[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 47 (Tuesday, March 14, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S758-S760]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Biden Administration

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I often come to the floor of the Senate 
to talk about one particular item as I want to be able to walk through 
what we are going to do to be able to solve it.
  Honestly, today, it is a little different for me. In some ways, I 
feel a little bit like Will Rogers with his statement, the famous 
Oklahoman, who said that all I really know is what I learned from 
reading the newspapers, which is an alibi for my ignorance.
  Today, I want to just be able to talk about random stories that I 
have read lately that are kind of in the ``you can't make this stuff 
up'' column. It has been frustrating for me.
  Right now, 7 in 10 Americans feel like America is on the wrong 
track--7 in 10. I mean, I don't know why, but they just feel like 
something is not going right, like things are out of control. It has 
been frustrating to me to be able to go through so many news stories 
lately and to be able to say: If I put this in front of 7 in 10 or 
maybe 9 in 10 Americans, they would say, ``Why are we doing this as a 
nation?''
  Now, I understand a lot of the issues we face are complicated. Yet, 
quite frankly, some of these issues are not complicated; they are 
common sense; they become political only in this city. But for most of 
America, it is just not that complicated. Sometimes I just get 
frustrated with the language and the things that are coming out of not 
just the administration but with the things that are happening in our 
Federal Government right now that, I think, just need to be called out 
and for us to say: Let's as a Senate sit down and talk about some of 
these complicated issues. Instead of knee-jerk political reactions, 
let's try to solve some of these hard things because we are currently 
talking about it, and things are going sideways instead of things being 
solved.
  Over the past 5 days, we have watched the collapse of the Silicon 
Valley Bank and Signature Bank--a big bank in San Francisco and a much 
smaller bank in New York. For both of them, we have now had the FDIC 
step in, and they are going to save every single person in the bank and 
make sure they are whole. Now, that is very different than cyclical. 
Most Americans know you are insured up to $250,000, but the Biden 
administration stepped in and said: Oh, no. Everyone is going to be 
kept 100-percent whole.
  The comment that has come out of it has been: Well, we are going to 
make sure no taxpayers have to be able to cover this bill. Then, if you 
listen closely, the very next statement is that it is going to come 
from an assessment on the banks instead.
  Let me tell you what that means.
  As one of the wealthiest banks in America, which has mostly 
millionaires who actually bank there--in fact, to show that, for 90 
percent of the depositors in Silicon Valley Bank, their deposits exceed 
$250,000--OK?--90 percent. That is not normal for a bank. For that bank 
in San Francisco, all of their depositors are going to be bailed out, 
and the way that they are going to be bailed out is they are going to 
put a special--what they are calling--assessment on banks across the 
country.
  So let me tell you what is happening in the next few months.

