[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 214 (Thursday, December 18, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8888-S8891]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         Senate Accomplishments

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, we are getting ready to turn the page 
into 2026, which is hard to process in some ways because so much has 
happened in 2025.
  I have a habit when I approach the end of the year to look back and 
also take a quick look forward where things might be going. But just 
thinking about this year, we have had more votes in this body this year 
than any Senate since 1976. We have been in session more days than any 
Senate in the past 50 years. We actually confirmed more nominations in 
the first year of a new Presidency than any Senate in decades and 
decades. It has been a lot of work that has happened in this Chamber 
this year.
  Just reflecting back on that, I see what still needs to be done, but 
I think there is some benefit just for us to be able to pause for a 
moment and think about what has already occurred in this incredibly 
busy year.
  We talk a lot about the Working Families Tax Cut Act that we passed 
this past summer. The regulations are being written out by the IRS and 
multiple others to be implemented for this coming tax season. But there 
are so many things that actually went into that, and the debate around 
it was so noisy, I think people lose track of the things that are 
actually in it.
  I talked to some teachers in Oklahoma who have no idea that next 
year, when they buy school supplies, they will be able to write off a 
deduction for the school supplies that they purchase because of the 
Working Families Tax Cut Act. We are literally treating every classroom 
as if it is their own small business and they have their own small 
business expenses. They can deduct from their taxes their expenses from 
their classroom. That has never happened before, and we think that will 
be a tremendous gain for classrooms all over the country and will be a 
direct help to teachers. That was one of many things that were in the 
bill as well as things like no tax on tips to be able to help service-
related employees all over the country and no tax on overtime, which is 
especially beneficial to our first responders and our law enforcement 
who work so much overtime, including the Capitol Police who are right 
here. There are a lot of overtime hours, and that is going to be a 
direct help to them.

  I was talking to a person at a checkout line not long ago who was a 
working senior adult. As I am checking out, she said: Hey, that bill 
that y'all passed? That is going to keep me from paying taxes on my 
income after Social Security, after I am receiving that, and that is 
going to be a huge help to me.
  She just couldn't thank us enough because, as a working senior, she 
just needed a little bit of help.
  There are so many different things that we were able to get done in 
that Working Families Tax Cuts bill. We were able to provide a new 
child tax credit. We were able to provide a tax incentive to businesses 
that actually provide quality childcare for their employees so that so 
many employees who want to have their kids near them at work could 
actually have that opportunity. I am grateful that we are able to do 
some things that are substantial for a lot of those families.
  Within the past hour--it is kind of funny--even just walking the 
floor on this, I had someone who just made a random comment. They had 
no idea of my connection to it, but they just made a random comment 
about a part of the bill that I actually helped author in that Working 
Families Tax Cuts bill, and that is the area where we deal with full 
expensing.
  If you are not a business owner, you have no idea what that is, but 
if you own a farm or a ranch or a business, you know exactly what it 
is. If you have got big capital expenses--think, for a farm or a ranch, 
a tractor or a truck or think, for manufacturing, a big piece of 
equipment--when you are able to purchase that, that is a business 
expense, but in the past, in the Tax Code, you would have to write that 
business expense off over several years. You do eventually get to write 
it off, but all of the expense is actually in the first year when you 
had to buy it. You were prohibited from writing it all off in your 
first year.
  I was able to get that changed in this bill, in the section that I 
authored, so that those businesses and farmers and ranchers, in the 
year that they purchase that big equipment, can also write it off on 
their taxes in that 1 year rather than having to stretch it out over 
several years. It is exactly the same to the Federal Government as far 
as income that is coming in as tax revenue to the Federal Government. 
There is no difference. But to that business and that farm and ranch, 
it is a huge difference for them.
  As for many of those small businesses that have big capital expenses, 
literally, if they have a big capital expense that year, they also have 
to go to the bank and borrow money to help pay their taxes that year 
because it takes several years to be able to depreciate that out. That 
is gone as of this year. That is no longer going to be an issue.

