The presiding officer duly noted. Mr. Lankford mr. President , i want to be able to address this body to talk about an issue that we dont talk about enough, the deficit. Its an issue for whatever reason weve stopped talking about in washington, d. C. Were talking about tax policy, as we should. Were talking about Disaster Relief areas, which we should. Talking about health policies, which we should. A lot of other things. We have stopped talking about debt and deficit. I think thats a mistake for us. See, as the trend has moved, since 2011, at a high point when the deficit spending that year was 1. 3 trillion in overspending in a single year. Since that point, deficits have gone down a little bit each year until 2015. In 2016, our deficit number, thats a single year overspending started going back up. It went up in 2016. It went up again in 2017. Turning the wrong direction. As you will recall and as many people in this body would recall, deficits were a major topic for us starting in 2010. And each year, congress was trying to find ways to be able to reduce the deficit. That doesnt seem to be the issue anymore. What i bring is a set of solutions and a set of ideas. How do we get out of this . Are there Bipartisan Solutions to actually deal with deficit overspending . There are a priority of things that we need to spend money on. We should spend money on those things. The things that are nonessential for us are things that we would all find some way to agree, hey, theres a better way to be able to spend our dollars, we should. So this week, i have produced our third annual federal fumble book. We call it 100 ways the federal government has dropped the ball. None of these should be all that controversial, although we wont agree with all of them, but they are simple ways to be able to look at what the federal government is doing, what they are not doing, where they are spending, where they are overspending and where additional oversight is needed. There is no problem in this country that cant be solved, and certainly our deficit is an issue that cant be solved. Its going to make a have a decision made by each of us that this is actually important and were going to try to resolve this and try to get us back toward balance. I lump all these issues from this book back into a whole series of different process things because each one of the 100 things that we identify are not just stand alone. They are part of a bigger problem. So i have put them together into budget process reforms, grant process reforms, allowing more transparency into how decisions are made and what decisions have been made, and i would say as well senate rule changes that are going to be needed to be able to resolve any of these issues. So we have put these together in these four big blocks to be able to say what are we actually dealing with . Let me just give you a couple ideas of things. If were going to actually deal with some of the budget issues, were going to have to actually deal with the budget process. Were not going to get a better product until we get a better process. Since 1974, the budget act has only worked four times. Four times. And every year, the American People say over and over again what just happened, how come were back in this budget fight, how come its at the end of the year, how come its not resolved . Because we have a bad process, thats why. Our process is not constitutional. Its the product of the law that was put in the budget act. We need to be able to change that. I think there are some basic ways to be able to resolve that. I like to do budgeting and appropriations every two years. That would give us more time to be able to do more oversight. That would give us more time to do floor debate on it to walk through this. There are multiple areas that need to be resolved. Things that need to be done if were actually going to get budget work done. In the meantime, we need to be able to push through what we can with the greatest efficiency, but for the long term, we are going to have to fix a broken process that we have. We should fix the grantmaking process. There has been a lot of pressure to be able to move dollars towards grants because now we have put more and more restrictions on contracting. So because there are very few restrictions on grants, a lot of agencies are now spending more on grants than they are on contracting, and they are pushing dollars out the door with very little supervision. We have got to work on transparency. Im ashamed to say for six years i have pushed on a very simple bill called the taxpayers right to know. It has passed unanimously in the house two different years. It comes over to the senate, and it gets tied up. The taxpayers right to know is very simple. It asks every agency to list everything they do. What a shocking thing that would be, to actually know everything that every agency does. To be able to see what they do, what they spend on it, how many employees they allocate to it, and how many people they serve. Every business in america can give you a list of everything that they do except for the federal government. We cannot. We should. It would give the opportunity for agency heads to find out before they start a program to know if someone else already does it in the federal government. Ive talked to multiple agency individuals now under two different president s that had said they started a program, got it developed, committed people to it, and then a couple of months or years later determined somebody else is already doing it. Even our agency folks dont know what the other agencies are doing. This should be a simple, straightforward solution to be able to help our agencies and to be able to help all of us do greater supervision over the budget. And the fourth thing is, deal with senate rule changes. If we dont solve the issue of our nominations, we will never be able to get actual legislation on the floor and get back to debate again. We have stopped debating on major