Lankford Hosts First Floor Event As Vice Chair, Calls Out Wasteful Government Spending

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Washington, DC - Senator James Lankford (R-OK), Republican Conference Vice Chair and founding member of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Caucus, today hosted his first floor event as Vice Chair and delivered remarks calling out wasteful government spending.

Excerpts

"Mr. President, I don't even know how many times I've come to this floor of this Senate to be able to talk about government efficiency. It's not a shock 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 four million Oklahomans, that if I went to their house and 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 their children would have to pay for it.

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"Every single year I put out a Federal Fumbles report. And I'll put one out in a month or so. And when we release that report everyone nods their head and says, 'Yes, that's an area 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…Why are they being forced to pay for that? I highlighted things like we did a research study in Ghana to be able to determine whether helmets make 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'll make it safer. But why were the folks in Oklahoma being forced to pay for the study in Ghana to be able to study head injuries on folks with 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'm sure there's nice folks in Sierra Leone that are very interested in that. Why are my folks in Oklahoma, why are they 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 nods their head and says, 'Where did that crazy thing come from?' So because of the reports we put out, we're not paying anymore for helmet studies in Ghana, we're not paying for drag shows in Ecuador anymore, we're no longer paying for the study on the Russian wine industry that Americans used to pay for, we're no longer funding the 3-D puppets we once paid for. We've been able to put sunshine on those things, and those things have stopped.

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"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's 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's waste in agencies, where there's empty federal buildings, where there's federal projects that really should be done by the state or local government, why don't we make those changes? That's what this whole concept is about-the Department of Government Efficiency [will] 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'm very pleased that a whole group of colleagues are passionate about this as well."

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