During a Congressional Forum on Wednesday, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) discussed the need for Congress to balance the Federal budget and lower government spending.
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00:00It is really a pleasure to be able to be here and to be able to be in the conversation today.
00:04I've made this time as often as I possibly can.
00:07What's interesting to me is the number of places that we have been and the conversations that we've had.
00:13I have to say a memorable conversation from several years ago when we had a mid-sledged flight lunch.
00:19Some of you were there in the room, and this was not at this hotel, at a different place.
00:23And during the middle of my Q&A time, a water pipe broke and it started flooding the room.
00:30Do you remember that time?
00:31There's like a back corner in the room on it, and for those of you that hear, you're like, oh, yeah, I remember that one.
00:36And so it's always interesting to be able to be in the dialogue.
00:39We've set up a welcoming group for me outside this time, and I appreciate that I'll make this welcoming.
00:44That's economic development downtown.
00:46I propose to be able to come downtown and be able to be here.
00:49Let me say two quick comments on things, and then I want to get your questions as fast as I can.
00:55The things that I'm hearing the most as I'm traveling around the state right now is where are we heading economically, what's actually occurring, what's going on with the tariffs, what's going on with trade, what's going on with tax, what's going on with Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.
01:09I happen to serve on the Finance Committee in the Senate.
01:13The Finance Committee, let me just run through the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee in the Senate.
01:18It is tax, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and trade.
01:23It's a little bit in the news right now.
01:28We as Oklahoma are very proud to be able to be in the position that I'm in the Senate on the Finance Committee.
01:33Kevin Hearn is on the Ways and Means Committee in the House.
01:36There are very few states that have somebody that's on the tax-writing committee in both the House and the Senate.
01:42So that's a great benefit to us as we start talking about how we are going to shape the tax code in the direction that we're going to go in the days ahead.
01:49So let me just add a couple of context things to you.
01:51Let me begin with the most obvious of them.
01:54This year, the United States will overspend its budget by $2 trillion.
02:01That's not total budget.
02:04Overspend its budget by $2 trillion.
02:07What happens when the United States of America borrows $2 trillion by the way again?
02:15Well, here's what happens on that.
02:17We suck up all the money out of the market, and so it makes interest rates for home mortgages go up because there's more competition for those dollars.
02:27It makes it very difficult for third-world countries to get access to capital because the United States is borrowing so much money on the global market,
02:35and the United States has been the safe place to be able to actually buy our homes.
02:40And so it makes it harder for them.
02:42And it pushes countries to be able to go to places like China to be able to get access to capital because the Communist Chinese would be glad to be able to do that,
02:51but they've got a few strings attached in the process that comes to them when that happens.
02:56It's not just our economy.
02:58It's the global economy that is affected.
03:01And it's every single person in America and their borrowing capabilities affected when we as a nation overspend.
03:07I have brought this up year after year, and year after year, we as Oklahomans have said, yeah, we've got to do something about it.
03:18This is the year.
03:20We've got to do something about this.
03:21We have to find a way to be able to reduce spending.
03:24To tell you how far out of ours we really are right now,
03:27if we were spending the same amount that we did the year before COVID and had the revenue that we have now,
03:36to just take the revenue that we have now, all the tax income now,
03:39and the spending from the year before COVID, the United States would be in balance this year.
03:46It's not that long ago.
03:48But we're not.
03:51The spending went up during COVID, and it just stayed up.
03:54And it's been very hard to be able to turn that back.
03:58So we've got to be able to go back to individual programs and to say, well, what's required by law?
04:03If it's not required by law, we should turn that down.
04:06If it's something we've added on since COVID, we need to take a look at that
04:09and to be able to say, does that need to be turned back to a level that maybe it was before COVID?
04:15And we need to look at all of our programs and the way that we're actually doing spending.
04:18These are things that every family does, every business does on a regular basis.
04:22But the last time the federal government did a reinventing government was under the Clinton administration.
04:28Under President Clinton, the federal government reduced 400,000 federal jobs.
04:35We lose track of that.
04:37The reinventing government that President Clinton did was real.
04:41As they went through agency by agency and just asked the question,
04:44are there costs that we can actually remove or reduce?
04:47Now, granted, President Clinton did that in seven years.
04:52President Trump is trying to do it in seven weeks.
04:54I do understand that.
04:56There is a difference on it.
04:57But we are long overdue for a reevaluation.
05:01The last time we had a balanced budget where we were receiving the same amount that we were spending
05:07was under President Clinton.
05:10And there were hard decisions that were made during that time period, and they were made.
05:13And it started to bring us back to the balance.
05:15And I understand this is a partisan conversation at times to be able to talk about difficult things,
05:20but this is really a family conversation that we've got to have as a nation
05:23to try to figure out how do we do this.
05:27Because we have to do it all together.
05:30Now, I understand the President's leading and he's trying to do as many things as he can,
05:33but ultimately this is going to be Congress's responsibility.
05:36The courts are going to continue to be able to push back on the executive ranks
05:39to say that's a law that was passed by Congress, signed by a president,
05:43that's a program that's in place.
05:45So Congress has to come back and revisit this.
05:47So we'll have to be a bipartisan conversation ultimately to determine
05:51how do we actually slow down the rate of spending.
05:54We're not going to get back in balance in a year.
05:56To do that would be a catastrophic change in the federal,
05:59across the entire federal budget and across the country, and quite frankly, globally.
06:04It's still true that when the United States gets a cold, the rest of the world gets pneumonia.
06:09So we do have to be attentive on how we handle our economy.
06:14But we are going to have to take care of some things to be able to be engaged.