Biden Administration

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I want to be able to comment on my colleague, Senator Portman, and some of the comments he has made about unemployment.

My State is not one of those States yet that has made the decision to be able to end the additional unemployment benefits that are coming from the Federal Government, and it is harming workers and it is harming jobs and it is harming businesses in my State. And I hope in the days ahead, my State will be one of those States to be able to step up and will say--and I believe my Governor will--to be able to step up and say: Let's actually make sure we are benefiting families long-term.

There is a whole group of folks who believe that if you only give people enough money, that is going to help them rise out of poverty. People need a job. People need a purpose. People need a plan to be able to do that. Folks don't need long-term Government benefits to be able to help sustain that. They need a way to be able to help earn a living to be able to pass it on to their family to set a job record for them and to set a path for their kids and grandkids after them. That helps people rise--every study we have seen on how to help people rise out of poverty, graduate high school, wait till after marriage to have kids, and have a job of any type. Let's help people rise. Let's help people be employed and engaged. That is a helpful thing.

I think about some of the things that are happening even today. Secretary Mayorkas was in front of our committee today, and it was shocking to me to hear the Secretary of Homeland Security talk about how much more efficient they have become at processing people at the border and getting them into the country.

It used to be our evaluation for how we were managing Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection was how many people we were stopping at the border and returning to their home country. He, literally, over and over again, articulated how much faster they are now at processing people at the border and releasing them into the country. Even at one point when I challenged him and said: I understand people are being released into the country without even a notice to appear; that they are just being released into the country and told to go to a place somewhere in the country, self-report themselves to an ICE office and say: I would like to get a court order to be able to have a notice to appear.

At that point, I said: How many people have been treated that way?

He said: I am not sure.

Well, I have already looked up the record on it. It is 19,000 just in the past couple of months who have been brought across the border, released into the country, and told just self-report yourself to whatever ICE agent you see somewhere in the country.

I asked the simple question: How many people have already done that?

Not only could he not answer the number 19,000, which we have confirmed, but he didn't know how many people had actually turned themselves in and actually done it. But we continue to do this. It was all about speed of moving people who are crossing the border into the country rather than actually managing our border. And even something as simple as just the gaps in the fence, they are still, as he said to me, ``studying'' whether they are going to close the gaps in the fence.

We have a gas pipeline that has gone down due to a ransomware attack. It reminded me, again, of how important gas pipelines are all over our Nation, and it is interesting to me that on day one, one of the first things that President Biden did was he stepped in and ended the Keystone Pipeline moving through here and is now actively working to be able to shut down all pipeline construction around the country.

Can I remind Americans, especially Americans on the East Coast, what it means to lose a pipeline

When the President says we are not going to do more pipelines, that means we have no redundancy; that if a pipeline goes down, there is not an additional backup one in construction to be able to get there. It is better to have multiple pipelines in the area so that if one goes down, you still have other fuel supplies.

What if this pipeline had actually been a larger scale issue even than a ransomware attack, as bad as that is? This whole fight that we are having about pipelines suddenly makes sense to a whole lot of folks on the East Coast who can't get gasoline. Pipelines are not evil. Pipelines are moving energy across the country, and it is the least expensive, safest way to be able to move that energy across the country.

This week, of all weeks, has been interesting to have a dialogue about S. 1. It was a long markup in the Rules Committee to be able to talk about voting in America.

Now, I was at the White House several years ago when the FIRST STEP Act was signed. It was a remarkable bill dealing with criminal justice reform. As I was at the White House signing ceremony and the gathering of all these different folks that had been engaged, it was interesting to me to stand in that room with President Trump and to have folks from the Heritage Foundation and folks from the ACLU in the same room shaking hands and smiling and saying that this is a good piece of legislation. In fact, it is the only time that I can remember sitting at a signing ceremony watching people from two different perspectives saying they both support something so strongly. That was the FIRST STEP Act.

I have now seen my second time that that has occurred, when both the Heritage Foundation and the ACLU both oppose S. 1 and H.R. 1. They have both come out in opposition to it.

Well, that is an interesting gathering of folks to be able to gather together from both political extremes to be able to look at a piece of legislation--all 880 pages of it--and to say: That is a bad idea. Why would they say that?

Well, let me count the ways of why they would say that.

In my State in Oklahoma, we have great voting engagement. Good. We want to make it easy to vote. We want to make it hard to cheat. We want as many people as possible to be able to vote and as many people as possible to be able to engage in the process. It is the nature of a Republic like ours. You need people to be able to be engaged. But we also want to be able to follow up on that process as well, to be able to make sure that if somebody is actually breaking the rules on that, we follow up. And in our State, we do.

Recently, I followed up with our State leadership for voting to be able to find out what happened in our last election and what are we doing. We found 57 people as a State that voted twice in my State. All 57 of those names were turned over to local district attorneys, and they will start following up with those individuals because that is a violation of the law to be able to vote twice in our State. Fifty-seven names is not very many, but it is because we continue to enforce the law in our State to be able to make sure that we have as many people voting as possible but also accountability for people who want to be able to cheat in the system.

