Senator Lankford Votes to Advance Funding Bills in Committee

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) today voted in favor of the Fiscal Year 2020 Transportation-Housing & Urban Development, Agriculture, and Financial Services & General Government funding bills in the Senate Appropriations Committee. The bills passed out of the Committee with bipartisan support and now await further consideration on the Senate floor.

“Today the Appropriations Committee continued to advance bills to fund several important agencies with the federal government. Now they need to move to the full Senate,” said Lankford. “The FSGG bill provided additional funding for states for election security. However, I believe we must take additional legislative steps to streamline cybersecurity information-sharing between federal intelligence entities and state election agencies, expedite security clearances to state election officials, and ensure the auditability of elections so we are able to verify the results.

“One of Congress’s primary duties is to responsibly fund the government each year prior to the September 30 deadline. The House voted on hyper-partisan funding bills that they know will not pass the Senate or receive a signature by the President. The Senate should continue to work together in a bipartisan manner to ensure we do not face another unnecessary and costly government shutdown that hurts federal families and wastes federal tax dollars. I remain committed to pressing my colleagues in the Senate to reduce and eliminate deficit spending and remove budget gimmicks that look like spending reductions but are not. I look forward to the full consideration of these and other appropriations bills on the Senate floor.”

In summary these funding bills included provisions that:

• maintain conscience protections that prohibit the use of federal funds for abortions, protect religious liberty, and prevent federal funds from being used on computer networks that do not block pornography
• renew funding for the DC Opportunity Scholarship program, which provides parents in DC the ability to choose the best school for their children and move public funding with the student
• provide good government measures that ensure federal grant and contractor transparency, help reduce duplication, and prohibit federal research grants from being used for political purposes
• direct the Department of Agriculture to address the lack of performance measures in the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Loan Program and address duplicative conservation efforts with the goal of making these programs function more smoothly for constituents
• continue to delay the electronic logging device (ELD) requirements for agriculture haulers, which helps our livestock and agriculture industries
• direct the Department of Transportation to provide more transparency for grant selection processes so those competing for awards know that each application is reviewed fairly
• continue oversight of the ongoing investigation by the FCC into the Mobility Fund Phase II mapping rule violations
• require the collection of information on the status of managed-access technology and combatting contraband phones in state prisons
• provide oversight of SBA disaster loan programs
• provide funds for review of accounting standards by financial regulators for financial institutions
• fund programs for homeless assistance, Section 8 vouchers, and Native American housing programs.

Lankford serves on the Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee. 

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