Lankford Fights to Protect Oklahoma Small Businesses and Eliminate Government Waste

CLICK HERE to download Lankford’s remarks on Box.

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks on YouTube.

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks on Rumble.

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK), member of the Senate Finance Committee and Governmental Affairs Committees and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Caucus, went to the Senate floor to call out the burdensome Beneficial Ownership rule and highlight wasteful government spending.

Excerpts

Lankford Fights to Halt Burdensome Beneficial Ownership Rule:  “For over a year, I have worked to get rid of a rule that is driving every one of my small businesses in Oklahoma absolutely crazy. There are a lot of Americans that have no idea what the Beneficial Ownership rule is, but if you own a small business in America, you definitely know. To set the context for this, next week we’re supposed to take up the National Defense Authorization. In 2021, a small little section was stuck in at the end of the large National Defense Authorization that was called the Corporate Transparency and Beneficial Ownership Act. That little bill was supposed to root out money laundering and fraud. What it has become has been a nightmare for every business owner in my state.

…

“Thankfully, in the last 72 hours, a federal judge has stepped in and has halted this nationwide—has prevented the Biden Administration from actually implementing this rule that they created. In fact, this judge called this regulation ‘quasi-Orwellian.’ He also determined this, stating: ‘The government is unable to provide the court with any tenable theory that this regulation falls within Congress’ power. It appears likely unconstitutional.” I absolutely agree. I’m grateful this judge has stepped in to be able to stop its implementation. But I’m going to still ask this Senate to do the same thing we’ve asked all year, that is to stop it entirely. We should not be asking these questions of every small business in America. That is not our job to ask every small business owner in America to turn in who are the influencers on your decision making, or we will put you in prison for two years. What in the world? So I’m grateful for the stop, but we also will not stop until we actually pull this entire thing out.

Lankford Pushes for Solutions to Eliminate Government Waste: I also just left a meeting just now dealing with the newly named Department of Government Efficiency, where members of the House and the Senate gathered around Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and just asked questions of each other—what can we do to be able to make government more efficient? It shouldn’t be a partisan conversation. In fact, there are already Democrats that have joined us in this conversation. I find no one in my great state of Oklahoma that says, you know what I really want from my government? I want them to be inefficient. I want them to waste my money. I want my government to spend money on things that don’t really matter for the country. Every person that I meet in my state—Republican, Democrat, or Independent—all says the same thing. The government should do its job and not somebody else’s job. When you spend my money, spend it wisely. We all know we need roads. We all know we need national defense. We all know we need border security. There are key things that we all need to do, but there are some things that continue to be able to pop up or money is being spent, that there’s great frustration in my state and a great number of people that say, why are we spending money on that?

We spent money two years ago as federal tax dollars, and the people in my state of Oklahoma having to spend their hard-earned tax money on paying for drag shows in Ecuador. We had money that was spent on writing a book about humans, chimpanzees, and climate change in Sierra Leone. We spent some of our hard-earned tax dollars on doing a study about seatbelts and helmet usage in Ghana. The folks in Oklahoma ask a very simple question. We want the potholes fixed. We want efficient government. We want education taken care of. We want good schools. Why are we spending our dollars that are limited dollars on doing a helmet study in Ghana? Why are we doing that in the United States? Why aren’t we taking care of us?

It’s not that we’re selfish. It’s just that we all know we’re $36 trillion in debt. Every single year I put out a book called Federal Fumbles. Every year I bring it to this body. Every year we talk about inefficiency and waste in government. I’m grateful that there is a bipartisan conversation finally starting that is spreading among this body, in the House body, and now the new incoming executive branch saying, let’s find areas of efficiency where we can be better at this.

The basic goal is this—let’s have a prosperous nation that actually has economic growth and an efficient government that matches the efficiency of our nation. That shouldn’t be an irrational goal. That should be something we could all agree on. Quite frankly, it’s just Oklahomans saying, don’t waste my money. Spend in the ways that we’re supposed to spend it, and let me keep the dollars that I’ve earned.

###