bills. We have stopped debating on small bills because it takes so much time, its easier just to not do it at all. Thats not what the American People sent us here to do. When we say the senate cannot debate a topic, no one can believe it. That rule doesnt get better based on inactivity. It gets better when we actually fix the basic problem that we have, and that is get us back to debate, solve the nomination process, and lets actually get this resolved. Now, saying all that, all of the things that are in this book this year are things that myself and my staff and my team, Derek Osborne who has led all the compilation of this on my team have put together this basic package to say here are a hundred items. Quite frankly, i would hope that all 100 senators could go through budget areas, and everybody could find 100 items and could identify it and say lets compare a list then and say what are we going to do to be able to deal with debt and deficit . How are we going to deal with some of the spending and inefficiencies of the federal government . We will probably have 100 different lists, but i bet of the 100 different lists, we will find a lot of Common Ground and actually start to solve some things. What types of things did we find on our list this year . Let me give you some examples. The National Science foundation did a grant this past year to study the effect and how things are going for refugees in iceland. Now, im sure the country of iceland would like to know how its going for their refugees and maybe even the u. N. Would like to know, but im a little stunned that the National Science foundation used american tax dollars to study refugees in iceland. The National Endowment for the arts did a grant this past year to help pay for a a local Community Theater in New Hampshire and their performance of doggy hamlet. That is an outdoor presentation where a group of people are yelling and singing around a group of sheep and sheep dogs in an outdoor performance. Now, i have watched the performance. I look at the performance and think thats fine if the folks of New Hampshire want to do that performance. Im not sure why the people of oklahoma are forced through their federal tax dollars to pay for the production of doggy hamlet. The department of defense last year moved some equipment into kuwait to be able to give to the iraqi army, a billion dollars worth of equipment into kuwait to give to the iraqi army. Humvees, small arms, mortars. All thats fine is we are helping equip the iraqi army to allow them to be able to defend themselves. The problem becomes we lost track of them somewhere between kuwait and iraq. And d. O. D. Doesnt know what happened to a billion dollars of equipment after it was delivered to kuwait. The i. R. S. Has had multiple issues that we tried to identify in different segments of this. One is several years ago, we noticed that the i. R. S. Was rehiring employees that they had fired, employees that werent paying their income tax but were working for the i. R. S. Or employees that were using their position to spy on other americans and pull up their Tax Information just because of their own interests. Well, its a fireable offense of the i. R. S. , and it should be, to be able to violate some americans privacy, but the problem is the i. R. S. Has started rehiring those same people right back. I dont know of Many Companies that fire somebody, then later decide they will change their mind and rehire them, but apparently the i. R. S. Has become proficient at that. We identified it several years ago. The i. R. S. Said they would stop it. We checked on that last year. Guess what . The i. R. S. Is still doing it, rehiring employees they have fired, some of them even with their file stamped do not hire. Hired them anyway. We have got to be able to stop that. The i. R. S. Also did a study through a program that they have to be able to research tax compliance. Not changing tax rules. Just how are people complying with the tax rules . And evaluating are they paying the correct amount of tax . Quite frankly, our tax system is so incredibly complicated, its hard to be able to track what is the right amount, but the i. R. S. Should be able to look at and determine whether someone is paying the right amount based on those figures. The i. R. S. Has developed some programs to be able to recommend. The problem is they have not implemented those programs. Over 400 billion of taxes are never collected by the i. R. S. Because theyre not implementing the recommendations that they have already in front of them. The i. R. S. Has also had an issue. Were trying to be able to deal with, and along with several other incidences, by the way, whos alive and whos not alive. See, the Social Security administration keeps track of something called the death master file. It sounds wonderful, doesnt it . The death master file. But it basically says who has passed away in america and what Social Security number is not functional anymore. The i. R. S. Is not fully implementing that list, and at times is still sending checks to people that died years ago where some fraudulent person will take a Social Security number from someone who passed away, will file a return on that Social Security number in january or february, and the i. R. S. Is sending them a check simply because theyre not listing that this person has passed away and that Social Security number is not active. Theyre not the only one on that. We also aid identified for the snap program, what some people call the frap Program Still the food stamp program, the snap program, these false retailers using a false Social Security number that have passed away. Last year, over 2. 6 billion was sent out to snap retailers to Social Security numbers of people that have passed away or that are nonoperable. Those are things that are fixable. 2. 