Rep. James Lankford is pretty much already a member of the Senate.
After handily defeating primary challenger T.W. Shannon, the Oklahoma Republican is coasting to victory in his deeply red home state.
The question now is what kind of senator he’ll be.
Lankford spoke with the Washington Examiner about government shutdowns, clearing the air with supporters of his primary rival, and the House Ginger Caucus. The following is a lightly edited version of the talk.
You introduced legislation last year on government shutdowns, trying to prevent governing by continuing resolution. Do you think government shutdowns can ever be a useful tactic, regardless of the issue?
No. If we can take government shutdowns off the table and still run a budget that has the default to actually do appropriation, that benefits the nation greatly. It brings some level of stability, but it also forces the House and Senate to go back to the appropriations process, which is not happening. More than half of the House now has never seen the full appropriations process, ever.
Do you think using the threat of government shutdown as a tactic to change policy is acceptable in any circumstances?
Both parties have used it. It was a frequent conversation a year ago, on how many times [Former Speaker] Tip O’Neill shut the government down on Ronald Reagan. It’s a frequent tool that’s been used by both parties over the decades. Best-case scenario, though, for the nation, is to provide some level of stability and to use the appropriations process to be able to resolve this. We don’t always get best-case scenario, by the way, I don’t know if you’ve noticed.
If you had a choice between two pieces of legislation, and one was a conservative bill that the president would definitely veto, and the other could potentially be signed by the president but wouldn’t be as conservative, principally speaking, which do you think the Senate should prioritize, assuming Republicans take control?
That’s a tough one. I’m a very, very conservative person. I’ve had this conversation with the president before. My frustration is, there are conservative issues that even the president would agree to because the American people are strongly behind it. My recommendation is to stop trying to say, ‘We’re going to do a few things we don’t like, you’re going to do a few things you don’t like, and that’s real compromise.’ We’re past that as a nation and a body. We’ve got to go back to, where do we have common ground? And the common ground issues really are around conservative principles. I’m not interested in trying to compromise on basic principles to get something moving. ‘Just do something’ doesn’t help us as a nation.
Thoughts on the filibuster? Do you think its use should be curtailed at all?
Filibuster, best-case scenario, should be used when people actually go to the floor and hold the floor. That’s when the American people can engage in the debate, that’s when it’s at its best. …The filibuster’s at its best when you’re on the floor rather than filibustering from your office. It engages voters, you’ll use it when it matters, you’ll use it not for some flippant reason but for a reason the American people can engage with. If there needs to be a national conversation on some issue, let’s have it. The Senate was built for debate … but it was also built to make decisions at the end of that debate, more than just to argue.
Since your primary, have you spoken with any of the outside groups who backed Speaker Shannon?
Sure, we’ve had conversations with a lot of different folks. There’s no issues on that. The issue wasn’t about voting record, it ended up being, for almost everybody, the fact that I was on House leadership as the policy chairman. There was some dispute with Speaker [John] Boehner on the direction of the House, and I was already in Washington, D.C. When you talk about policy issues, there are not differences in policy direction.
Are there any senators in particular you look forward to working with?
Tim Scott’s in my class, and he and I have been friends since we first came in the House together in 2010. So I’m looking forward to being able to work with Tim. Ron Johnson and I have done some things together between the House and the Senate, so we have an ongoing relationship. Obviously Sen. [Jim] Inhofe and I have a relationship from working in the House and Senate from the same state. But many of the guys I don’t know well yet. I’ve met them, we’ve interacted: John Thune, [John] Cornyn, Mike Lee, [Ted] Cruz, Rob Portman, so I’ve had multiple short conversations with a lot of folks. We’ll develop those relationships and work together in the days ahead, God willing.
Do you think you and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp would start a redhead caucus?
We should, actually. Joe Kennedy and I had what we affectionately called the Ginger Caucus in the House. The Ginger Caucus is cutting in half now with me leaving.