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  Banks in Oklahoma, in rural towns, are about to pay a special fee to 
be able to bail out millionaires in San Francisco. Now, what Oklahoma 
banks and bankers had to do with that bank failure in San Francisco I 
have no idea, but the comments being made over and over again are that 
no taxpayer is going to be affected by this. I am sure my bankers will 
be glad to know that they don't pay taxes anymore, apparently, and I am 
sure every person who banks there will be interested to know when their 
bank fees go up and their interest rates go down so as to be able to 
cover what happened in San Francisco.
  Listen, I don't want to see a contagion of banks either, but let's be 
honest. What is really happening is a backdoor tax increase on every 
single American. They are just not using the IRS to do it. They are 
using community banks to do it all over the country--to charge them a 
quick higher fee, which they know will mean a higher fee to the people 
who are members of their banks. That is how it is going to get covered 
rather than the typical way this would get covered--by actually taking 
that bank, actually doing an auction and auctioning it off to other 
banks to be able to take it in.
  I look at that and say: You can't make this stuff up, in some ways, 
to be able to say no taxpayer is going to be affected, but quietly 
taxpayers across the country are going to be affected by this.
  Mr. President, I was surprised when I saw the President's budget come 
out, when he said this is a new budget and a new way to be able to 
reduce deficits, when the budget proposal he had was $6.8 trillion. 
That is the spending number--$6.8 trillion. To put this in perspective, 
in just 2019--4 years ago--the total spending for the Federal 
Government was $4.4 trillion. That was the last year before COVID--$4.4 
trillion. Now, post-COVID, the President's budget is $6.8 trillion in 
new spending.
  Mr. President, I visited with some folks on immigration recently, and 
it was interesting. In January, the numbers went down a little bit for 
illegal crossings, so the Department of Homeland Security immediately 
put out ``numbers are down.'' Even before the month was done, the 
numbers came out that the numbers were down in January. Now it is the 
middle of March, and we can't seem to get the numbers for February 
because the best guesstimates we have is that they have skyrocketed 
back up again, so the DHS is no longer talking about it.
  They have released a new proposal, though, to be able to expedite 
individuals on asylum, to be able to get through under asylum here, 
which is a good thing, by the way; but with their current structured 
proposal, they will do about 500 people a month through this new asylum 
process and procedures when we actually have 5,000 people a day 
illegally crossing. So their new proposed answer is how to expedite 
hearings for 500 people a month when the problem is 5,000 people a day.
  In addition to that, the Biden administration just released a new set 
of rules on what will constitute, as they say, ``violent crimes.'' 
These are individuals who are illegally present in the country who are 
due to be deported. They are trying to redefine what ``violent crimes'' 
mean and who is eligible for deportation in the country. Part of what 
they are redefining is, Who are sex offenders and how would you define 
a ``sex offender'' and who would be guilty of that?
  Can I just tell you? I won't find very many Americans who would say: 
We only want part of the illegal sex offenders in the country. Yet the 
Biden administration is quickly trying to redefine what equals a sex 
offender and who actually has to be deported from that group.
  Mr. President, I met with the Director of the FBI last week and had a 
conversation about a memo that the FBI put out just a month ago, saying 
that there is a threat of terrorism coming from traditional Catholics 
and that they need to have further investigation.
  To their credit, the FBI pulled that back quickly after they released 
it, after the Director saw it, and the Director, unequivocally, 
distanced himself from it. But why did that ever start in the first 
place? Why was there an office in the FBI that considered traditional 
Catholics to be a threat to the country?
  In the Federal workforce--it was interesting--just about a month ago, 
there was a big to-do. As a matter of fact, there were some here, even 
in this room, who made a big to-do about how the IRS is doing so much 
better. The literal statement was made: After we pass the Inflation 
Reduction Act, the IRS now has a much higher percentage of answered 
calls. And there was a celebration on the floor here.
  Well, I have to tell you, that is a good thing to be able to answer 
more calls because there have been millions of unanswered calls from 
the IRS. So I went to check the data because so many people were saying 
the percentage of calls answered is much higher than what it was last 
year, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act. I went and pulled the data 
on it to be able to look at it and to see what that was, just to be 
able to check the facts.
  Here are the actual facts: Half as many people called the IRS last 
year as did the year before. In fact, the IRS actually answered 100,000 
fewer calls than they did the year before. It is just that so many 
millions of people stopped calling them, knowing that they are not 
going to get an answer at all. The percentage looks better because 
fewer people were trying, but the actual number of answered calls 
actually went down. Literally, you can't make this stuff up. We need to 
stop celebrating better percentage when the real facts are fewer calls 
were actually answered by the IRS.
  In the category of ``you can't make this up,'' the Office of 
Personnel Management, who runs the Federal hiring process--I just wrote 
a letter to them a few days ago because two of their leadership 
individuals and senior management team are now going to need to be 
fired because in their previous employment, they had credible 
accusations of harassment. This is the office that is designed to be 
able to oversee hiring in the Federal Government that failed to do 
background checks on senior management they were hiring.
  In the category of ``you can't make this stuff up'' in the Inflation 
Reduction Act again, there was a lot of to-do about drug pricing and 
them saying we are now going to control drug pricing. Here is what also 
has occurred with that: Four drug manufacturers have now pulled new 
cancer drugs from the American market. Just in the last 6 months, four 
new cancer drugs have been pulled because they are saying they can't 
make it work with the new Inflation Reduction Act law.
  If I want to stack on top of the Inflation Reduction Act, there was a 
huge section on green energy within the Inflation Reduction Act--which 
is really what the act really was, was a new Green New Deal bill. There 
was a huge section all about how we are going to do more energy 
production, more battery production for electric batteries. The future 
of green energy is going to be in America; and as the President said 
over and over again, it is going to be made in America.
  In fact, I sat in on the President's State of the Union Address, and 
this is what the President said during the State of the Union Address. 
The President said:

       Folks, I know I have been criticized for saying this, but I 
     am not changing my view. We are going to make sure the supply 
     chain for America begins in America. The supply chain begins 
     in America.
       So when we do these projects--and, again, I get criticized 
     about this, but I make no excuses for it--we are going to buy 
     American. We are going to buy American, folks. And it is 
     totally--it is totally consistent with international trade 
     rules. Buy American has been the law since 1933, but for too 
     long, past administrations--Democrat and Republican--have 
     fought to get around it but not anymore.