[[Page S8889]]

  Literally, every economist has said that it is one of the most 
significant parts of the bill as far as economic activity across the 
country because it incentivizes more people to buy another piece of 
equipment to be able to use. It makes a business more efficient--and 
guess what. The person who sold them the piece of equipment also gets 
more business. It literally churns our economy and gets us up into a 
higher speed economically, providing more jobs and more opportunity for 
more people.
  I also worked a lot on a section of the bill that a lot of people 
don't talk about, but it is very important to me, and I found it has 
been very important to a lot of other folks as well in the nonprofit 
sector.
  In 2017, we made a change in the tax law. That change doubled the 
standard deduction, simplifying the tax filings for about 91 percent of 
Americans, which is much more straightforward than it used to be. But 
the tradeoff for that was, if you donated to a nonprofit and you didn't 
itemize your taxes, that nonprofit donation was no longer tax 
deductible for you, meaning the top 9 percent of people in the country 
in income who itemize their taxes get to write off their nonprofit 
donations, but no one else does. That may not seem like a big deal, but 
in the past decades, nonprofits have lost $20 billion--$20 billion 
going into nonprofits. That is a very significant issue.
  America has three safety nets: The third of those safety nets is 
government. The first safety net is the family. The second safety net 
are churches and nonprofits. The third safety net is government. The 
government can never keep up with all of the issues and the social 
needs. We have got to have strong families. We have got to have strong 
churches and nonprofits. They are the ones that are actually taking 
care of the homeless and the hurting and the hungry. They are the ones 
who do it every single day. They are the volunteers who are out there 
who are supported in what they are doing by usually small-dollar 
donations.
  So, as of January 1 of next year, we will have made a permanent 
change in tax policy to say, if your family donates to a nonprofit of 
your choice--pick whichever one you want to--if your family donates to 
a nonprofit, as of next year, you will be able to write off up to 
$2,000 of that donation on your taxes whether you itemize or not.
  The goal is to have stronger nonprofits, which means more people 
getting assistance in their communities face to face. The government 
writes checks. Nonprofits meet people face to face--mentor, help--in a 
way that the government never can.
  So this body made a decision together in their Working Families Tax 
Cuts Act to say we are going to do something to be able to strengthen 
our nonprofits all around the country, and I am very proud to be able 
to be a part of that.
  We forget about this, but we started this year by passing a very 
simple piece of legislation. It says, if someone is illegally present 
in the country and has committed a crime, if he is arrested, he has to 
be removed from the country. As strange as it is, that didn't used to 
be the law. We literally had people arrested who were illegally present 
in the country. Then they were just released right back out again. Many 
of those individuals had committed crimes over and over and over, and 
they were just released again, released again, released again.
  This body voted this past January and said that that is not going to 
ever happen again. We are never going to have individuals who are 
victims of crime in just this repetitive nature of it over and over 
again.
  We have done a lot to just talk about the value of every single 
child. This body and my colleagues who are here will know that I speak 
out often on this issue. I am one of those crazy people who thinks 
children are valuable--all of them. I don't think some children are 
valuable and some children are disposable. I think all of them are 
valuable. So we have done a lot to be able to just talk about this 
issue and to be able to bring it up.

