[rock music] Welcome to Oklahoma Memo. My name is Ryan Welton.
I am the founder and curator of your daily local news recap, Oklahoma Memo. And today, we are joined by Senator James Lankford from Washington, D.C. How are you doing, sir?
I'm actually doing well, regardless of where is, uh, right now is the country. I'm still doing well. Oklahoma senior senator, always good to talk to you.
I, I, I actually high-fived you once at the, uh, Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon. I was running the half marathon. You had your hand up. I high-fived. It was awesome. That's great.
So we are in day 23 of the federal government shutdown, and it doesn't look like any progress toward an end is being made. Is that the picture on The Hill also? Yeah, it is very frustrating right now. This is,
uh, uh, th- this is a moment that we're trying to figure out how you get out of this moment. Uh, there, there's an old painful joke about wars, that wars are easy to start and hard to stop. Shutdowns are the same way.
They're easy to start. They're hard to stop. Uh, and so we have these every few years, and I think it's because people forget what it was like last time, uh, when we stepped into it.
Uh, we had 13 times during the Biden administration that we had a moment like this that both sides agreed, "No, let's keep the government open while we negotiate.
We don't all agree on everything, but let's keep negotiating and not have a shutdown." This time's been different.
Uh, we had a continuing resolution on the table which was just clean, nonpartisan, let's just maintain status quo while we negotiate.
And my Democratic colleagues said, "No, we, we wanna talk a lot about healthcare and climate change and other issues, and we wanna talk about it right now."
Uh, but that's, once we tipped into it, now there's the debate of how do we get out, out of it? What is enough to be able to get out of it? What does that actually look like, and how long does that take?
Because as you know, healthcare issues especially are very complicated and very detailed, and once you get into that debate, it takes weeks to be able to get through it.
Uh, if we're gonna be in a shutdown the entire time we're having that debate, this is gonna last a very long time.
So it, it seems like you're just asking the Democrats to say, you know, "Hey, at least come to the table with the government open."
Um, w- how would y- you were in Congress in 2013 when the government was shut down for s- for 16 days. Yep. Um, is this any different? Uh, you want... It... What's funny is it's kind of the opposite of it.
In 2013, there was a government shutdown over the Affordable Care Act, over Obamacare, saying, "Hey, we wanna go back and re-litigate it and look at it again."
And, um, Democrats piled [chuckles] on us and said, "No, we're not gonna talk about healthcare while the government's closed down. We're not gonna do it."
Uh, literally there are quotes from my colleagues in 2013 that are Democratic colleagues saying, "We will never negotiate healthcare while the government is closed down." Now it's literally the opposite on that.
Uh, my Democratic colleagues w- uh, when Biden was president and Democrats had the House, the Senate, and the White House, they did what's called a reconciliation bill, which was, uh, fine for them to be able to do, uh, but they added additional funding to the Affordable Care Act, uh, and said, "Hey, this is COVID-era funding.
We're in COVID, so we need to plus up dramatically, uh, the subsidies for, uh, the Affordable Care Acts and all those recipients." They set an expiration date of this year. Now they're saying, "Okay, just kidding.
We wanna make that permanent." And so that's one of the big issues. So it's literally the opposite of 2013. Now Democrats are closing down the government and saying, "We wanna argue over healthcare spending."
Uh, and we're saying, "We're not gonna negotiate this while the government is closed." Uh, so the same thing happened in 2013. We voted to reopen the government, then we had the rest of our debate.
It's gonna happen the same way again. We've gotta reopen the government. It, 'cause it does take months to be able to negotiate this kind of stuff. You can't do it while federal workers are not being paid.
It's complicated. But let, let's say that Democrats do come back to the table. How do you feel about extending the subsidies?
And, and I'll refer to a, a KFF a- analysis that said essentially for folks who are in the marketplace, prices would double, and the fear is that they would drop out of the marketplace or drop out of healthcare altogether, which we all pay for.
Yeah, it, it's a very complicated issue. Let me kind of walk through a couple numbers. I know that's dangerous to do in a dialogue like this, to be able to talk out loud on numbers.
I've not been supportive of the additional subsidies, uh, but there are, there are several reasons why on that. If I look at just Oklahoma's numbers for the...
If I take a six-year snapshot, uh, of the healthcare spending in Oklahoma, those that are on, uh, the Affordable Care Act, those subsidy areas, their rates have gone up 200%.
Now, most of that's been covered by the taxpayer just adding in more and more with additional subsidies on it, but their rates have gone up 200%.
