Good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome, welcome, welcome. We're speaking with US Senator James Langford, and boy, it's been busy. You got the vacation coming up, but still a lot of work to do.
I don't have to have vacation or not coming up. In August typically is the one month a year that we are not in session. We're in session eleven months of the year. Typically we're not in session in August, so we can get a chance to be in our own states and get a chance to be able to travel around see people. This year, we've still got a lot of nominations to do. I have to tell you, it's been interesting the last six months. We have moved twice as many nominations for President Trump that we got
done during his first term at this time. But we still have a lot to go and we're going to continue to be able to press through and get as many done as we possibly can.
Well, recently we've had the big beautiful bill. How big, how beautiful? And how does it work for Oklahoma?
You know, it's been funny for a lot of times when there's a big omnibus bill that's into the year type bill, the longer it sits out there, the less people like it. They find out there's things in it they didn't realize, and they don't like it. This one's been the opposite. It's been interesting. It is big, it's nine hundred and forty pages, but it was public for weeks before we actually voted on it, so everybody to
have time to be able to look at it. But the longer it sits out there, the more people seem to like it. For if you're a farmer and rancher, the people are finding out that half of the farm Bill was actually done in this bill and so reference pricing. Of course, we dealt with the estate tax, which is terrible for farmers and ranchers where it literally takes away family farms. When someone passes away, the next generation has
to sell the farm to be able to pay taxes. Well, we dramatically increase the limit on a state taxes to be able to help farmers or ranchers be able to maintain their family farms. So that's in there. We did a change that I've worked on really hard, dealing with the nonprofit donations for several years now. If you don't to your church or nonprofit, you couldn't write that off on your income tax anymore. Only the top nine percent of Americans were going to write off their stuff on
their income tax. With their nonprofit donations, well I got that changed in this bill, where now individuals are able to ride off one thousand dollars of their nonprofit donations. A couple is able to write off two thousand dollars in their nonprofit donations. So that's been very popular. We're upgrading air traffic control, We're upgrading border enforcement, increasing border agents.
We're upgrading our navy and our coast Guard, which are in desperate need of some upgrades, especially in the Coast Guard area. It's been a really big issue for a long time. But also we flattened out the tax rates. Democrats were fighting really hard to be able to raise every American tax rate. What was funny was they kept
saying this all about millionaires and billionaires. What they were actually fighting for and people are finding out now every single tax bracket was scheduled to go up on January the first, and Democrats were fighting tenaciously to make sure that every single tax bracket in America went up in January. We were able to stop that. Just keep tax rates where they are right now. So there's a lot of things in it that people are finding out, Hey, that actually works better for me.
We actually went to some recisions. Can you tell us about that?
Yeah, our recisions the terms that not a lot of people know. In fact, it's the first time our recisions passed through Congress in more than thirty years. Our recisions during the middle of the year, when the law has been made, appropriation bill, when the law has been made, House Senate President of all signed it and requires that funding to be done. A recision is when the White
House says I don't want to spend this money. Will you allow me Congress to be able to not spend this So the White House sent over nine billion dollars in requests saying I don't want to spend this money, a lot of it's foreign aid, some of it was for NPR and for PBS, and said hey, I don't want to spend this money anymore on it. Congress went through, debated it, and then actually approved it. So that is nine billion dollars in savings going back in directly into
this year. Those are all Doge cuts that were made and proposed when Doge was making all these different proposals, we've now been able to enact that into law.
How are we doing on energy as far as oil and gas, and I guess even wind and everything else when it comes to Oklahoma. Anything legislative working in our favor here in Oklahoma?
Yeah, obviously Oklahoma is truly all the above and all the below energy state. All different types of energy don't bother us, but we want to make sure we've got more of it. Democrats in twenty twenty one were able to put in a new tax just on oil and gas companies. They called it tangible drilling cost IDC's you heard that term before. This is just the basic cost of drilling. Well. Democrats created a new tax on that said we're going to tax oil and gas manufacturers different
than any other manufacturer. Is tax I was able to get into the One Big Beautiful Bill a repeal of that, to say oil and gas companies should be treated the same as every other company. You shouldn't have some new attack on oil and gas companies as Democrats did, and say I'm going to attack them more and try to be able to stop their production through increasing taxes on them. This just treats oil and gas that's same as everyone else. That's all we're looking for on it. Let them compete
on a level playing field. We need more domestic energy. All of us who drive our truck, drive our cars, fly on an airplane, or any other use for petroleum like carpet and tile and so many other things that are out there. We've got to be able to maintain a steady supply of domestic energy production. So this just puts them back on a level playing field, adds Oklahoma jobs and makes a big difference for drilling in the future.
Senator Langford, how can people get a hold of you?
You know, everybody seems to find a way. Actually, we've got literally tens of thousands of contacts on that, which is great. We love having the communication with oklaholments. The best way to be able to reach me just go to my website Langford dot Senate dot gov. Langford dot Senate dot gov. That's got all the different places to
get connect with me. You've got phone numbers, has has email addressed, as has got our social media pagents which at Senator Langford at all the different social media platforms. You can even buy a new Benjamin Franklin two hundred and fiftieth anniversary stamp and be able to put that on a mail a letter. The Post Office would be very excited if you would mail a letter on it. And we've got our address there Langford dot cend dot gov if you want to send that to us as well.
Senator, thank you very much for being with us today.
You bet glad to do it. You'll take care of keep braying for the nation.
We'll do