Lankford Calls Out Re-Write of History of Border Negotiations

Lankford

RELEASED: September 13, 2024

James Paul Lankford is an American politician currently serving as the senior United States Senator from Oklahoma. A member of the Republican Party, Lankford has held this position since 2015. Prior to his Senate role, he represented Oklahoma’s 5th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011 to 2015.

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) today joined Fox News’ Fox & Friends to announce two new bills to cut wasteful spending on fraudulent Unemployment Insurance claims and pandemic-era funding. Lankford is a founding member of the Senate Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Caucus with Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA).

Last year, Lankford released the latest edition of his government waste book: Federal Fumbles: Ways the Federal Government Dropped the Ball, which highlights almost half-a-trillion dollars in government waste. Lankford also championed the Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act which resulted in the launch of the Federal Program Inventory (FPI) earlier this year so the American people can see how their tax dollars are being spent.

Excerpts:

Steve Doocy: The Department of Government Efficiency is holding its first meeting about its plans to cut government waste. And our next guest, a founding member of the caucus, wasting no time getting to work with two new bills aimed at slashing fraud, costing billions to you and me, the taxpayers. Senator James Lankford is a founding member of the Congressional DOGE Caucus … You’re the perfect guy to be on this because for years you’ve had the Federal Fumbles books where you’ve detailed all the government waste. So today, are all the House Members and Senators going to say, okay, Elon and Vivek, here’s a list of stuff to start cutting? 

Lankford… This is something I’ve literally worked on for ten years, and it’s good to be able to get the initiative going right now, to be able to say, ‘Let’s work on this.’ Honestly, this shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Everybody should work on government waste.

Steve Doocy: … And so that’s why you’re introducing two anti-fraud bills. One extends the statute of limitations for all pandemic-era programs, covers unemployment insurance fraud and allows states to withhold payment from fraudulent claims. And let’s put up some of the Federal Fumbles details where you said the federal government spent $79,000 on a climate change study on road safety in Ghana, $1 million on dance equity organization in DC, the list goes on and on. These guys are going to have such a gigantic list. It’s going to be a shopping list. Actually, it’s not a shopping list. It’s almost a chopping list, isn’t it?

Lankford: … That’s exactly correct. So what we’re trying to do is break this into big categories. So you look at like, drag shows in Ecuador that the State Department paid for—that grant to be able to do that. If Ecuador wants to do drag shows, that’s up to them. But the American taxpayers shouldn’t pay for that. That’s a slice of it. So it’s not just going after that grant. It’s trying to determine how did that happen? How do we stop that from happening? It’s like government waste and spending. It’s not just that it happened. How did that happen? And how do we make that stop? And the two that I put out there deal with Unemployment Insurance. Right now, there’s a rule in place that you’ve got to go after fraud within 14 days. If you don’t get after it within 14 days, you literally have to give someone who you know is committing fraud extra benefits on unemployment. That’s dumb. So let’s fix that.

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