If I'd look at commercial insurance, it's, it's provided by employers in Oklahoma, those rates have gone up 29% in the same time period.
So we're literally talking 10 times higher for the Affordable Care Act than it is for those in commercial insurance.
The difference is taxpayers are subsidizing more and more every single year to be able to keep up with it. We've raised our hand, I'm one of them, and said, "Hold on. Why is commercial insurance going up 29%?
The Affordable Care Act is going up 200%. What is in that structure that is causing that kind of increase?" Now, it is true a lot of the folks that are on the plans don't know it, but the taxpayer does.
It's continuing to accelerate more, and more, and more on it. We gotta be able to figure out how to not have this kind of rate increase continue to accelerate because we have a $38 trillion debt right now.
We've gotta figure out what's the problem that's causing that. So the first big issue is it's a bigger issue. It's accelerating 10 times faster than commercial, uh, insurance is. We gotta figure out why on that.
Second thing on it-Uh, right now, uh, my Democrat colleagues will all admit as well, the way that their subsidies were structured, there's a tremendous amount of fraud.
Insurance companies were incentivized to add people in at zero premiums. There are millions of people that are- have coverage but don't even know they have coverage because they've been added.
Insurance companies are getting the money for it, but the person's never using their insurance, probably because they don't even know they have it. They were just signed up for it.
So there's a big problem where insurance companies are getting huge amounts of money, and the individual that, quote-unquote, "has coverage" is not using it 'cause they don't even know it.
The s- uh, the third problem on this is they did it uncapped. So someone who makes $250,000 a year is getting a subsidy in the Affordable Care Act. Uh, th- this additional subsidy they put in in 2021.
We're saying, "Time out. Do we really need to subsidize every single American in this, or are there some limits to when people should get subsidies?"
And the last thing, this is number four, last thing is the way the Democrats did their additional subsidies, they went around what's called the Hyde Amendment, created a special tax structure so that they could fund abortions that are elective abortions using federal taxpayer dollars.
We've said, "Hey, listen, I, I don't care what your opinion is about abortion. Most Americans do not want elective abortions paid for with their tax dollars. So we, we're, we're not going to allow that."
So that's when I say this is not something simple to be able to navigate and to say, "Just throw us more money," and to be able to do it. We said, "Time out.
There are several major issues of fraud, of sending money to people that make a quarter million dollars a year, of having abortion issues involved into it, and then also the 200% growth of the program." W- we're...
All those are reasonable questions to be able to have in a debate. Nuance and complication, imagine that. Uh, uh, what... I wanna shift to, uh, farmers and food. There was good news for farmers.
Farmers have been struggling. There were a couple of, uh, p- program payments that they were supposed to get in October, but they weren't able to get because of the shutdown. President Trump said, "You know what?
We're gonna reopen the USDA, get them $3 billion in aid." That's great for the food producers. They've been struggling.
But there are 687,000 Oklahomans getting SNAP benefits, and if the government is shut down November 1st, their SNAP benefits may stop. Do Republicans have a plan to help those folks out at the start of the month?
Yeah, we're talking to the White House about it. The numbers get big. So for instance, two weeks ago, what's called WIC, uh, if you're familiar with that program, it's Women, Infants, Children.
It's a program that's special set aside for just, uh, new moms with small infants. There's special payments that go out on that. That program actually ran out two weeks ago.
Uh, the president actually moved tariff dollars, income coming in from tariffs, over into the WIC program to make sure that those Women, Infants, Children program and those that are recipients were still getting that assistance.
So we've already hit one of these bumps, and the T- Trump administration has tried to find supplemental dollars to make sure that those folks aren't exposed to it.
We're gonna hit a much, much bigger one with SNAP, uh, that comes up because that's nationwide, as you mentioned. That's over 600,000 just in Oklahoma that receive those benefits.
The president's already looking for dollars that he can shift over to be able to help on the SNAP side but may not have enough to be able to cover that without an additional amount being allocated by Congress.
Best thing that we can do is in the next week actually solve this government shutdown. In fact, the best thing we can do is not have shutdowns at all, uh, and so that we don't have this chaos out there.
But yeah, that's a very big issue that the Trump team and Republicans have already been working on, how do we find ways to be able to supplement, to be able to help those folks. That is...
It is not their fault that the shutdown is happening, but they are facing the consequences.
To that end, you have proposed, uh, an act that would, uh, prevent shutdowns in the future, and, and, and, and, uh, if, if you would just tell us a little bit about that, and do you fear that, let's say the midterms don't go Republicans' way, could this act be used against you later?
