Sen. Lankford calls on Senate to get back to 'grunt work' of legislating 

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) called on the Senate to refocus on getting bills signed into law to help the American people, rather than simply posting about them on social media.

In an interview on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday,” Lankford said the Senate should “100 percent” be a more deliberative body, where ideas can be raised, argued, settled and resolved and eventually become law.

“That means committees have got to do their work,” Lankford said. “And when a bill passes out of committee, that means the Republican and the Democrat that were in committee that formed it have got to do their work to then get 60 co-sponsors.”

“That's just grunt work,” he continued. “That's just going to one member at a time and actually working out, saying this needs to be law, not just discussed.”

Lankford said the Senate has forgotten how to proceed through that standard legislative process of lobbying other senators to get buy-in for their legislation.

“So that grunt work has got to start again. And quite frankly, we've lost our muscle memory of doing that.

“It's easy to be able to do a post on social media saying, ‘I filed this bill,’ but not do the work to actually pass it. Filing a bill doesn't solve the problem. It may get you clicks on social media. We've got to actually do the work on that. And then once we pass it, we've got to pay attention to the House and the White House” to make sure it gets across the finish line, he said.

Lankford, a conservative Republican, made headlines during former President Biden’s term for his role in negotiating a bipartisan immigration deal that got Democratic buy-in to a conservative approach to tackling immigration. The bill ultimately tanked amid reports that President Trump, the GOP candidate at the time, was pressuring GOP lawmakers to oppose the bill, which would have been seen as a win for Biden, who at the time was still running for reelection.

Lankford joined the interview to promote his new book, “Turnaround: America’s Revival,” in which he details the complicated politics surrounding immigration policy and pledges to continue trying to solve the problem.