James Lankford

Madam President, Procedure · 15 wordsreserving the right to object--I would like to reserve the right to object on this.Procedure Claims · 20 wordsMy friend came with a proposal to try to ban the sale and ownership of stocks by Members of Congress. Positioning · 10 wordsI am pretty confident of why this came up today, PositioningClaims · 247 wordsbecause earlier today, we had a vote in this body to ban Members of Congress from owning stock--or, I am sorry, buying and selling stock on it.¹ But it also included what the vast majority of Americans also want and that is voter ID. It is pretty simple and straightforward. It is a very short bill. It just mandated voter ID, and it also banned Members of Congress from buying and selling stock: short bill, straightforward, easy to read, uncomplicated language. Now, every one of my Democrat colleagues voted against that bill, ²and their complaint was: It is because it is going to rig elections if you require voter ID. Well, I would like to remind this body, the Chair, that 36 of our 50 states already have voter ID; ³exactly what we voted on. There is only 14 States that don’t, which means 72 Senators in this body already serve in a State that has voter ID. This is not a complicated, highly politicized, red versus blue issue. This is Americans that just say: Hey, we show ID to do everything. Why don’t we show an ID to vote? In fact, the vast majority of countries around the world are completely confused by Americans, that we don’t show ID to be able to vote, when most countries around the world do. It is not diminishing people’s right to vote. This is acknowledging the reality of where 36 States already are--red and blue--that we show voter ID. Reasoning · 5 wordsIt shouldn’t be an issue. Claims · 123 wordsBut this particular bill that is being brought today, and the response that Democrats voting against the bill earlier today, it is different. This is not just a ``can’t buy and sell stocks’’--which I, by the way, totally agree with. That is why I wholeheartedly voted for the bill earlier today.⁴ This one has some additional features in it that have not been discussed here on the floor that I think we should actually put out onto the floor. This bill itself also includes requirements for the Ethics Committee--which I happen to chair--which is a bipartisan, equally represented group here in the Senate that has to evaluate all this.⁵ So I am pretty attentive to bills that actually deal with this to know: Reasoning · 7 wordsHow are we going to implement this? Claims · 49 wordsSo this includes a requirement for small businesses and family farms and all those, that the Ethics Committee has to come and evaluate every single one of those from every Member to determine if there is going to be a conflict of interest from them owning a family farm. Procedure · 7 wordsSo let me give you an example.Procedure Claims · 62 wordsIf you own a family farm, you can’t be on the Agriculture Committee because that becomes a conflict of interest. So the Agriculture Committee in the U.S. Senate suddenly becomes a group of people that don’t know anything about ag because this bill would force them to divest from their family farm or it becomes a conflict of interest in the Senate. Reasoning · 32 wordsI, personally, don’t want everybody on the Ag Committee to not be farmers. I would like to have some farmers on the Ag Committee and some people that know something about this. Claims · 272 wordsIf you own a family-owned business that is not a family farm, that is just an LLC--which it is typical for most family businesses to be incorporated as an LLC--this puts an additional requirement on them on any kind of securities ownership, which is pretty common in an LLC that anyone who serves in this body that has a family business, multigenerational business, may have to divest from that to be able to come into the U.S. Senate. That would mean Senators can’t come from a small, family-owned business. That puts out a lot of Americans that suddenly wouldn’t be eligible to serve in the U.S. Senate. This bill also prohibits what is called a qualified blind trust.⁶ It is one of the most misunderstood aspects of this. A QBT--a qualified blind trust--any Senator that is here that has a stock portfolio that is larger has the ability to be able to take all of those assets, put it into a qualified blind trust, and they are prohibited by law from talking to that person that is actually doing all the investments. They can’t know what is in it; they can’t get updates on it; they can’t have any interaction. And it is called a qualified blind trust because we actually have to qualify that. In fact, the Ethics Committee actually engages with everyone who has a qualified blind trust and the person that is there to actually get all communications. So we literally monitor that to be able to make sure there is no interaction on that. Well, this bill would actually prohibit this. This bill would also prohibit digital assets.⁷ Reasoning · 13 wordsWell, I understand that for investment in cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and everything else, Claims · 295 wordsbut there is also a digital asset called stablecoins, and this body actually passed that.⁸ Stablecoins aren’t an investment piece; stablecoins are just a dollar in digital form. That is all that it is. This bill would prohibit Members of the Senate from actually having a digital dollar because it would be now considered a new investment asset, when it is not an investment asset at all. I wish this bill would have gone through committee. There is a lot we could have discussed in committee to be able to work this through. But this bill skipped all the committees and has had no hearing in committees to actually talk through it because there is even a section in this bill where it talks about one section where the Secretary of the Senate does the reporting, ⁹or another aspect where the Ethics Committee is doing the reporting. Some of those little pieces could be worked out in committee. That is not controversial at all; it could be worked out. But it hasn’t actually gone through committee to actually have any kind of oversight to try to figure out how to be able to perfect some of these areas. Listen, this is not a bill that is just about ownership of stocks and buying and selling stocks. It is much larger. It gets into family farms. It gets into small businesses. It gets into stablecoin. It gets into all those different aspects on this. This is the reason that, when we brought a stock bill earlier today, it is a short couple-of-pages bill to be able to make it very clear what it is and what it is not. It was not this 31-page very complicated bill that is actually being brought to the floor today.¹⁰ The ask · 53 wordsSo my challenge to all of my colleagues are: We should not be trading stocks.No reason given And if you have got stocks, those need to either be divested or put into some blind trust so that Americans have full trust that Members of this body are not looking at their portfolio all the time; Reasoning · 24 wordsthey are actually looking at the people that live in their State and what they can do best to be able to serve them. Claims · 32 wordsThat is where my colleague and I adamantly agree. Where we disagree is on this text and what it does that is far beyond what is actually being advertised that it does. Promise · 35 wordsSo I would be very willing to be able to work with my colleague to be able to figure out how we can get this right because I think it is an incredibly important issue, Positioning · 9 wordsbut this needs more work back in the kitchen.Positioning Procedure · 5 wordsSo with that, I object.Procedure