All Things With Kim Strassel: Inside the 119th Congress with Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford
26:46 Share

From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is All Things with Kim Strassel, a Potomac Watch podcast. ♪

Welcome to All Things with Kim Strassel, a Wall Street Journal opinion podcast and a Happy New Year to all of our listeners, first timers and veterans. And I am delighted to say that we get to start 2025 with a man who will be in the center of the coming congressional action in the Senate, which is about to tackle confirmations, reconciliation, appropriations,

Senator James Lankford, Republican from Oklahoma and the new vice chair of the Senate GOP Policy Committee. Senator, congratulations, I think, and welcome to the show. I'll take the I think congratulations. Welcome to a new year as well. Senator, it's obviously a great time of opportunity for Republicans. You have

officially now taken back the House and the Senate. On Monday, Congress certified Donald Trump's victory as president and he will be sworn in the week after next. So, unified control. Yet the sheer volume of the work facing Congress is really quite eye-popping and in the Senate in particular. And that's because you guys are in the additional business of personnel.

You have hundreds of Trump nominees to confirm. And I wanted to ask you this, just in terms of the dynamic. Donald Trump set this land speed record getting his picks named. One month after his election, he'd named more than 100 nominees, which was more than twice the pace of prior transition teams. All 15 of his cabinet level heads in just 18 days.

And I wanted to ask you about having seen this before, what you think that kind of flood the zone, very early approach to this means for the nomination process in terms of the way the press ended up covering them or the way the opposition looked at them. Has it made a difference? How does that affect what's now coming?

I think a couple of things on it. One, it shows the pent up energy he's had for four years. He's been ready to get back to work to be able to get on this and he's had people in mind. And so it wasn't a matter of someone else doing a bunch of interviews and then bringing them to him. And then he does a set of interviews and puts them out. I think he already knew who he wanted to be able to put in different spots, who he already trusted. He was looking for people that were loyal to him, people that were competent and people that were disruptors. I mean, that's really what he was looking for. And it's very clear. And when he knew who it was,

he launched them out there and put them out there as fast as possible. Now, the challenge is we've got to get FBI background check information. They've got ethics reports they've got to fill out. They've got all this background information. They've literally got to gather everything they've ever written in any place, every interview they've ever done and put it all in one giant sheet and then to be able to go through all these things. And so there's a ton of that that literally bogs down the process. But you're right. He was very rapidly putting people out. And I think it's very helpful. Do you think it made a difference in terms of how

The opposition, as it were, dealt with these two. I just have a memory of past nominations, you know, and they would choose one person and sort of focus in on them and then really go all out to try to derail their nomination. But it almost felt as though there were so many people pouring out, they didn't know where to put their fire.

- Yeah, every day they were attacking a new person that meant the person yesterday that they were attacking, they've got to move on to the next person that they're attacking. That did have a real effect as it went through. And you saw for some, like for Matt Gaetz, when that came out, he was one of the very first ones that came out on it. Lots of focus, lots of attention, lots of ethical challenges there. And the president quickly made a shift

and said, I'm moving on to Pam Bondi. We've heard nothing attacking on Pam Bondi. It's been incredibly positive on Pam Bondi. It's interesting that it seems like no one's even talking about the whole attorney general issue at all anymore. Yeah, it's fascinating. I'm just wondering if it's a new model that future presidents might follow. It seemed like a very smart move on his part. You sit on

the Senate Finance Committee, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. Who are you looking forward to for a couple of these nominations hearings? - We've got a lot of folks here because of what I said on with the Finance Committee, that's not only Treasury, but that's gonna end up being all the tax issues and trying to be able to deal with new leadership for IRS. But we've also got RFK Jr. dealing with HHS.

So, yeah, there's quite a few. I've already met with a ton of folks. But I also sit on Homeland Security, which deals with Kristi Noem in DHS, but also will deal with Russ Vought in the Office of Management and Budget. So we have not only the personnel issues and the process issues, but also the national security issues. We'll deal with the new Secret Service leadership. We'll deal with new leadership in FEMA on that committee. We'll deal with John Ratcliffe for CIA and Tulsi Gabbard for ODNI.

