Business Meeting to Consider Duncan Nomination for OMB Deputy Director

The committee will come to order. Today we're in a meeting to vote on the nomination of Hal Duncan to be the Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Um when uh Senator Graham gets here, uh I certainly wanna welcome our newest member to the committee. Um I I do wanna thank the our colleagues on the other side of the aisle for uh not objecting to the resolution last night uh naming me chair. Uh I I think I will speak for uh, Senator Graham, neither one of us wanted to take this responsibility the way we did. You know, we're all we're all mourning the loss of of Senator Lindsey Graham. And that's really what this business meeting is gonna be about. I I really appreciate uh, Senator Merkley agreeing to waive the seventy-two hour notice rule here, so we could have this, this business meeting, um, make it available for senators to tell a story about Lindsey to reminisce. We did a little bit of that at uh, our Republican Senate lunch uh, uh last week, and it was touching. And I I think one of the legacies of of Lindsay is he he's a friend to everybody, right? Uh, he showed us how to work together. Uh, and maybe that's the greatest legacy. So I'm I'm hoping that by having a a business meeting where where we where we just express, you know, off, you know, off the cuff, you know, from our hearts, this is what Lindsay meant to us, tell stories about Lindsay. Maybe America can understand that, you know, we're we're not at each other's throats. Uh, there there are there are areas many areas of agreement. And if we focus on that, maybe we can start healing this uh deeply divided nation. So again, that that's kind of what my hope is. You know, we have issue in terms of taking the vote right now. Um, but I I know Senator Merkley is gonna wanna talk about uh the nominee. I'll I'll just say that I absolutely support the nomination of of Hal Duncan in his uh, in his confirmation hearing. Uh, he stated that he was committed to be relentless in the pursuit of a of a federal government that spends taxpayer dollars wisely, delivers services efficiently, and reduces regulatory burdens. Um, I've been working with him for the last a year and a half as liaison and and how we're gonna spend the hundred million dollars that we did we did uh appropriate during the the first reconciliation package to focus on the management part of OMB. You know, focusing on line-by-line evaluation of the budget, program by program. Uh, try and root out the the ways fraud and abuse that, you know, I don't think anybody, Republican, Democrat,

Uh, thank you very much, Chair Johnson. And on this nomination we do have a very different perspective on it. And one of the things I really enjoyed about being the ranking member here was that uh lindsay and i were on very different we had very different perspectives on the reconciliation bills but as soon as we got through uh advocating fiercely for our viewpoints which conflicted dramatically we still enjoyed each other uh a great deal and i appreciate that we'll have a chance to share some uh comments uh shortly but in regard to hal duncan's nomination i urge the committee to reject this nomination it's position the deputy director of omb it's a position of immense responsibility and his resume and his testimony raise serious concerns now i was thinking about how over the weekend i was in text correspondence with two cabinet members and they got back to me on the issues and are trying to help resolve challenges but in his role with omb before uh how duncan never communicated with the minority side i mean he just absolutely stonewalled any form of bipartisan cooperation or information he had the responsibility to make sure that the uh letters were answered letters went completely unanswered uh if you had uh questions for the record the questions for the record uh the responses did not come in in a timely fashion and if they did come in they were complete obfuscations And it's really given that so much goes through OMB, having that mentality by the deputy director is just thoroughly unhelpful. And if wasn't able in his current role, uh, to be able to even do the basic courtesy of closing the loop to saying, I'm not al- I'm not able to get back to you yet, cuz I don't have the information, just a complete. It's like, no, that is not facilitate government by and for uh the people so having really performed miserably in his former role i certainly am not going to support him in this role

