Sen. Lankford To Release Report On Government Waste

Senator James Lankford has announced he will once again release his report on government waste.

It's called Federal Fumbles and our Justin Dougherty broke the news earlier on Monday. Senator Lankford did give us a few details early, and the big number that will shock a lot of people -- our national debt is now nearing $20 trillion.

As we were on the phone, Lankford went on to call the national debt a crisis that has to be addressed. And it would be the number one topic he'd bring up with President-elect Donald Trump.

While he didn't want to give away too many details, the Senator said the federal debt increased $1.4 trillion.

Federal Fumbles will be released at the end of November.

In a release Sen. Lankford said, “The American people have signaled a bold new direction for Washington with the election of President-Elect Donald Trump. Although the federal debt wasn’t a focus during the presidential campaign, it remains an impending crisis that must be addressed."

Lankford continued, “In the last year alone, the federal debt increased $1.4 trillion and is now approaching a staggering $20 trillion. Since I came to Washington in 2010, our Republican-controlled Congress has reduced our annual deficit each year, however, we haven’t had a willing partner in the White House to make bold changes to stop the rising debt. Last year, our federal government spent $223 billion, or 6 percent of all discretionary spending, on debt interest payments alone. By the start of the next decade, we will spend more on debt interest than we do on our national defense."

"When we put out that report last year we had several agency heads that called us and they wanted to try and explain some of the grants they did and say no ,it's really not as bad as it looks. The problem was when they came into my office to explain, they had no good explanation. They just said this was an area that just slipped past us. My comment is not that we don't ever do a grant, it's that these grants that are done we really need to know they're in the best interest of national security and the economy of the U.S. and they’re the right use of federal tax dollars, not just someone in the government who wants to do something nice that's not the role of the tax dollar," Lankford said.