So yes, there's quite a few of those folks that are running through the three committees that I'm actually on. Yeah, and I'm always fascinated because they often get overlooked, but those personnel people that you mentioned like OMB, they're going to be crucial given the DOGE effort and other things to try to cut back government. Yep, the Office of Management and Budget is what I call the most important office no one's ever heard of.

because every regulation that's done has to go through Russ Vought. Every time that they actually do efficiency has to go through that office. All the personnel issues for the millions of federal employees all go through that office. It is the most important office no one's ever heard of. - Well, I share your geekiness for that. I'm completely fascinated by OMB.

OK, just quick question of those 15 cabinet picks he made cabinet leaders. What number do you think get through? It could be all of them, actually. It'll be interesting to see. I don't hear anyone really coming up publicly and saying I'm adamantly opposed. What I hear is a lot of people saying, hey, I want to give a fair hearing. I want people to be able to answer questions publicly. I mean, there are issues. Let me give you, for instance, that people aren't talking about. Tulsi Gabbard with the Office of Director of National Intelligence.

For that role, she has voted against what's called 702 authority every time that she was in Congress and voted against it.

Well, now she's got to be the spokesman for 702 authority. It's a legitimate question just to say, OK, how are you going to handle this? What does that mean? Because if she comes out and says, no, I want to oppose all 702 authority, that literally shuts down all of our national defense gathering. Now, I don't think that's what she's going to say at all. And I've had an opportunity to be able to sit down with her. But she's going to get a fair hearing to be able to put those things out there and to say, this is what I believe about these issues. And I think it's the right thing to do. Yeah, it's a good way to frame it.

Today we're talking on Tuesday. Tomorrow, Donald Trump is apparently coming to meet with Senate Republicans to talk about this reconciliation strategy. And he came out over the weekend, the debate that's going on here, and I recognize it's a process debate. Everybody's got the same goals for an end place. It's how you get there.

And Senator John Thune has advocated for a two-step process, a quick early reconciliation bill that deals with border and energy, maybe some defense dollars, and then a second later one to deal with more thornier questions of tax policy.

And Donald Trump, however, this weekend, Mike Johnson suggested they favored a one bill approach, throw it all in one bill. Of course, the merits of reconciliation is that you can pass it with 51 votes, overcome Senate filibuster, as it were. What do you think the thinking is right now going on? Because Donald Trump seemed to walk that back.

a little bit on Monday. Where do you think you guys end up on Wednesday? Do you have a particular approach that you advocate? All right, so let me back in and give a little more context. I think we get it all done. Now it becomes the issue of it's one step or two step, but I do think we get immigration work done with the funding issues.

That's not policy, that's funding issues, the permitting issues for energy that we can make those changes on, some of the healthcare changes that need to be made. I mean, there are some of those key aspects that need to be done as well as tax policy. So we do get it done, then here's the challenge that you're exactly outlaying.

is one step or two, really it boils down to what can the House get done? The Senate can do either. What can the House get done? And what you hear is people saying, well, let's just do it in one step. What they're quietly saying is, I don't think the House can do two. Their margin is so close. There's a significant group of people with differences of opinion, welcome to the House of Representatives, and quite frankly, the United States of America, that there are differences of opinion, even among Republicans or even among Democrats,

trying to get a large body to agree on two separate bills. It's easier to be able to say you really care about border. You really care about energy. You really care about the economy in this area. You really care about taxes. There's something in that for all of you have one bill. That's what the focus is for the House. The Senate, with a 53 vote margin, care strongly about all these issues, have strong opinions on it.

But I think we could easily do two or we could do one. It's what can the House get done is, by the way, easier, more efficient to do, too, because we can get the first one done very rapidly, put some points on the board for President Trump that he is immediately moving on some of his priorities, get some of those dollars in place for national defense, those dollars in place for border security, those things for energy security, get those done quickly and then move on the tax bill, which is more complicated.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, more with Senator James Lankford.