you know thanks senator merkwe uh until we have our our side here taking the vote i'll just kick it off in terms of you know my my reminiscing about uh senator graham i i think we all recognize he was irreplaceable he he was one of a kind as i said earlier he he's a friend to everybody uh he he's Uh, but my my story quite honestly had to do with the during the first reconciliation, we had uh, we were down in Mar-a-Lago, uh, kinda game planning it out, and I was driving back to the hotel on the bus with him and we sit next to each other. And you know, I I I don't think it's any uh secret that Lindsay's primary focus on was on foreign relations and and and budget, he he wasn't he he wasn't big into details. He he got the big picture right. And in that bus trip he he encourage me, you know, with with my financial background to get involved. You know, fight for what you believe in, even though he knew when I would fight for some things, it might give him some headaches. But it quickly shifted from him encouraging me to get fully involved to talk about his role in foreign relations. And he was as respected and influential around the world because he put in the work. And, you know, tho- those of you who traveled with him understood, you know, what that work entailed it it's arduous i mean you get done uh thursday night you hop on a plane eight hours ten hours twelve hours you get out full day of the meeting have a dinner try and try and sleep do that you know repeat that two days in row and you're and you're, you're back here in full week so during that conversation lindsay confided in me that it took a toll on his personal life and on his health and i think the point i wanna have everybody recognize about lindsay garum whether you agree with him He dedicated his life to this country. And I think in the end he gave his life for this country. I think the the last two weeks of travel over to Turkey, over to Ukraine, uh. I I think it cost him his life. So. That's his lasting legacy. He dedicated his life, he gave his life to this country, and he showed us how to work together. Um, I think that's incredibly important, but I think we have. not quite we do have a quorum but we need more members to vote but uh senator darlene graham is here ok so senator graham welcome um i i will give you the first opportunity i i i mentioned earlier before you're here that neither one of us wanted to assume this responsibility the way we assumed it but we take it seriously but uh but i called this business meeting and and thanked senator uh merkley for waving the seventy two hour period so so that we can just tell those stories so so that the public understands what Lindsay meant to all of us and what it really meant to our nation. So if, if you'd like to speak right now, I'm happy to have you tell us your story.

Absolutely. Um, thank you for doing that. That means a lot to me. I was just at a prayer breakfast and I was sharing that, you know, just the absolute outpouring of love and support and all of the personal stories, how he just personally touched so many people is just absolutely amazing to me. And that has meant so much to me over this last week. It's been so difficult. But just hearing again how he touched so many people that has really helped get me through. Uh, he he was an amazing person. You mentioned how hard he worked. He worked harder than anyone I have ever known. And I'm not just saying that because he's my brother. I begged him to slow down. I knew it was not gonna be good. And I had already prayed and knew in my heart that one day something was gonna happen. But I had a peace just knowing that if it did, that it happened with him doing what he loved. He was not gonna stop. He loved serving the people of South Carolina. He loved serving this country. And I ultimately, uh, like you, I feel like it took him from us. But um, his legacy will live on. But thank you.

again i i thought it was just an inspired choice to have you fill out his term and we we just welcome you to the committee and and offer you our sincere condolences

thank you very much thank you

thank you um one more senator leaves here one more uh senator merkeley do you have any further thoughts on senator graham

well welcome so much uh to the senate and uh to this committee and uh i'm sure if if lindsay had known the path that lay ahead uh he would have hoped that you would be able to be here i was always very struck by the role he played in supporting you with the uh loss of your parent

we have our quorum

and that um is kind of a a a beautiful human act for a brother to stand in and really support a younger sister, uh, and in multiple ways and Uh, Lindsay and I are both blue-collar kids, and there's not that many of us, uh, here in the Senate. And I think it brings a different perspective. There's a lot of senators here who come from a background, uh, that is very elite, uh, very wealthy, and they have a hard time understanding the challenges that ordinary families face. That certainly wasn't a challenge for Lindsay. And uh I think that the Senate is far better to have more folks who understand the challenges of of families that are are struggling. And Lindsay and I disagreed on a whole lot of things, but we often did conspire behind the scenes on some of the amendments and appropriations and plotted out how we could get just one more vote to uh pass an, an amendment in that committee. Uh sometimes he'd say that this is not something I can help publicly but but uh i'll see what i can do to boost the outcome and other times we uh uh shared a a vision on an amendment uh here in this committee we fiercely disagreed but as soon as we were through uh proclaiming how our vision was right and the other side's vision was wrong we had a good time together and that's what i think the chairman was referring to about uh the uh the ability to disagree on policy and still respect and together and uh enjoy each other and the senate has much less of that now that our families generally uh don't live here and don't know each other uh so lindsay was an element that tied us together in ways that um uh we need need a lot more of here, so welcome uh it's a pleasure to to to have you here and um i hope i can conspire with you a few times in the in the years ahead.

Thank you. Thanks everyone, mercifully. A a quorum now being present, we now move to the vote. The call the roll.

Mister Grassley.

