[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5324-5325]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           THE NATIONAL DEBT

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, the talk of the debt in our Nation has 
been diminishing. Unfortunately, debt itself has not also diminished. 
While the deficit has been reduced significantly over the last several 
years, the debt continues to grow. It is now crossing well over $19 
trillion. It is my concern that we as a body continue to get distracted 
with other things and lose track of the looming debt issues we will 
still continue to face and we will be held to account for, and 
rightfully so.
  The American people expect us to come here and solve a lot of 
issues--solve not only crisis issues such as Zika and other issues 
around the country, but also what we are going to do with national 
defense and security. There is an expectation that we will be able to 
do multiple things, but over all of that, there is an expectation that 
we will balance the Nation's checkbook and find a way to be able to 
solve these issues. I don't think that is an unreasonable request.
  When we cross over $19 trillion, at what point do we as a body decide 
that this is enough and that we need to work together to solve the 
issues we face? The Congressional Budget Office continues to challenge 
us and to tell us that this is an unsustainable pace, and the Nation as 
whole continues to push back. I think we should pay attention to it.
  I thank Gene Dodaro and the good folks from the Government 
Accountability Office for putting out their latest report on what they 
define as opportunities to reduce fragmentation, overlap, duplication, 
and achieve other financial benefits. It is the report that GAO puts 
out every year that we often call a duplication report--here are the 
problems, here are the unresolved issues.
  Last year, I asked Gene Dodaro and GAO specifically to break it up 
and to make it very clear--not just to say where it is in government 
but whose responsibility it is, who can actually fix this. They broke 
it up this year into two different sections basically saying: This is 
the administration and the agencies. They already have the authority to 
fix this, and these are the issues they face.
  He also identified 63 areas that specifically only Congress can fix. 
It is a to-do list for us of things that we need to either vote on and 
discuss or we need to disagree with GAO and be able to push back on, 
but we shouldn't just ignore it and say we are going to do nothing on 
it.
  We have dealt with this every single year for the last several years. 
We all face the duplication. We all hear the stories about it. My 
challenge is, How do we actually bring this to the floor, vote on it, 
solve it, and move forward from here? It will leave some things 
actually addressed.
  Part of the issue we face every year with duplication is that 
duplication is buried into the governmental system, and it takes a GAO 
report to pull it out.
  I have proposed a bill for several years now. I did it in the House 
and brought it over to the Senate. It is called the Taxpayers Right-To-
Know Act. The Taxpayers Right-To-Know

[[Page 5325]]

Act already passed the House this year, and it has not yet cleared the 
Senate. The Taxpayers Right-To-Know Act is a very clear transparency 
piece. It says: Shouldn't we have a list of every program in the 
Federal Government, how much we spend on that program, how many staff 
are committed to it, what that program does, and, specifically, how it 
is evaluated? It is a very straightforward, transparent piece.
  Everyone in this body continues to talk about duplication and says we 
should do something about it. GAO then highlights it for us, but the 
challenge is that you can't easily identify it until you do a very deep 
search on it. I think we should be able to have a level of transparency 
so we can see where the duplication is by comparing one program to 
another. That way we can all address it and talk about it.
  Yesterday, at the Indian Affairs Committee hearing, we were doing a 
markup. The conversation in that markup was about several programs that 
seemed to be very good ideas to serve Indian Country. The problem is 
that many of them already exist in another agency, and they are not 
doing their job very well. The challenge is this: Can we get rid of it 
in another agency and not just start it in a second, third, or fourth 
agency?
  We can't continue to say: It is not working over there. So let's just 
do it somewhere else. Every time I bring up the issue, they say: We 
don't know what agency it exists in. The Taxpayer's Right-to-Know Act 
provides a very simple list that should be searchable and public and 
that everyone would be able to see. It is currently being held up right 
now and going back and forth in this ongoing conversation about 
something as simple as: How many programs should we see?
  OMB has pushed this issue back on us and said: We will have program 
transparency but only for the biggest programs.
  We basically said: If you spend $1 million on this program, you 
should have transparency.
  They said: No, let's do a much higher number. Let's do $10 million or 
more.
  Yesterday, we asked Gene Dodaro: If we dropped this number from $10 
million to $1 million, how many programs will suddenly go away?
  He said: It is in the thousands. That just puts us in the same spot. 
We can't eliminate duplication we can't see. The famous philosopher 
Muhammad Ali said: ``Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, the 
hands can't hit what the eyes can't see.''
  We, as a body, spend a lot of our time saying: I would love to get 
rid of duplication, but we can't see it. Let's actually expose it. 
Let's get it out there so everyone can see it and we can clear this 
issue. Let's just solve this very simple issue. Let's make it 
transparent, and then let's work together.
  Senator Tester and I had a great conversation after the Indian 
Affairs Committee hearing yesterday. We agreed that we would look for 
areas of duplication in Indian Country. We are not looking for more 
programs. We are looking for programs that actually work and accomplish 
what they should accomplish, and for things that don't work, we can 
eliminate them. We can take that money from one area and put it in 
another area where it actually does work. At the end of the day, we 
have to get back to balance. We can't keep funding duplicative programs 
that don't work, and we should be able to accomplish this together.
  Last year, I put out a report called ``Federal Fumbles: 100 Ways the 
Government Dropped the Ball.'' Two-thirds of that book identified 
duplication and waste in the government. We have made progress on some 
of those already this year. We have so much more to do. The key to it 
is that we actually need to get busy working on it instead of just 
talking about it.
  Yesterday, Gene Dodaro, who is with GAO, also mentioned a bill that 
Ben Sasse is working on called the new hire database bill. I think it 
is a very good bill, and I am glad to be supportive of what he is 
trying to accomplish there. Senator Sasse wants to do one thing, and 
that is to be able to say that when we actually do means-tested 
programs, we should be able to see the employment records. That should 
be a very open process for those who are in the means-tested program, 
but right now GAO and other groups do not have access to the new hires 
database. So there is no way to see those in the means-tested program.
  There are people who self-report their income, and there is no way to 
be able to verify that. Shouldn't we be able to verify that?
  It is a straightforward solution in a day and time when they continue 
to bring up obvious things year after year, such as having the same 
person being eligible for disability and unemployment insurance at the 
same time. That person will actually receive unemployment and 
disability benefits simultaneously. Disability benefits, by definition, 
means you cannot work anywhere in the economy, and that is why you get 
disability benefits. Unemployment benefits, by definition, means you 
can work in the economy, but you are not currently employed. Why should 
you be eligible for both? GAO has brought that up to us. That is not a 
partisan issue. That should be a solvable issue, and it is costing 
taxpayers billions of dollars. It is one of the things that we have to 
be able to work on together so we can actually solve this problem. This 
is not too hard for us, and the American people expect us to get it 
done.
  My only challenge is this: Let's actually get it done.
  With that, I yield back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant Democratic leader.

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