Welcome back. I'm Kim Strassel with All Things with Kim Strassel here with Oklahoma Senator Jim Lankford. My worry on one is that just your point about timing is that you'd like to put some points on the board. There is no way this is getting done in a couple of months. No way. Yeah, no way. I mean, I watched the last tax reconciliation bill in 2017. It took them an entire year to get everybody on board, if not a little bit longer. It was a huge lift.

And so that's my concern on the other direction. When you looked at the House, your unity point, though, is very good. How concerned are you when you look, for instance, at that very close speaker vote? Do Republicans understand nothing's getting done unless they all come together?

Yes, they definitely agree and they definitely understand that. And everyone sees it. If we don't do something on taxes, there's a $4 trillion tax increase, $400 billion a year that comes starting January the 1st of next year. Everybody sees that boogeyman sitting out there saying that that has to be avoided. The question then becomes where, okay, what happens with the SALT deduction?

because there are some folks, especially around New York, that have said salt is the biggest issue for them in that area, and they ran on it, and they want to be able to do something with it. And someone else says, you know what? We don't want to have pay-fors for all of our different tax pieces. Or someone else demands that we have to have it. Tax policy, once you get into it, is extremely complicated, very detailed work. And of the, let's say, 218 Republicans that we will need to be able to pass it in the House,

Right now, the last time we passed a tax bill in 2017, only 80 of them were there. So that means two thirds of whoever the Republicans are to vote on a tax bill, this will be their very first time in their whole congressional career to vote on a tax bill. So this is a lot of people getting up to speed on a lot of issues that are very complicated and trying to be able to do that, let's say by May, is a big lift.

That is a crazy number. I had not heard that and now I'm even more scared, but thank you for enlightening me. You're welcome. One more thing to stay awake at night thinking about.

The other thing, of course, here is that adding to this is not just questions over policy and potential divisions, but you have so much other work to do. We talked about nominations. Congress back in December punted this year's appropriations to March 14th. That's something that's going to have to be sorted out. The other thing that is now coming up, I think much to my chagrin,

is all these Biden midnight regulations that are flowing out. Now, you guys will have an opportunity, at least for some of them, to use a Congressional Review Act vote to try to overturn them. And you'll have a president this time that if you manage it would actually sign that so you could get rid of some of that. But we most recently saw this. He's now put out a moratorium on oil drilling in vast portions of offshore areas.

New rule on tankless water heaters fueled by natural gas. A new rule today finalized by the CFPB on medical debt. How concerned are you that this administration is, this doesn't seem like finishing up a term. It seems like active sabotage or roadblocks.

It is, and it's deliberate. There have been multiple statements put out by White House folks saying, "We're writing this and doing this in such a way that it cannot be undone," which is wishful thinking on their part. There is no executive action that cannot be undone by the next executive, but it may take

depending on how they actually do it, a while to be able to unwind it. Most of them can be done with the Congressional Review Act, which just takes a vote of the House, the Senate, and the White House to be able to sign it. And so there will be a way to be able to overturn that. But then we've got Guantanamo folks that are released yesterday and sent to Oman, where they sent 11 folks out of Guantanamo to be able to release them to Oman. And they're saying they're going to try to get more out the door on it.

That's not something you can just turn around. We just released some pretty bad folks into the world and just hope that that turns out well. Those just can't be overturned quickly. Yeah, it's really disturbing. When you do some of these Congressional Review Act moves, do you expect to see any Democratic support in the Senate this time around? I mean, did they learn anything from this election? What are you hearing as you walk through the halls this time?

One way to find out if anyone learned from anything is just to be able to apply it in the days ahead. I do think there will be some engagement in some areas, especially on things like border security and on crime and some of the things on energy. There are quite a few areas, for instance, the hot water tank rule, dealing with hot water tanks. What in the world did they not learn from the backlash that when they told every person in every kitchen in America, you're not going to be able to get a gas range?

for your stove, everyone who loves cooking on gas freaked out on them and said, you've lost your mind. And they immediately pulled that back. They're about to experience the same thing in a hot water tank to say to everybody, okay, if you use gas hot water, we're about to take that away from you. Every house that's been plumbed for that's now going to have to be redone for electric. And you may have to have a different breaker installed to be able to handle that kind of

load that will come onto it and it's a sudden cost on every homeowner. And a lot of homeowners are going to say timeout. I think some Democrats will join us on that to say, hey, this is going to be a burden, especially on people in lower income, that they're going to have to have an electrician come out to their house and have all this because Biden didn't like it. That just doesn't work for people. Yeah. You know, call me unusual, but I'm actually most excited for Donald Trump to make my dishwasher great again and my refrigerator great again.