  There are several bills that we have actually worked through, one 
being the MOMS Act, which bolsters access to resources and assistance 
to help moms and children thrive.
  We have actually tried to work through multiple different things 
dealing with conscience protections. There is a bill that I have that 
actually works to protect the conscience rights of those who are in the 
medical profession and are going through training.
  As odd as it sounds right now, in medical training, you are now 
brought to a point that it is assumed that abortion is going to be part 
of your medical training unless you opt out of it. Even at that point, 
they can still bring you in and say: You have got to be able to choose 
right now.
  I can tell you stories of medical students who have actually reached 
out to our office and said that they literally were brought into an 
abortion as a part of their medical training and were told, if they 
left, they would have a mark on their educational record saying that 
they abandoned the patient. This is even when they had said they did 
not plan to ever do elective abortions in their practices--ever--and 
wanted to be able to opt out of it.
  Listen, there is a simple way to be able to do this. Change the 
perspective on it to say that, automatically, everyone is opted out and 
that, if you wanted to do elective abortions, you would have to choose 
to opt into that in your residency.
  But the abortion folks want to make sure as many people as possible 
are trained to be able to do elective abortions because they want to 
keep that going--violating the conscience rights of many people who go 
into medicine to save life, not to take it. So we are working through 
the process to be able to now protect that.
  Cindy Hyde-Smith, the great Senator from Mississippi, and I are 
working on a bill called the RESTORE Act to deal with infertility 
issues and to be able to find multiple different ways to walk alongside 
families.
  We have a bill that deals with pastors and nonprofits that have been 
targeted by the IRS for simply speaking their minds. It should not be 
so in America.
  Senator Jacky Rosen, my Democrat colleague from Nevada, and I lead 
the anti-Semitism task force here in the Senate. Anti-Semitism should 
not be a partisan issue--it should be a nonpartisan issue--and it 
should not be a part of who we are in America. The problem is we have 
rising anti-Semitic conversation happening all around our Nation right 
now from the left and from the right, and it is disheartening in a 
nation that values every single person.
  Of the many people who actually speak out openly about diversity in 
our Nation and about protecting the rights and opportunities of every 
person no matter where they are from--for them to have equal 
opportunity and an equal ability to be able to rise--they seem to have 
no problem, at times, ranting anti-Semitic tropes, sometimes flippantly 
and sometimes in a hostile way.
  We have had folks just during this year, in public settings, talking 
about how much they love Hitler or making jokes about the gas chambers. 
We have folks talking about organized Jewry or folks talking about, if 
you support Israel, maybe you have some kind of brain virus. We have 
folks chanting ``from the river to the sea'' and ``liberation by any 
means.'' On a college campus even this year, a Jewish student was 
confronted with someone saying: If I see another pig female Jew, I will 
drag you away, rape you, and throw you off a cliff.
  This is the United States of America. We stand for the rights of 
every individual to have any faith of their choosing and to live that 
faith openly and without fear. So why is it that, when I go to Hanukkah 
festivals, there have to be so many police there? Do you know why? It 
is because some people hear these dumb statements and they do dumb 
things. Acts of violence come out of that.
  Just this year, we had two Israeli Embassy staff members who were 
murdered while they walked out of an event here in Washington, DC--just 
this year. Just this year, we had, in Boulder, CO, a gathering of folks 
there just to stand in support of Israel, and someone came by with 
incendiary devices and literally set a group of Jewish people 
peacefully speaking out for Israel--they set them on fire in the 
street. Just this year, a Chabad Jewish center was set on fire 
overnight in Florida. That is in our country. I could go on and on--not 
to mention the incredibly painful first day of Hanukkah with the attack 
in Sydney, Australia.

[[Page S8890]]

