WASHINGTON –
Lawmakers in Washington, D.C., are working to come to a resolution of a government shutdown that threatens to pause federal benefits to millions of Americans.
In Oklahoma alone, 700,000 people who rely on SNAP benefits for food and groceries could lose those benefits if an agreement is not made in Congress.
RELATED: Oklahoma Gov. Stitt warns SNAP food aid could stop if Congress fails to fund government
News 9 spoke to U.S. Sen. James Lankford on Thursday to learn the extent of negotiations to end the shutdown and what Oklahoma’s congressional delegation is doing to contribute.
SEE ALSO: Bice says shutdown could soon cause ‘significant pain’ in Oklahoma
Where are we with the shutdown? Any progress at all?
Lankford: We are still stuck. A group of Democrats all pulled together a proposal to be able to pull us out of this. They handed it to Sen. Chuck Schumer, and Sen. Schumer said, “Nope, it’s not time to be able to end this yet.” We are waiting on the moment that he actually puts a proposal on the table. Their initial proposal was for $1.5 trillion in new Obamacare [Affordable Care Act] funding and climate change initiatives, all kinds of things that they knew no one would move on. That actually was in October. They’ve not actually done another proposal since then. They’ve just said, “No, we’re keeping it closed.” We’ve had 13 votes just to open the government status quo. No funny games, no partisan anything — just keep it open at the same levels we were at before. They voted down every single one of those. We voted last week to fund SNAP benefits for the entire year and said, let’s take that off the table, let’s fund them for the entire year. Democrats also voted that down. So we’re stuck in some ways. The goal that they had was shut down, and we’re still waiting for them to actually come to the table to finish it out.
Nov. 1 is the trigger date. There are a lot of Oklahomans — hundreds of thousands — who rely on these SNAP benefits. What do you say to Oklahomans who are on those SNAP benefits?
Lankford: It’s been incredibly frustrating. I tell folks I’ve voted 13 times to open the government up, just status quo. I voted last week on full funding for the entire year for SNAP — that also was voted down. So we’ve done everything we can do at this point. Very grateful for the Regional Food Bank, for so many churches and nonprofits that have stepped up. A lot of our Native American tribes have also stepped up to be able to help tribal members. This is a big challenge. It’s 684,000 Oklahomans on some level who receive some of these benefits. Now, President Trump has moved — he’s allowed by law to do this — to be able to move some of the tariff revenue into the WIC program. That’s the Women, Infants and Children program, for some of the most vulnerable at that point. So that will remain funded, but he’s literally moving funds around. He’s done the same for the military, moved some research and development funds in the military to personnel to be able to cover military pay, you can’t do that in every one of these areas. You don’t have that kind of flexibility where, at the end of the fiscal year, they don’t have those dollars available for everything. And so it has been very frustrating.
It’s not just SNAP food benefits or even military paychecks; can you address some of these other areas as well, Senator?
Lankford: It’s been some of my frustrations. I’ve had a couple of my colleagues say, let’s see if we can’t fund air traffic control, which I’m all in for. We need to fund the Academy and air traffic control; it’s happening, but that leaves out Head Start, that leaves out [agriculture] programs, that leaves out USDA, that leaves out the National Weather Service. So we really need to fund everything. The last 13 times during moments like this — including during the Biden administration — we got to this point, disagreed on things, but voted to keep the status quo while we kept debating. Democrats this time said they don’t want to do that. They want to close the government down. They want to have some demands on this. That’s been the most frustrating part. There’s a way to get out of this. Y’all know because we’ve talked about it before — I have a bill that takes government shutdowns off the table entirely. We had 57 votes for that last session. I’m working on that as soon as we get the government open to try to get the final votes for that. You need 60 in the Senate to move anything. I’ve had a majority, but I haven’t had enough. I’d like for this to be the last shutdown we ever have as a country.
How many votes are we away from the government reopening? Are we doing all this over again if we got it open on the 21st of November?
Lankford: So we’re five votes away at this point. We have 55 votes, which is a majority, but we need 60 in the Senate to be able to move anything. We would like to have — I actually proposed this yesterday, and several colleagues agree — I’d like to be able to push this out into January so that we don’t reopen for three weeks and then go through this all over again. That kind of chaos for federal workers and their families, and for every federal program, doesn’t help us. It hurts our economy and hurts families. So I’d like to be able to push this out to January, and in the meantime, finish the appropriation bills that have to actually get done. We tried to do three last week to settle some of these — including the SNAP benefits — and settle them for the rest of the year. My Democrat colleagues wouldn’t get on it at all. But we have several bills ready to go to make sure we have full-year funding, not just temporary. Let’s get those done.
Senator, what is your message for Oklahomans?
Lankford: Continue to pray for each other, take care of each other — that’s what we do as Oklahomans. We’ll continue to do the work. At this point, we’re waiting for, I don’t know what, we think that Chuck Schumer is holding out until after the New York City mayoral election next Tuesday. So maybe after that time period, they’ll be willing to reopen the government and get us going. At this point, we’re doing the work we can to keep us going and trying to keep politics out of it, saying, let’s just open it. Even the federal employee unions have now stepped forward and said, just open it. Everybody gets your message. So we’ll keep doing our work. You keep praying and serving our neighbors. This affects millions of people all across the country.