all of these appliance rules that came out during the Biden administration. Those might take some time to unwind, but I'm looking forward to it. Listen, I know people that get underground like dishwasher detergent that actually has all the old school dishwasher stuff in it. It has to be just sold under a different brand and they go in and get this like this actually cleans my dishes on it. Can you put me in touch with them? I need to be in on this underground market. I know a guy and I can connect you.

OK, we're going to take one more break when we come back. More on this upcoming Congress. From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is All Things with Kim Strassel, a Potomac Watch podcast.

Welcome back. I'm here with Senator James Lankford. You know, the Senate more broadly, we've just had the past four or five years, speaking of Democrats, all committing or nearly all of them committing to saying that they would abolish the filibuster. And yet my understanding is that by the end of this week, we could have a Senate vote on House legislation, in this case, the Lake and Riley Act.

This obviously has to do with Laken Riley, the 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student who was brutally murdered. The University of Georgia campus charged to Jose Ibarra, 26, who illegally entered the United States.

And this bill would require ICE to take custody of those who commit certain crimes and also give state attorney generals the right of action to sue. But I'm already hearing that Democrats are saying that they're likely to filibuster this. I thought they didn't like the filibuster. Yeah, that was the rumor. And it's been very interesting. I had some Democrats that even called me last evening. We were having this conversation about filibuster. They were surprised somehow that

John Thune came out so early and made a clear statement saying, no, we're going to protect the filibuster. You know, we we don't want to turn that off. And even the Democrats filibuster it. We're not going to try to override that and destroy that. So they were surprised to hear that. Why were you surprised? Thune has said that every year, including when Donald Trump was president before and Republicans at the House, the Senate and the White House.

We didn't try to take the filibuster out then, even when Democrats were challenging us. This is a basic American value that both sides need to be heard. The only place that that happens in government is in the United States Senate. It's incredibly frustrating when you're in the majority, but it's incredibly comforting when you're in the minority that grownups have to sit down and talk to each other like grownups.

And to be able to have hard dialogues and come to agreements like neighbors do every single day all across the country. But it's the one spot that it happens in government and it needs to be protected. And when Democrats talk about just throwing out the filibuster, they're really talking about throwing out a basic American value of people that disagree with each other being forced to sit down and come to common ground rather than running over each other. Yeah, totally agree. I think.

People don't understand that it's one of the basic things that also separates us from European parliamentary systems where you just end up having these policy swings back and forth every time a new party comes into office. It's not particularly good for stable democracy.

Speaking of the Senate, just more broadly and faces, and you mentioned Senator John Thune, the new face of the head of the Senate Republican majority. For the first time in 18 years, Republicans are having a new leader after Mitch McConnell. Obviously, McConnell had his strengths. He was a master strategist. Also, though, a little bit more ruling from the top.

How do you think things will change or stay the same under a majority leader, Thune? I think John Thune is going to reach out to more folks in committee chairs and is going to say, if you want to get something on the floor, get 60 votes for it. Go do the work. If you don't just come to the leader and people looked at McConnell and said, you know how to do strategy. And so what's going to come to the floor is going to be because the leader is going to try to work the strategy to get it.

soon I think is going to empower more of the committee chairs and to say, you've got something you passed in committee, go work with the other side, figure out how to get 60 co-sponsors on it. When you get that, we know we can pass it. We'll get on the floor. That's a very different, more open process to say to everybody, go do your work. And if you actually do your work, you have the opportunity to be able to get something passed. Don't expect just the majority leader to be able to do their work and get your stuff passed. Yeah, I absolutely agree. You hear a lot of

complaints often saying, well, you know, we don't get enough say, but doing the work is something that doesn't always get happen in Congress. I think that's a really excellent point, though, in terms of doing the work. You know, I can't tell you the last time and I maybe some people will find this boring as I geek out on process here for a minute, but I

