Oklahoma U.S. Sen. James Lankford’s campaign for federal budget reform took a few hits on Tuesday.
Several amendments Lankford has backed to improve federal the budgeting process could not make it out of a special committee hearing. The special committee voted in favor of the amendments but not by a big enough margin to pass them.
One proposal from Lankford and Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst would essentially force the Senate to stay in Washington when budgets and appropriations bills aren’t passed on time. Lankford said Congress has been looking for ways to stop using continuing resolutions and end government shutdowns.
"And the conversation has spun around those two items with bipartisan conversations, bicameral conversations, 'How do you do that? How do you end CRs, how do you end government shutdowns?'" Lankford said. "This is the way that bubbled out, that you create a mechanism where you stay to be able to finish the work."
An amendment Lankford has pushed offered by Georgia Sen. David Perdue would have aligned the federal fiscal year with the calendar year instead of Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.
"We do it already, we just have to do it with stopgap CR spending every single time to do that, which puts all of our contracting behind schedule year after year after year, and we lose the first quarter," Lankford said.
Lankford presented to the comittee an amendment that would have ended the practice of Changes in Mandatory Programs, like an ongoing $10 billion victims fund "gimmick."
"Instead of sending it out to rape victims, assault victims, their families, deal with criminal justice issues, we don’t spend that, though we say we’re going to. We hold and then spend that money somewhere else and pretend we spent it," Lankford said.
