today sworn in as the nation s 116th justice, and the first black woman ever to serve on the high court. her husband, dr. patrick jackson held two bibles on which she swore a family bible, and the court s harlan bible. a court federal appeals judge, jackson replaced justice stephen breyer, who stepped down today after three decades on the bench, justice breyer hired ketanji brown jackson as a clerk in 1999, making it a full circle moment when he administered the judicial oath to her today. a formal investiture for justice jackson is expected in the fall we can call her that now, justice jackson. taking her oath today allows her to begin her judicial duties. she arrives on the bench in the wake of several hugely polarizing decisions, issued by the court on abortion, gun rights, and today s ruling limiting the epa s authority to fight climate change. we are going to have much more on that ruling specifically, and on the future of the court, and its newest member just ahead. b
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 don t talk about enough, the deficit. it s an issue for whatever reason we ve stopped talking about in washington, d.c. we re talking about tax policy, as we should. we re 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 that s 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, that s 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
next, a preview of c-span s landmark cases from the national constitution center in philadelphia. welcome to the constitution center. i am the president of this wonderful institution which is the only institution in america chartered by congress to disseminate information about the u.s. constitution on a nonpartisan basis. beautiful. that is so inspiring. wonderful live c-span audience. you can see the great members of the national constitution center, like people around the country, are inspired by this nonpartisan mission of constitutional education and believe it is crucially important for citizens to educate themselves about the constitution so american democracy can thrive and survive. and in this educational mission, we are so excited to be partners with c-span. we had a wonderful collaboration a few years ago. landmark cases. which described the human stories behind some of the most important supreme court cases of all times. that series was inspired by a comment t
honesty and no naivete, and the way you helped conduct foreign policy during a period of enormous crisis in dwrunt states, constitutional crisis, people on the streets and dealing with one of the most intractable problems, i really must say it was an honor to serve with such great men, and thank you very much for sharing your perspective with all of us and putting it down for history. i think people can learn a lot from what you ve done for your nation. with that, thank you very much. [ applause ] president obama visits new orleans on thursday to mark the 10th anniversary of hurricane katrina. you can watch live coverage of the presidential visit beginning at 5:00 p.m. eastern time on c-span. president nixon appointed four justices to the supreme court and others who were rejected by is senate. kevin mcmahon is the author of nixon s court. justice antonin scalia makes introductory remarks a this the event that took place in the supreme court chamber. this is 45 minutes.
are open for business, we are working, we re doing the public work, work very well, i think. so there are two current members, i m the acting chairman. i m a republican. and i have my colleague, terrell mcsweeny, who s a democrat. but the thing to remember about the ftc is we are generally a bipartisan agency. we re an enforcement-oriented agency, so our rules allow us to have a quorum with as few as two commissioners, so that isn t affecting our work. but, of course, we have to reach agreement to take action. fortunately, most of the work that the ftc does is very much focused on real harms to consumers, fraud, we review mergers, we review antitrust issues, and those are areas where there is a lot of agreement. the other thing that s happening, you know, under hi leadership as chairman, i ve asked staff to go back and take a look at some of the things that we re doing that maybe need to be better focused or perhaps have a more limited impact on business or are our civil inve