  That is what the President said down the hall at the State of the 
Union Address.
  What has happened in the last 3 weeks? The President's team has 
actually worked with Japan to create a false free-trade agreement 
because there is an exception in the Inflation Reduction Act that if 
you want to do green energy production, you have to do it in North 
America or you have to have a free-trade agreement. We don't have that 
FTA with Japan, so they are creating a type of FTA with Japan so Japan 
can sell us batteries. So much for ``the previous administrations are 
the ones that tried to work around that.''
  I would love to say it is isolated, but they just did the same thing 
with Germany, to create a workaround in the

[[Page S760]]

Inflation Reduction Act's MADE in America Act so that the MADE in 
America Act and Produced in America Act will now also include Japan and 
their production, will now also include Germany and their production.
  May I just say to you, one of the largest new North American battery 
manufacturers for EV just got moved to Canada, not the United States--
so much for ``past administrations have fought to get around it, but 
not anymore.'' This administration is working around the MADE in 
America, Buy American Act right now for green energy. Where did they 
get their supplies and their critical minerals? It is not from the 
United States; it is from China.
  In the energy environment--while I am still talking through that as 
well--the Willow Project has been talked about greatly with Alaska and 
saying that now ConocoPhillips is going to be able to produce off three 
platforms more oil coming from Alaska. That is good, by the way. We 
have a steady supply of oil that can come for a very long time from 
Alaska, and it has been blocked off over and over and over again, when 
the law states that property is set aside for energy production.
  But in the process, the Biden administration not only allowed three 
platforms to start producing oil, but then they blocked off 3 million 
new acres from production--3 million.
  There was recently, in the United Arab Emirates, a set of meetings in 
the Middle East dealing with the Abraham Accords. It is interesting, 
when I am traveling around that absolutely beautiful country and 
seeing the wealth that is there, I couldn't help but think, this is 
what Alaska would look like if the Federal Government would actually 
allow energy production there like there is energy production in the 
UAE. But our Nation won't allow it. Instead, we are still buying from 
other nations rather than allowing full production on our own. You 
can't make this stuff up.

  If you talk to a developer right now, they will tell you it is very 
hard to develop new neighborhoods and new locations because they can't 
get transformers, those little boxes that sit on the edges of 
neighborhoods. Some of those are the transformers that are up high. 
Those transformers have a 99.55 percent efficiency--99.55 percent 
efficiency. I wish I had that layer of efficiency.
  The Biden administration just put out new rules for those 
transformers--that are very hard to get right now because they are 
back-ordered--to add a 0.1 percent new energy efficiency requirement on 
them. Remember, they are already 99.55 percent efficient. They want 
them to be 99.65 percent efficient, so they are moving just that little 
decimal right there. To do that, it is going to slow down production of 
the transformers again--could be up to 16 months slower--and it will 
increase the cost by hundreds of millions of dollars.
  So when your electricity bill goes up and they are not able to 
continue building an expansion, that is not the fault of your electric 
company; that is the fault of your Federal Government right now so they 
can brag about increasing production by 0.1 percent on something that 
is already 99.55 percent efficient.
  Put this on top of the Biden administration's new exploration to be 
able to cut off gas stoves. They initially announced from two different 
Agencies that they are going to try to end gas stoves in America and 
then quickly pulled that back and only said: Oh, no, we are just going 
to study gas stoves in America, and we are going to look at trying to 
be able to shut those off in the future, but we are not going to do 
that right now leading up to the election because there are millions 
and millions of people who use gas stoves, which, by the way, have been 
studied for years across the country.
  This is not an issue about particulates in the house; this is an 
issue about an administration that doesn't care about the cost to the 
consumer, as long as they can say they got their way.
  It is the same exact issue on the EPA's heavy-duty electric vehicle 
emissions rule. That rule is rightly being addressed by my colleague 
from Nebraska, who is going after a very simple thing that the EPA is 
trying to be able to do in this Biden administration that will raise 
the cost of trucks up to $8,000 per vehicle. Listen, there are a lot of 
long-haul folks who cannot afford $8,000 per vehicle just to be able to 
follow a new Biden administration policy.
  Listen, I put all these things together because as I read the news 
and as I go through the different things that I go through on a daily 
basis and be able to read through things, at some point, I look at it, 
and I think, Who says this makes sense? Where are these things coming 
from? If I pull any one of these out and put them in front of the vast 
majority of people in Oklahoma and ask, Is this the direction the 
country needs to go, they will say no.
  This Senate needs to talk about the direction the Nation is going 
when you put controls around Agencies, that they just can't make up the 
rules based on their own preferences.
  This is not just an issue for our consumers; this body had a wake-up 
call this weekend when we watched China broker a deal between Saudi 
Arabia and Iran, and the U.S. State Department was not at the table 
because our foreign policies are collapsing around the world. That is a 
threat to American national security. It is not just an absence of 
American policy making a difference, it is an absence of our American 
values. When China's values are on the move worldwide, that is not a 
safer world that we are living in. We need to shift the direction this 
is going. And it needs to be soon.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Nebraska.