Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.
It's time now for our visit with Senator James Lankfort and a senator A
good morning to you today, very good morning to you as well. What's
going on in Washington, DC? It just seems like there's a lot a
lot of things going on in a lot of different directions. Kind of spill
it out here for us. It is actually what I jokingly say that people
Congress can do three things at once, We cannot do fifty things at once.
When you get to fifty things at once, people start locking up and
saying, I just don't know which way to be able to work. My
focus is trying to be able to push people towards saying, focus on what's
in front of you. Let's get that checked off. Then we've got another
one right behind it. But then we've got a lot that's actually going on.
Next Friday is the end of the fiscal time, which means we have
a threat of a government shutdown, which means we're working through how to be
able to keep the government open as well as try to get us on a
new trajectory to start reducing or spending and improving our debt and deficit. It's
all happening right now. There's a lot of work happening on Israel and what
are we going to do to be able to stand with our ally Israel.
There's a lot of work happening right now on border security, and that's a
main focus that I'm working on, actually a ranking member on the committee that
handles border security. This in there, I've worked on lots and I'm working
through trying to be able to get the administration to say, if we're focusing
on other nations and their national security, we need to be focusing on our
nation and our national security at the same time, and trying to get significant
policy changes to improve the situation at the border dramatically, so that in a
million other things. There's just a lot that's happening right now. Let's kind
of digest this down a little bit. You see the clock is ticking once
again. Nothing new in Washington, DC. But you've been working so hard
with different pieces of legislation to make sure that these government shutdowns never happen again.
It is actually so about five years ago I was sort of working through
in a bipartisan away because in the Senate you've got to resolve things in a
bipartisan a way. That is the requirement of the Senate to try to find
a way that I can get Republicans and Democrats both on boards in government shutdowns,
but keep the debate going. We can't ignore the problem, but we
shouldn't have. For instance, right now, members of the military that wouldn't
be paid that they're literally deployed to the Middle East, making themselves ready and
available for the country at that moment if they needed, but their families are
back home trying to pay the bills and raise kids and everything else. So
at this moment, next week, it could be that we've got members of
the military deployed that are sitting on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean contacting their
family and saying, hey, if there's a government shutdown, let's talk about
how to be able to pay the mortgage and pay the rent, and you
know, all of those things that should not be We've got to find a
way to be able to fight about our debt and deficit without saying we're going
to hold the paychecks of all the federal workers and all the members of the
military at the same time. So I know there's some folks that just think
running into a shutdown is a glorious experience. It's not if you're a member
of the military and you're deployed. It's not if you're on the border patrol
and you're not getting paid work in overtime hours. It's not if you're trying
to get a permit from some federal agency so you can do construction or work
on a mine or whatever it may be, and you can't get that.
It's not a glorious experience. It's a problem, and it's a significant problem
that you can't fix. Only Congress can fix. So my answer to this
has been we've got to actually hold American people harmless, hold federal workers and
members in the military are unless, but force members of Congress to stay in
session seven days a week, no travel. We're all here working on just
appropriations that locks us into only those type of bills, and we're here seven
days a week until we get it resolved. I mean, the simplest thing.
If you don't finish your class work, you've got to stay after school
to be able to finish it. That's all it is. But the focus
is we got to get the pressure off members of the military and their families
and actually put the pressure on members of Congress. Another thing that's been getting
a lot of people's attention too is our southern border, and you've been watching
that like a hawk that we've been hearing a variety of different numbers of people
on terrorists watch lists that have been coming over and seemingly it's like, whatever,
that can't be, No, it should not be. We've had about
one hundred and fifty that have actually been arrested that are caught on the terror
watch list. They were not released in the country. But we've had seventy
thousand, seventy thousand in the last two years that are coming from areas where
there's known terrorism, but they weren't on our terror watch list, but we
had no criminal history on them. We just didn't know they were released into
the country. And the challenge is if one percent of those folks, one
percent of those folks actually had terroritized knowing that they come from terror areas we
just don't have any background on. That's seven hundred terrorists that are in our
country. It's just an enormous number that this administration seems to be very flippant
saying everything's gone fine. So far, so it must not be a problem
ignoring DUIs that have happened in our country, people not legally presenting, boring
all the criminal issues that have occurred, ignoring all the drug issues that have
occurred. Now, the folks that are coming across, not all of them
or even most of them, are involved in criminal activity, but they did
have a crossing that was not legal. They were working with cartels in a
criminal organization to actually get across the border. And now they're indebted to cartels
while they're in the country, so they're either paying up or working for the
cartels once they're actually here. That is a huge problem for us as a
country. So I've been just bringing not only facts and figures to people.