The interesting thing about S. 1 and H.R. 1 is that they make it much easier to cheat in the process. They set up a different system where you can actually have no voter ID. And it is not just no voter ID; it is no voter ID and same-day registration combined. So you can literally walk into a polling place that you are not registered for, not show an ID, and say ``I am not registered. I would like to vote'' and not show an ID and also vote that same day in that spot. There is no way to be able to verify, then, one way or the other if this person is voting twice because no one knows.

In my State that has great voter ID laws, it would gut them, and it would take it away from our State, though no one is complaining about voter ID in my State. You can show an ID. You can show a library card. You can show a utility bill. You can show anything in my State just to be able to verify that is actually you because we want people to be able to vote, but we want to make sure it is that person who is actually voting. That used to be a common, accepted practice.

Why would we want to create an environment where we would make it easy to be able to cheat?

This bill, S. 1, also creates ballot harvesting--forces it around the entire country. Folks may say: I have no idea what that is. Well, let me set up what it is. Ballots are mailed to your house, and if you haven't mailed it back in yet, you may have a knock at your door. They come to your door.

And if they come to the door--it would be a political activist from one of the campaigns, and they would say: Hey, have you filled out your ballot yet? I know they got mailed out yesterday. Have you turned it back in yet?

Oh, you haven't? Grab your ballot inside and bring it out on the front porch, and I will help you fill it out right here on your front porch. And, I tell you what I will do. I will also turn it in for you. You won't even have to mail it. I will deliver it for you.

That is ballot harvesting. In most States, that is illegal. They want to make that legal in every single State. That is an invitation to fraud.

Now, there is a difference between ``I want to help facilitate everyone to be able to vote and to be able to protect their right to vote'' and actually creating opportunities for fraud where everyone doubts every election. That is not the right way to go. I want to make sure that we all look at an election at the end of it and say we can trust that.

One of the ways we can trust it is through a Federal Election Commission that actually is bipartisan. We have a Federal Election Commission with an even number of Republicans and Democrats. They want to change that to where it is five members, not six, and the last member, who is the tie breaker, is someone selected by the President who would be ``independent.'' I am sure that is going to work out just fine, but that is not going to end up being a partisan individual.

In my State, all the ballots are done ahead of time--all of them. If you do a mail-in ballot, those ballots are opened up early on. There are Republicans and Democrats. There are poll watchers who are watching it. All of the evaluations for the quality of the ballots are all tested before election night. So that is all finished. So when election night is done, by 10:30 in the evening, all the ballots have been counted and election results are out.

Oh, no, that won't work. My Senate Democratic colleagues want to give an additional 10 days for ballots to continue to trickle in. So, literally, what we had in this last election where it was for days that no one even knew how many ballots were coming in, and the uncertainty that that creates in the process, they want to make sure that exists in every State, not just in a few States.

Listen, I would rather have every State be like mine, to say that everyone has to turn their ballot in early. It is not like election day is a shocking day that no one knew about. In fact, the majority of States around the country are like my State.

This is not just a partisan issue. Vermont has the same rule that we have in Oklahoma. This is a straightforward way to protect the integrity of the ballot, that you can turn in the ballots early, and that you can evaluate all of them so the ballots aren't trickling in for days.

If you love all those rules, let me give you one more quick one. Remember that campaign speech or that campaign commercial that you really, really hate, that you are sick of it by the time the election comes? Well, get ready for a whole lot more of them because the S. 1 bill gives Federal dollars, 6 to 1, to be able to fund more campaigns and to make sure campaigns have even more money.

So if someone raises $100,000, they are going to give--Federal tax dollars--$600,000 to that candidate, even a candidate you didn't vote for and don't like. They are going to get $600,000 for every $100,000. If they raise $1 million for their campaign, they will get $6 million of our Federal tax dollars.

I don't want to pay for campaigns I don't agree with. I don't think that is the right way to go. And I don't bump into many people in my State that get real excited about paying for someone else's campaign whom they disagree with.

I think this bill was the result of the 2020 election. They pulled it out and said: That election was such a shambles. We need to be able to put a bill out there to do that.

But you would be incorrect. Actually, this bill is exactly what they pulled out in 2017, saying that Russia took over the election in 2016 and so we need a big bill to be able to fix it. And for 4 years they have been pushing it and, now, after this election, they pulled it out again and said: We have to be able to do this.

It is the same bill. It used to be the bill to fight Russia. Now it is the bill to be able to fight whatever now.

Listen, let each State make those decisions, and when there is a challenge for that, take it to Federal court. That is why we have the court system. Allow those Federal courts to process through those challenges.

We want every person to be able to be protected, to be able to vote, and if some State is suppressing the vote, take that to Federal court, and let's solve that and make sure that does not occur. But don't tell everyone in my State that Washington, DC knows better.

We have Republicans and Democrats that have worked very hard on election law in my State. In fact, there was just an expansion of additional days for early voting in my State. It has been a nonpartisan issue in my State. Let's not make it a partisan issue now and tell everyone across the entire country that DC knows best. Let's put this bill aside and not pass the S. 1 bill.

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