  Anti-Semitism has no place in our Nation. Now, I understand you have 
a First Amendment right to be able to say any dumb thing that you want 
to say, but I also have the right to call it out for what it is. It is 
anti-Semitic hatred. Don't try to shape it in some way to say: This is 
my right to be able to speak out.
  It is. It is also my right to call it out and say: In my party, as a 
Republican, we have no place for anti-Semitic hatred. In our Nation, we 
should make no space for someone to be able to intimidate someone 
because of their faith or their background no matter who they are.
  This year--this year--we were able to pass a bill assisting rural 
hospitals with $50 billion--$50 billion. I don't know what the rural 
hospitals are like in everybody else's State, but I can tell you what 
they are like in Oklahoma. They take care of some great people. They 
are dedicated folks in the medical profession, but they struggle 
because they don't have a high patient count. They are not trying to do 
intricate surgeries; they are trying to help someone who just got hit 
on the road in an accident or to help someone who had a heart attack or 
someone who had a stroke. They are trying to stabilize them and to help 
them. Yes, they are going to transfer them to a big hospital somewhere 
else, but they are desperately needed all across rural Oklahoma. They 
really struggle to keep up because of the incredible price of medical 
technology now. So we just passed a bill dealing with $50 billion to be 
able to help rural hospitals all over the country get caught up and 
then to be able to maintain what they are doing.
  We were able to help rural nursing homes as well, rural nursing homes 
that were actually facing a Biden-era rule that Biden-era folks--they 
told me they meant well by it, but basically they were requiring a 
bunch of additional 24-hour nursing assistants and nurses to be able to 
be on sight at any point in those nursing homes.
  Now, that sounds like a great idea, but understand that there are 
physically not that many nurses that live in rural areas across the 
country. What that really was going to mean--although they seem to have 
meant well, what that really meant was they were going to close down a 
bunch of rural nursing homes all over my State, distancing people at 
one of the most vulnerable moments of life away from their families. 
That is a terrible idea.
  This body was able to flip that and say: We are not going to allow 
that to be able to happen. We are going to change that to where that is 
different.
  This body just passed the national defense authorization. Thankfully, 
we have now gone six decades, and every single year, we have passed it.
  In my State, we were able to do several things to be able to make 
sure we are protecting national security in the work we continue to do 
in Oklahoma.
  Tinker Air Force Base is the largest Air Force depot we have in the 
country. It is critical for the maintenance of all those aircraft and 
the strength of our warfighters.
  Tinker Air Force Base has struggled with civilian hiring--we have 
thousands of people there--not because we don't have great Oklahomans 
that want to serve our Nation as a civilian at Tinker Air Force Base 
but because of foolish hiring rules that were set aside and created 
that slowed down the process of hiring.
  In the national defense authorization, I was able to put in an 
amendment to be able to get that changed so that we are able to 
actually do the civilian hiring that our Nation requires so that we can 
actually continue to be able to defend ourselves and our Nation 
anywhere in the world.
  We want to make it very clear that we have the most lethal, most 
moral fighting force in the history of the world, and we want to make 
sure we are strong and ready enough that no one ever would challenge 
us--ever. That is what brings us greater national security.
  This year, in a moment probably no one here saw--and that is OK. We 
all have different issues in our States. In a solemn moment in April of 
this year, we gathered on the Capitol grounds right over there, around 
the enormous, 100-year-old trees that are planted all over the Capitol 
grounds, and we were able to plant a tiny, little live oak. Most folks 
probably won't even notice, but you will. Next to that little live 
oak--it is just about that tall now--is a little plaque saying it is a 
seedling from the Oklahoma City Survivor Tree.
  Thirty years ago this past April, a person with deep hatred for the 
Federal Government drove up to the Federal building in Oklahoma City 
with a truck loaded with fertilizer and diesel fuel, ignited it, and 
killed 168 people that day. It was 30 years ago this year.
  Across the street from the Federal building there was a tree that was 
just a gangly little tree that was in a parking lot, quite frankly, 
growing up through the asphalt. The detonation itself literally twisted 
the tree across the street and blew every single leaf off of it--
literally blew every single one of them off of it.
  No one paid any attention to that. Obviously, through the recovery 
and all that happened in trying to recover families, taking care of 
people, and trying to stabilize the community, no one really noticed 
until the next year, literally a year later, that that twisted, bent 
tree budded. It survived that blast, and it has become the signature of 
Oklahoma City, the Survivor Tree. It is still doing well, by the way.
  A seed pod was taken from that tree, was grown in some soil, and then 
it was transplanted here to the Capitol grounds so that every person 
that walks past it for centuries from now will walk past and see that 
little plaque and remember those who were lost and those who survived 
and those who were changed forever in April of 1995.
  We have to do that this year because we never want to forget.
  We have gotten a lot done this year. There is still a lot more to do 
next year. We have to finish appropriations, we have a lot of work to 
do on housing costs, we have a lot of other bills that are still 
pending, but we have been able to accomplish much.
  I understand full well that we are divided. I understand full well 
that we don't agree on everything. I get that. But where we can find 
agreement, let's get moving. Let's solve the issues.
  One last thing. Many folks in this body know my friend Jim Inhofe. 
Jim Inhofe served in this body literally for decades. He used to sit 
right there.
  Jim Inhofe and I several years ago worked on a new formula for 
veterans hospitals--to partner a veterans hospital with another 
hospital so they would share resources. So the veterans hospital would 
never have to keep up with other hospitals; they could share resources 
and physicians in a brandnew way.
  It had never been done quite like this before. We were able to 
partner together to be able to do that in Tulsa, OK, where Oklahoma 
State hospital and a new veterans hospital would rise up right in 
conjunction with it so that the best researchers, the best equipment, 
the best physicians could share that space back and forth so that our 
veterans would never hear someone say ``Well, we are going to have to 
send you to a different VA hospital, a different place, to be able to 
get that type of care.'' They could get it right there at home.
  It is a new model. I am pleased the Veterans' Committee and other 
leadership, including my colleague Jerry Moran, who is sitting on the 
floor today, were a part of it.
  For Jim and I to be able to work through that process was an honor, 
for us to be able to get that in Tulsa.
  Never did I ever think that a couple of years later--this year--I 
would be dedicating that hospital as the James Mountain Inhofe Tulsa 
Veterans Medical Center after my friend Jim Inhofe passed away. That 
hospital that he and I worked together on now bears his name.
  Veterans, in the days ahead, will continue to get quality care in 
Northeast Oklahoma from the legacy of Jim Inhofe but also from the 
commitment of this body to say that we are going to do what it takes to 
take care of our veterans, as we continue to do.
  I am grateful to this body for the work that we get done because it 
matters to people, but we have lot more to do, so let's get after it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
  Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, first, before I make the remarks I would 
like to make, let me commend my colleague from Oklahoma Mr. Lankford 
for his comments. I have said this to my colleagues, Republican and 
Democrat, and