6 billion. Thats just fraud thats in the system. We have asked the question about immigration, and immigration has been an important topic here. We talk about immigration as well, and not just in the financial portion of it but in the fumble portion of things that are going wrong in immigration currently. Some folks in this body have even said we will just enforce the law as it is and build a fence, well be fine. The problem is right at 66 of the people that are in the country illegally came into the country legally with a legal visa but overstayed the visa. They never left. After 9 11, the be 9 11 Commission Said one of the major aspects to deal with immigration was to do an entryexit visa system so we would know when someone came in, who they were, and we would also know when they left. That was a recommendation from the 9 11 commission. Its still not been done a decade and a half later. If were going to deal with immigration, one of the key things we have to have is not just a wall or a fence or some sort of barrier, but its also trying to deal with when people come in and when they leave under legal visa systems. Ive heard comments about lets hire more birth Border Control s and more i. C. E. Folks. Im good with that. The current system, it takes 450 days to hire one person as a Border Patrol person because the process is so convoluted. 450 days. How would you like to apply for a job and you wouldnt hear back about it for a year and a half . 450 days. What if were going to add more immigration attorneys. We have a half a million person backlog in our Immigration Courts right now. What if we were to hire more judges to be able to handle that process . Great idea. Guess how long it takes to be able to hire more judges in the Immigration Court . 742 days right now to be able to hire a judge to be able to add to the Immigration Court. You see, our problems are not just immigration. They are structural problems in the federal government right now, in hiring, in oversight, in managing the reports. I mentioned the i. R. S. Not implementing world cup of the reports that they have. There is also an issue with some other agencies that will put on the back of the federal vehicles the number, like hows my driving, heres the phone number to call. What a great idea for a federal vehicle. The problem is when we looked at it, we found out that the agencies never actually read the reports that came in. So if people called in and said this particular car number is driving crazy, no one is actually looking at t. Its the fear that americans have that no one is really listening to me in the federal government. Clairp ra mccaskill and i worked at something to pass in this body on how are we going to solve this basic question. Can agencies ask how am i doing . When most of us get a rent car or a hotel room online, well get an email right after we check out of that room or stop using that rent car saying how is our service, is there any way we can improve . Did you know federal agencies cant do that or its become so complicated that they cant produce a simple threequestion esurvey to be able to send out to people to say how are we doing in Social Security, disability, how are we doing in vet rarns administration veterans administration, hud assistance to you. The reason for that is the paperwork reduction act of all things, an old law that was supposed to help us is actually in the way of us now in the modern age trying to do basic surveys. We need to be able to resolve that. And thats something this body can lead out to be able to change. There are a lot of things we want to just be able to identify and say we can do better. This is our list. Quite frankly, this is our to do list for the next year, just like the previous two volumes have been. And weve seen some things that weve been able to accomplish over the last couple of years from previous federal fumble books. But you cant get started on them until you actually identify them and say thats a problem. How are we going to fix it. Our simple question for the rest of this body is, heres our list. Whats yours . What are the things that were working on . What are the things that were going to actually get done and say weve solved for the American People . What are the crazy stories and the things that were wasting money on that if we only identified it and said lets stop that, we could and would. Lets do it together. Theres no reason reducing the deficit should have to be an issue thats become a partisan issue. Deficit and growing debt affects every single american. So lets work on it together. And lets stop finding ways that we dont work on it and find areas of Common Ground where we can work on it. Lets fix inefficiencies in federal government hiring. Lets fix inefficiencies in our system. We have a tremendous number of great federal employees that are all around the country that work extremely hard for the American People every day and do great work, but are trapped in a system that slows them down, that prevents them from being as efficient as theyd like to be. Lets help them out by fixing the broken things that are in these agencies and systems. Lets set them free to be able to serve people the way they want to be able to serve people. There are things that we can do. Lets get busy doing it. If youre interested in knowing more about the fumble federal fumbles, go to our website. The whole list is there for any office thats here. Well send you a copy over. Better yet, well sent you a link to our website because its even cheaper and you dont have to print it off. You can look at it online. The issue of the day for us is lets find what your list is. Weve started ours. Mr. President , with that i yield the floor. A senator mr. President . The presiding officer the senator from hawaii. Ms. Hirono mr. President , the judges donald trump appoints to lifetime positions on our federal court will be a lasting legacy, and he is determined to do what ever it takes to place as many nominees with an ideologically driven agenda on the bunch as possible. Today the senate is debating whether to give Gregory Katsas a lifetime