No, I... The, the act is the act.
It's just basically saying at any point, if we reach a moment like this, and we will again someday, where we don't have agreement, the best thing that could happen is keep the government open but continue to be able to debate.
I don't care if it's the Republicans in the majority or Democrats in the majority. We shouldn't have government shutdowns on it. We need to have big budget fights. As I mentioned before, we have $38 trillion in debt.
We need to have a big public fight about debt and deficits, but we don't need to be able to have the American people and federal workers and all their families go into chaos while we're having a fight about all this.
Uh, it's no grand shock Republicans and Democrats don't agree on things. What is different about this is there's not enough dialogue to try to finish the negotiation.
So the bill that I have, we actually brought up in the last session, I've actually brought up in the last two sessions. Last session, we got 57 votes for it.
We gotta have 60 to be able to move anything in the Senate, so we were three votes short of actually not having this government shut down ever again. So I continue to be able to work this.
Met with some folks yesterday all over again to say, "How can we actually move this to actually pass it so this is the last shutdown that we ever have?" The bill's pretty simple.
If we get to a moment like this, automatically the government is funded at current year levels, and it just stays funded at status quo, but members of Congress and our staff can't travel.
We're in session seven days a week, and you can only do appropriation bills. So it kind of locks us into a box and says, "Okay, the government isn't shut down, but you as Congress are shut down.
All you can do is meet every single day and work on appropriations. By law, you can't go outside of thatThat, that to me is the equivalent of when you don't finish your classwork, you gotta stay after school.
I mean, it's just that simple to say, "You didn't finish all your stuff on time, you gotta stay until it's actually done." Not the only act that's, uh, out there.
There is a Shutdown Fairness Act that I believe that you'll be voting on at 12:15 today, that would pay federal workers who are, are facing the possibility of not getting, uh, their check on Friday.
Would that cover the 42,000 federal workers in Oklahoma? It would actually. So th- this is a bill that actually has been created just on the spot to say at least we should pay the people that are still working.
Can we at least agree that if you're showing up, if you're federal law enforcement, if you're members of air traffic control, if you're, uh, US Marshals, I mean, there's so many different folks that are showing up to work every single day still.
We need to make sure those folks are getting paid. It doesn't pay the fa- uh, the, uh, furloughed workers. It doesn't open up things like SNAP.
There's lots of problems with it, but it does at least the first minimum amount.
And what we're saying to our Democratic colleagues is, "Hey, I know you don't wanna reopen the government, but can we at least pay the people that are working every single day and get them their checks, and then while we continue to be able to work on the next thing?"
So we're trying to take some baby steps to say, "Let, let's at least start doing the right thing for people." But we got a long way to go, because as you mentioned, the SNAP issue is a week away.
We've gotta be able to resolve that in time. Those folks should not face the consequences of our fight. Right. Um, so one more question. I know we've g- we've only got 15 minutes here.
I wanted to ask you about, uh, uh, polarization in politics. We look to our leaders for, for examples, and I remember I grew up with Reagan and Tip O'Neill.
Uh, and of course, I was aware of the deep friendship that Barack Obama and Dr. Tom Coburn had.
Uh, so in, in situations like this, do you have some go-to Democrat friends that you, you hang out with, have dinner with, you bounce ideas, what if we did this?
Are those relationships, do they still exist in Washington, and if so, with whom? They still do exist. Actually, I've been pretty outspoken, because he's been expo- outspoken on it as well, is Chris Coons from Delaware.
He and I are actual legitimate friends. We keep up, our spouses talk to each other. Uh, we track each other's kids and what's going on, and we spend time praying together.
Uh, so Chris Coons from Delaware, I joke with him, he votes wrong all the time, uh, but he's actually a legitimate friend that we can actually talk about hard things and try to be able to figure out how we're gonna try to get things resolved.
I got several others, Angus King from Maine and, uh, Cory Booker from New Jersey, and there's multiple folks that I have that I, I can freely talk with and have frank conversations with.
Though we disagree politically on things and we vote very, very differently, we still have to have enough of a relationship to be able to talk about hard things. That's what grown-ups do.
Grown-ups actually have grown-up conversations to be able to talk to people that you disagree with. You don't just say, "Those are those people, and I never talk to them."
That is an American that we're talking about, and my fellow American that I disagree with, I still should be able to have a dialogue with.
Senator James Lankford, the senior senator from the state of Oklahoma, thank you so much for your time. You bet. Glad to be able to do it. Keep praying for the nation. We got a lot of work to do. Thank you.
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