But here's how you solve it. We have to change the way we do
asylum. We have to change the way that we do our screening. We're
not trying to be unkind or unfair to any individual that's coming across. We're
just doing something crazy called enforcing the law of the United States. That doesn't
seem to be a radical concept to me, but for whatever reason, my
Democrat colleagues are squeamish about enforcing the law because their base is all about allowing
as many people that want to come into the country to come. My focus
has been I don't mind legal immigration. I just have a huge problem with
illegal immigration, unchecked immigration, unvetted immigration. That's a whole different issue than
allowing legal workers to be able to come in or people that want to be
able to come and be an American to go through the legal process. So
I'm actively in negotiation with multiple Democrats to sit down and figure out how do
we actually solve this and to move them off of I'm squeamish about solving the
border issue. To actually solving the border issue. Again, it's the Senate.
I've got to have sixty votes to be able to move it, so
I means they've got to work with both parties. I can't impose this,
but I do have a real solution that I've set in front of my Democrat
colleagues and saying this would solve the problem. Let's work together, and we're
talking serious. We're talking to you as Senator James Lankfort and Senator you've been
working on something that effect virtually every family, and that is prescription drug costs.
And you know, whether you're a parent and you've got a child that
maybe has a special need where they might to need insulin or something, or
perhaps if you're a senior, st isen't like me, or it seems like,
well pick one, let's go to the medicine cabinet. Yeah, it's
it's a really big issue. It's not just costs, it's also availability.
People will hear that they've got a friend that has access to a certain drug,
and they'll say, well, I don't have access to that. How
come I can't get access to that. It's less expensive on your plan than
it is on my plan. I can't even get it on my plan.
So we're working through I had a hearing yesterday that was a culmination of literally
years of work of working on the issue of prescription drugs. So yesterday we're
dealing with mental health issues, telehealth issues, rural hospitals, and making sure
that they can be stabilized in the way they do reimbursements for rural hospitals.
I've been working on all those, but also this issue of what's called pharmacy
benefit managers. They're the behind the scenes group behind all these independent pharmacies that
are out there that are literally choking off the funds to independent pharmacies. Your
pharmacist is not the one that's setting those prices. That is actually a pharmacy
benefit manager that's behind the scene and insurance companies. We're working to make sure
that that pharmacist can actually sell you cheaper drugs on it and to be able
to get access to those on different formularies. And that's been an enormous battle
with drug companies and all the behind the scenes groups to be able to get
to yesterday and a bill that I've had that we actually what's called marked up
in a committee, went through the process, and then we're still trying to
be able to finalize that out, get it to the floor, and get
it done. But this is a really significant change in the way we do
drugs, opening up more opportunities for independent pharmacies across rural America and even urban
America, for independent pharmacies to be out there, and then also greater availability
in a cheaper price for drugs. And this is just increasing competition. This
is not a bunch of government mandates to control the price. If you increase
competition in America, an opportunity more drugs will come in there of a lower
price and we'll drive down the price. We've already seen that, and the
big companies are cutting it off. We're just going to block how they're cutting
it off. And as Senator Lank gret afl Clomans want to talk to you,
they got a question our comment. How do they reach you? You
know there are a bunch of folks reach out all the time, and so
glad to be able to have that kind of conversation with myself and my staff
to be able to talk to the issues and go to Langford dot Senate,
dot gov, that's gov Langford, dot cent and dot gov. On that
website. It's got my phone number, it has email addresses, it has
a sign up for our e newsletter. It even as a physical address.
If you still own a stamp and want to be able to send something to
us, you can do that. We can also go on the social media
platforms at Senator Langford all the social media. I would just encourage you.
Don't believe everything you read on social media, but you're glad to be able
to check out and you'll be able to see what we're working on right now.
Senator thank you for very much. As always, you bet good.
It is what you gain