[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 18939-18941]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          GOVERNMENT SPENDING

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, when you are home and the television is 
on, the phone starts to ring, your dog is at the back door barking, and 
the kids need help doing their homework, occasionally you can forget 
that dinner is on the stove, but if you forget about it too long, your 
house will catch on fire, and that is going to be a problem. You can 
get distracted by a lot of things and suddenly miss out on something 
that is very important.
  Our Nation is dealing with a lot of issues right now, such as 
terrorism, immigration, banking issues, our economy, education, 
transportation, and I do have a concern that we have forgotten this 
year we still have $450 billion in deficit and a total debt of $19 
trillion hanging over our heads.
  If we were in any State in America and faced with that, the 
legislative branch would work, make hard decisions, and then balance 
their budget. Every single State, at the end of the legislative 
session, comes to a balanced budget, but we don't. We just overspend, 
and it has happened consecutively so many times now, our debt has built 
up to $19 trillion. I don't have an easy way to articulate $19 trillion 
of debt, but let me give you a picture of that. Earlier this year we 
passed a 10-year budget plan that would get rid of our $450 billion of 
deficit and would slowly work down, within 10 years, back to a balance. 
Good.
  Let's do a hypothetical. Let's say we finish out that path, and we 
have to get back to a balance within 10 years, and then in year 11 we 
do very well and we have a $50 billion surplus. It is a good surplus. 
Here is my question: How many years in a row would we have to have that 
$50 billion surplus before we paid off our debt? If you are doing the 
math in your head, the correct answer is 460 years in a row. If we had 
a $50 billion surplus for 460 years in a row, we could pay off our 
debt. That is not going to happen, is it? We are in a bad spot, and my 
fear is that we are distracted and we are not focusing on something 
that will come back and bite us.
  What do we do about that? I ask if we can do the first thing: Can we 
at least agree that this is a problem and that we should actually work 
to balance our budget? At least have that as the common ground that we 
can agree on in this body and say we need to get back to a balanced 
budget, and then we need to begin to pay this down and start that 
process--to approach this issue in a way that I think can develop real 
solutions. We need to find common-ground areas, but first we need to 
begin with that one simple principle.
  Our office has come up with a list which we affectionally call the 
Federal Fumbles List--100 ways the Federal Government has dropped the 
ball. We are identifying areas of waste, duplication, and, quite 
frankly, regulations that are well outside the purview of the Federal 
Government, many of which slow down the economy and drive up the costs 
to consumers.
  These Federal fumbles are not an exhaustive list. This is not 
everything; This is just our list. We took some from multiple agencies 
and entities. As we pulled this list together, we encouraged this. This 
is our to-do list. We encourage other offices to start their to-do list 
so at least we can have a common-ground sense of, let's get back to a 
balance and work together to identify something within our own office 
to find out ways we can deal with some simple things, such as, how are 
we wasting taxpayer dollars? What programs are ripe with fraud? What 
duplication and inefficiency is out there? Where are we overregulating, 
which in turn raises the costs of goods and services for consumers? And 
how does the

[[Page 18940]]

