if it is an appropriate payment that was done or not.

That is something we should spend some time investigating. Mr. President, $100 billion seems like real money to me.

Last year, there was a billion dollars that was allocated in subsidies to a Chinese solar manufacturing facility--a billion in American taxpayer subsidies.

If I went to the folks in Oklahoma and said, ``Where should we get solar power?'' Not a one of them would say China. And if they did, they certainly wouldn't say: We should give a billion dollars to a Chinese company to be able to subsidize them to be able to send solar panels to us.

If I were to walk around Washington, DC, right now, current stats are there are 17 Agencies in Washington, DC, that are using 25 percent or less of their real estate. Seventeen of our Agencies are using 25 percent or less of their occupancy building space. That is billions of dollars in costs in electricity; that is billions of dollars in costs in furniture--for a simple question, because it is not a business. They are not having to pursue efficiency. We have 75 percent of the building unused. That is an area that we should actually ask some very simple questions about and just say: What can we actually do better on this?

Listen, these aren't partisan things. If I sat down with my Democratic colleagues, they would nod their head and say: Let's take a look at that. Let's figure it out. The most simple thing that we do every year when we bring out this ``Federal Fumbles'' book is say: Here are things we can talk about.

Now, I understand the DOGE conversation has become controversial with Elon Musk and some of the tactics and the speed that they are moving. I completely understand that and respect the conversations about that. But government inefficiency shouldn't be partisan. It shouldn't be controversial.

And for those that have joined all of us that have worked on this for years to expose waste in government, welcome to the club. We are glad to have folks engaging on this. I am not critical. I am excited that you are here because we need more help, because when the Federal Government fumbles taxpayer dollars, people in Oklahoma, in my State, lose their hard-earned tax money on things that aren't education, aren't roads, aren't national defense. They are waste, and that is what people want to see stopped.

So I not only encourage people to be able to just take a glance--it is easy reading, lots of pictures. I not only encourage people to take a glance at our ``Federal Fumbles'' book, now that it is released, but I encourage every Member of this body to assign their staff to go look for waste. And then let's sit down together and see if we can figure out how to make it stop. We should waste less and save more. It shouldn't be that hard.

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