I can't remember the last time I actually witnessed a fully functioning, for instance, conference between the House and the Senate on legislation. You know, one chamber passes something, the second chamber rubber stamps it. I guess I have two questions. One, is there a goal, as it were, to ramp up communication between Thune and Mike Johnson, between the two chambers, to kind of come up with a strategy? But two, do you see more of that

regular orderly process happening in terms of appropriations, in terms of House-Senate conferences, committees, conference meetings to come up with stuff. It's been, I think, something that's a huge frustration for many Americans that Congress doesn't seem to work in so many ways anymore.

Yeah, the system and the processes that were put in place, the 1974 Budget Act, all those things, none of that's functioning at all anymore. We're now in this ad hoc process of trying to be able to get things done instead of actually doing the process that was put in place. So I know Thune and Johnson are meeting face to face even today to be able to work through some issues on some things. They have a regularly scheduled meeting. Thune is also meeting with Schumer to be able to sit down and say,

you and I have to be able to sit down and be able to talk through things because if we're gonna move legislation, it still has to be 60 to be able to move it. So it's beneficial to have two leaders that disagree with each other to stay in regular contact. I think that's helpful as well. We'll see if there's actually conference meetings that happen between House and the Senate. I'm with you. I think I've seen two of those in 10 years.

in the Senate, that's not very many. So that's a big deal to be worked out and that there's been these separate processes saying we're gonna sit down behind the scenes and do it. But on the appropriation side, just to remind everybody, nine weeks from now, we have to get 12 appropriation bills passed.

nine weeks from now. None of those are done at this point because you can't just take last year's work. That was the old Congress. All of those bills died at noon on January the 3rd. So we have to start from scratch on nine new bills

or 12 new bills on appropriations in the next nine weeks that they have to be passed through committee, passed in the House, in the Senate, conference if they're going to be conference, and then passed. So there's going to be an ad hoc process, no doubt, because we literally don't have enough days in the week to be able to do that. At the same time, we're trying to get 100 nominees that are actually across the floor and all the different aspects that we're working on, on tax, on energy, on border security.

There's a lot in the next nine weeks. So everybody needs to block off March the 14th because that is a looming deadline sitting out there. Yeah, absolutely. Especially because I think there's a lot of members that don't want to see another omnibus or minibuses or whatever you call them. That was one of the reasons why this was pushed past December. Last question, just on a high note, because you mentioned earlier all the new faces in the house. Got a lot of

We have new faces in the Senate too. Republicans, Tim Sheehy from Montana, Bernie Moreno from Ohio, Dave McCormack of Pennsylvania. New Democrats too, Ruben Gallego from Arizona. Have you met some of these folks and what do you think they bring to the Senate?

Yeah, Dave McCormick, we were just chatting yesterday on things. Governor Justice, who we'll be leaving out from West Virginia and coming here as soon as his term is done there. He's another face that's joining us. There's a lot of new faces. They're bringing some good skills. The folks that came in on the Republican side have had the opportunity to be able to visit with more. I'm

meeting some of the Democrat folks to be able to sit down with them. Everybody comes to Congress with some experience on it. And it's a little bit different. It's always interesting to be able to hear from people, not only why did you come, but what do you plan to work on when you're here? For several of the Republicans that are here, it is the economy. I mean, that is their focus. The reason they're here is because they see the debt, they see the economic issues,

They're coming to say, we've got to be able to address those things because that's what everyone's talking about at home. And so it's been interesting for them to walk in in the rare year that we're doing tax policy and we're doing all these economic pieces. They will find out very quickly there aren't many years like what's about to happen in 2025 that happened in Congress to have this many economic issues all happen at one time. So they're coming and they're about to start drinking from the fire hose of issues that have to be resolved in the next five months.

Well, a real chance to do some work. And like we were talking about, that is, I think, the word American people want to hear when they're looking at Congress. Senator Lankford, thank you so much for coming in. We want to thank our listeners. We are here every week. If you like the show, you can hit the subscribe button. And if you'd like to write to us, you can at pwpodcast at wsj.com.