government actually have processes in place that deceive taxpayers and 
add debt to their families?
  When we walked through this, we had a common agreement on our team: 
We are not just going to identify problems; we are going to actually 
work together to find a solution. Our issues and conversations have 
been simple. If I am back home in Oklahoma, I can sit in the 
coffeehouse with other folks eating breakfast and talk about all the 
problems, but when I get back in this room, we can't just complain 
about the issues, we have to fix those issues. That is our job. We 
spend a tremendous amount of time just complaining about the issues as 
if fixing it comes from somewhere else.
  So we take all 100 of these issues and say: Here is the problem, and 
here is the solution we have proposed. If people have different ideas 
and different solutions, bring them, but let's at least agree that 
these things should be resolved. Some of them are small, some of them 
are large, but we simply asked the question: How do we fix this?
  I have several things to say on that issue. One is that we have to 
fix our budgeting process and the way we make decisions about it.
  We have these cute little terms in our budgeting process, such as 
CHIMPS, changes in mandatory programs. It is a cute term, but the 
problem is that adds $11 billion to the debt every year and everyone 
just pretends that it is not there, that it is not real.
  There is a fund called the Crime Victims Fund. This fund is supposed 
to go directly to what it says--to crime victims--but it is actually 
not used for crime victims.
  Eleven billion dollars each year--in fact, this is the same $11 
billion that is used each year as an offset for additional spending, 
but the money never actually moves out of that account, it just stays 
there. We pretend we are going to spend it and then actually spend it 
somewhere else and then the next year do the same thing again. It is 
deceptive. We have to stop that. That adds deficit and debt onto 
families by a deceptive tactic.
  We have a thing called the corporate payment shift. This one is fun 
as well. The corporate payment shift assumes that money is going to 
come in or be spent, and we have a 10-year budgeting window and move it 
in the very last month to year 10 plus 1 month. We move it just 
slightly out of the budget window, but we say we are going to spend it 
and actually go ahead and spend it anyway. If we had a budget that was 
10 years and 1 month, it would be out of balance, but if we put that 
little corporate payment shift in there, it looks fine on paper, but in 
reality it doesn't work. So we identify that as one of the fumbles that 
we have as a government. It is something that we obviously have to fix. 
Basic oversight will help that, but it is also this body making a 
decision on how we are going to budget it.
  We also walked through a lot of areas where we just identified things 
that the Federal Government spends money on that we thought were rather 
unique to spend money on and we thought may need some oversight.
  How about a $43 million natural gas filling station built in 
Afghanistan? It cost $43 million for one natural gas filling station. 
Now that that station is in place, it is not being used at all and it 
is a $43 million waste.
  How about the Academy Awards. It is a pretty ritzy event. The Academy 
Awards are choosing to build a $250 million museum, and the Federal 
taxpayers are kicking in $25,000 to that museum. Why in the world are 
we kicking in $25,000? Did we believe at some point that they couldn't 
raise the last $25,000, and so we had to kick in a Federal connection 
to it? I would disagree.
  One of my favorites is the fact that we just spent almost $50,000 to 
study the history of tobacco use in Russia. I am still looking for the 
national security implications of why we just spent $50,000 to study 
cigarette use in Russia.
  The National Park Service spent $65,000 doing a study on what happens 
to bugs when you turn on a light in dark areas. I can tell anyone in 
this Chamber what bugs do if you turn on a light in a rural area. They 
fly at the light. But we spent $65,000 trying to investigate that.
  The VA in Arkansas installed solar panels to show that they have 
green energy in this area. Many VA centers around the country are doing 
this project. The particular one in Arkansas put them on in the wrong 
spot, relocated them, and spent $8 million in total just for the 
installation for their solar panels. Any guess on how long those solar 
panels will have to run continuously to before they pay off the cost of 
installation? They will have to run continuously for 40 years just to 
pay for the cost of installation. That is not green energy, that is 
just waste.
  How about a challenge like this. The Social Security Administration--
the definition for Social Security disability is that you cannot work 
in any job in the economy. You are only eligible for Social Security 
disability if you cannot work in any job in the economy. But there are 
individuals who receive both Social Security disability, which by 
definition means you cannot work, and unemployment insurance, which by 
definition means you are looking for a job. You should not be able to 
get unemployment insurance and Social Security disability insurance at 
the same time. They violate the definitions between the two. Even the 
President of the United States agrees with that. Yet we have not been 
able to get that done. That is a fumble.
  As American taxpayers, we spent $374,000 studying the dating habits 
of senior adults. Can someone help me understand what the national 
security implications are for that and why we spent $374,000 studying 
the dating habits of senior adults?
  We also created what is called the Ambassador Slush Fund.
  The Ambassador's Cultural Fund from the State Department, $5 
million--almost $6 million--is designed to be able to help us give away 
money to do construction in other areas.
  We have done projects like building a welcome grotto into a Buddhist 
temple in China, which I find the ultimate irony. If any church in 
America said we wanted to be able to add on a welcome center onto our 
church, we would forbid the use of taxpayer dollars for that, but in 
China we literally borrowed money from them, gave it to our State 
Department so they could build a welcome grotto into a Buddhist temple 
back in China. I am not sure that is a great idea.
  The State Department also has a Twitter account called 
ThinkAgainTurnAway. It is to discourage people from joining the jihadi 
movement. Any guess on how much Americans spend for a Twitter account? 
For that one Twitter account with 23,000 followers, we spent $5 
million--$5 million to maintain a Twitter account. I am very confident 
there are multiple teenagers at home who could help us run that for a 
lot less than the price.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to extend my remarks for a 
couple more moments.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LANKFORD. Let me mention just a couple more.
  I have a real concern that our Social Security Administration is not 
sharing what is called the death master file. That may seem like a 
macabre comment, but what happens is, if we don't share the death 
master file, then we literally don't know in other agencies when to be 
able to pull a Social Security number off the record. The Social 
Security Administration recognizes that someone has passed away, but 
the IRS doesn't, so that is still a live Social Security number to 
them, meaning someone could get that Social Security number, file, get 
a work permit, even register and vote--all sorts of things can be 
done--under that number.
  We have 6.5 million people, according to our government, who are over 
112 years old--6.5 million people. That is quite a few. Actually, in 
the world, there are less than 100, but according to our government we 
have 6.5 million and those numbers are being abused.
  I can't even get into multiple issues, but let me just mention one 
more on this list of waste. We identified what

[[Page 18941]]

many Americans already know. Social Security numbers are being stolen 
and used to file fraudulent tax forms. Many Americans in the coming 
months will file their taxes only to get notification from the IRS that 
someone has already filed under this number. It is infuriating to them, 
and it is billions of dollars of loss to the Federal taxpayer. The IRS 
knows how to fix this. We list out the solutions. We have to actually 
implement the fixes. We have to be able to protect the taxpayer and to 
protect individuals from identify theft. That is a fumble, but it is 
fixable and we need to do it.
  I haven't even gotten into some simple things such as school 
lunches--ask any teenager what they think of school lunches at this 
point with the new regulations--or waters of the United States and how 
even the Corps of Engineers doesn't want to implement the new EPA rule. 
The fiduciary standard is causing chaos among retirees and individuals 
wanting to get retirement advice or rural banks in how they want to be 
able to give out loans for mortgages but can't in many rural areas of 
America.
  There are solutions to these problems, and it is our responsibility 
to be able to work through the process to solve them. With $450 billion 
in deficit spending and an economy that continues to slow down, this 
body needs to determine what our job is and do it. It would be my 
encouragement in the days ahead that we actually achieve that; that in 
the days ahead we speak of what we have solved for the American people 
rather than pretending, as we are eating breakfast back home with some 
friends who are complaining about the problems. It is time for us to 
fix the problems.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.

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