Senator Lankford Supports Funding Bills in Committee

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) today voted in favor of fiscal year 2020 appropriations bills to fund Interior, Environment, & related agencies; the Commerce, Justice, Science, & related agencies, Homeland Security; State, Foreign Operations, & related programs; and the Legislative Branch in the full Senate Appropriations Committee. The bills passed the Committee with bipartisan support and now head to the Senate floor for full consideration.

“Today the Senate Appropriations Committee continued our important work to provide specific funding to federal programs including for the Departments of Homeland Security, Commerce, State, and Interior,” said Lankford. “As we continue to work toward addressing deficit spending, eliminating duplication, and addressing waste and fraud of federal tax dollars, we should continue to do the work of keeping our government functioning. The House continues to turn basic federal funding conversations into long-term partisan stand-offs. We should address spending in a bipartisan manner and come together to solve our differences to avoid another unnecessary and costly government shutdown that hurts federal families and wastes federal tax dollars. We should work to pass my bipartisan Prevent Government Shutdowns Act to permanently take government shutdowns off the table.”

The bills passed in Committee today included several provisions Lankford worked on such as:

• maintaining a pay freeze for all Members of Congress that prohibits Members from receiving a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for fiscal year 2020
• encouraging the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) to notify local law enforcement when possible when a felon in their jurisdiction tries to buy a firearm and encouraging ATF to notify and utilize the help of local law enforcement when retrieving firearms from those who fail a National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) check
• providing additional funding for immigration court judges to process immigration cases, E-Verify, the border barrier, additional Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention beds, and several other immigration-related areas in need of additional resources
• continuing and increasing funding to combat human trafficking in Indian Country
• prohibiting funds for federal programs that do not protect against pornography on their networks
• encouraging consistency and oversight in the Indian Health Service’s Joint Venture Construction Cycles
• requiring a report to detail the Bureau of Indian Education’s implementation of Lankford’s Johnson O’Malley Modernization Act
• funding for criminal investigation services on unsolved missing and murdered indigenous women and an oversight report on streamlining data collection
• funding for the modernization of oil and gas records with oversight compliance on the management of Indian energy resources
• funding for the operations of the Senate and other entities under the Legislative Branch
• funding for the US Geological Survey (USGS) Cooperative Matching Funds

Lankford serves on the Homeland Security, State & Foreign Operations, and Legislative Branch Subcommittees and also serves on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

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