[[Page S8891]]

I would join in this call for getting things done.
  A message that I have tried to make clear is that many of us, most of 
us, perhaps all of us are away from home, away from family. We come to 
Washington, DC. And in much of my life, I felt guilty about being gone 
from things at home. That sense of regret about being absent to family, 
to kids, to wife, is somewhat compensated for in the service that comes 
from this, serving in the U.S. Senate, from public service. But unless 
we actually accomplish things, it is hard to justify the sadness that 
comes, the challenges that come, the absence of fulfilling 
responsibilities that occur in our lives if we are here without 
accomplishments.
  As Senator Lankford made so clear, it doesn't always have to be the 
biggest things or the things that are thought of to be the biggest; it 
could be things that are in many ways, in people's minds, the modest or 
small things. But I can't imagine that anybody in the U.S. Senate or 
Congress or public service or in jobs that are demanding would do so if 
they didn't think there was a goal accomplished at the end of their 
time.
  We all ought to take to heart what the Senator from Oklahoma said 
about getting things done. It can help us justify being away from those 
we love so frequently and doing something that actually matters to 
America and the world.
  We don't--certainly we shouldn't--come here for purposes of the name 
on the door or a nice desk in a big office or for the camaraderie or to 
be able to call yourself a U.S. Senator. Those things are absolutely 
meaningless. But if we can find the common denominator between 
Republicans and Democrats, between individuals from different States 
and different parts of the country; if we can find the common 
denominator between people who have different ideas and political 
philosophies, the U.S. Senate should be a place that is designed to 
pull people together, to bring us together so that those 
accomplishments occur.
  I commend my colleague from Oklahoma as a Senator who has 
accomplishments and works hard to make sure that we all are working 
together so we all can have accomplishments. I express my gratitude to 
and respect for the Senator.