Lankford on Voting Against His Border Bill: ‘It’s No Longer a Bill, Now It’s a Prop’

COLLINS: “You said that you will vote ‘no’ on this bill, even though, of course, we all know about the efforts that you put into it. Why are you voting ‘no’ on Thursday?”
LANKFORD: “It’s no longer a bill, now it‘s a prop. We spent four months sitting down in a bipartisan way to be able to work out what do we think we can actually get passed. Obviously, I was not successful in getting something that can actually get passed. The problem still remains. Everyone knows that this bill is not going to pass, and Senator Schumer is bringing back up to try to bludgeon people. But what will be interesting on it is, you‘re not going to have Republicans that are going to vote for it, the same Republicans who didn‘t vote for it last time, but I expect there‘ll be more Democrats that will vote against it this time as well when it’s standalone. There were some Democrats that said, ‘I‘m not going to vote for it if it doesn‘t have DACA, if it doesn‘t have amnesty,’ if it doesn‘t have all those things they wanted. They were willing to vote for it if it had Ukraine and Israel funding in it, but not willing to vote for it on a standalone. So it‘d be interesting to see how many votes it gets total. My challenge to the Senate, and as you played the clip from earlier today was, let‘s actually sit down like grown-ups. If the whole thing wouldn‘t work and we couldn‘t pass the Republican proposal, which is H.R. 2, we couldn‘t pass this particular bipartisan proposal, which was my bill I worked on with Senator Sinema and Senator Murphy, if that couldn‘t pass, let‘s at least sit down and figure out what will pass. Let‘s not just keep pulling the same bills up over and over again that we know we‘re not going to pass and pretend we’re doing something. We‘re not getting it solved. Let‘s sit down. Let‘s actually work this out and let‘s get it done, because yesterday, with more than 5,000 people, again, that illegally crossed the border yesterday, this has got to stop.”
COLLINS: “But, senator, you knew the first time that you voted for it, that it also wasn‘t going to pass then and you still did vote for it then?”
LANKFORD: “Yeah. That was actually when we‘re in the heat of trying to be able to get the moment out, and my challenge to my colleagues was, let‘s actually see if we can actually pass this. That was when we brought the bill up. Obviously, the week before, I felt like we were going to pass it, and over about 72 hours I had quite a few folks have walked away and said, ‘Nope, not going to vote for it this time.’ My challenge was to my colleagues, let‘s step up and do it. That‘s now several months ago. We know it‘s not going to pass again. Senator Schumer‘s just bringing this up for a political reason on it. And I‘ve said, ‘Hey, Senator Schumer, if you want to actually pass something, let‘s sit down and actually work this out.’ But this is not a bipartisan attempt to be able to solve something. This is a partisan attempt for fundraising or for whatever attempt they‘re trying to do. And honestly, I don‘t think most of the American people are paying attention to this at this point because we‘ve already voted over this. You wouldn‘t run into anyone on the street today that said that bill is going to pass this week, because everyone already knows the outcome, just like we do in the Senate.”