Aye.

Mister Crapo.

Aye.

Mister Marshall.

Aye.

Mister Cornyn.

Aye.

Mister Lee.

Aye.

Mister Kennedy.

Aye.

Mister Ricketts.

Aye.

Mister Moreno.

Aye.

Mister Scott.

Aye.

Miss Graham.

Aye.

Mister Merkley.

No.

Sorry, I'm just moving room to the bottom.

Mrs. Murray.

No by proxy.

Mister Wyden.

No by proxy.

Mister Sanders.

No by proxy.

Mister Whitehouse.

No.

Mister Warner.

No by proxy.

Mister Cain.

No.

Mister Van Hollen.

No by proxy.

Mister Lujan.

No by proxy.

Mister Padilla.

No by proxy.

Mister Chairman.

Aye.

Mister Chairman, the yeas are eleven, the nays are ten.

Then I'm nations reporter favorably. uh just so you understand the the order if people wanna stick around and reminisce about lindsay we have uh senator cornyn then whitehouse kennedy kane and rickets senator cornyn

mr. chairman thank you uh i'm gonna have to leave to go to the finance committee but i just wanna make sure we welcome darling and uh into the senate and uh we all have our memories of i think he's probably one of the funniest human beings i ever met um i always thought that being compared to me kind of a short in stature that growing up he must have been one of those uh kids who got everybody who started trouble and then left it to the bigger kids to uh fight it out um but he always uh he he was so well spoken, and that he could basically, you know, talk uh, uh, talk an Eskimo and uh, you know, buying a ice house. Um, he, he was a very uh, very talented guy. I know he loved this country. I know he loved Darlene and his family. And uh, he was uh, dedicated to our national security in a, in a way that uh, is really extraordinary. And one of the questions that

Thanks, Senator Cornyn. Uh, Uh, Senator White, Senator White. i know you traveled a lot with the lindsay uh led the delegation of the meeting conference uh a number of times so again

yeah i um had the chance as ranking member

i'd like to

in environment public works where lindsay served to say a few words when the drape and flowers were still on his seat um so i'll just welcome uh lindsay's sister to this senate and to this committee um I think the Senate suffers as a result of this loss. We are a grimmer and a dumber place without Lindsey Graham. Um, our prospects as a body are narrower. Our boundaries are more constrained and frankly, more tedious. Um. Many of us will miss him. But I think the institution will miss him most of all. I hope that in the months and years ahead, colleagues prove me wrong. But I think we lost a pretty vital force for progress, um, in this body.

So, let's dedica- dedicate ourselves to make sure that's not a self-fulfilling prophecy. You know, we're we're gonna we're gonna miss his wit. There's no doubt about it. We're gonna miss his uh, again, his demonstration how to work together. Um, it's maybe a wake-up call. But listen, I I appreciate, you know, the friendship you had with him. And I know how, again, we we all deeply miss him. But but thanks for those comments. Um, Senator Ricketts.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and darling again, welcome to the Senate. Great to have you here. Uh, obviously we all wish it was under different circumstances. uh lindsay was a friend of mine as well and i think the thing that i will highlight is just how and i know you know this how blunt he was sometimes and he would just dive into different topics and um in areas where most people maybe uh will be little bit more circumspect and i'll just share one story cause frankly there's a lot of stories we can't share uh at least not in a public forum like this but um one of them was we were at uh the french ambassador's residence for dinner and we were waiting for Lindsay to show up. He had gone to the embassy instead of the residence. And so, uh, we sat down for dinner, you know, cuz we've been waiting a while. We sat down for dinner and Lindsay walks in, right? So we're all sitting around the table for dinner with the French ambassador without saying anything else. He sits down at the table, turns to the French ambassador and goes, " So, we're gonna start putting boots on the ground in Ukraine?" This is right after Macron had said something like And it's like, not even a hello. So of course the French ambassador was like, well, well, well, well. We didn't talk about that. So, but it was just uh, it broke the ice and actually we had a lovely evening. It was a ton of fun and actually, and it was one of the ways that Lindsay actually got to the heart of the matter, around uh, you know, things that people wanted to talk about and just get straight into it. Don't, you don't need to fuss around with things. So, I will miss him personally as a friend. Uh, I, again, all the things that. the people were saying as far as his wit and his intelligence were absolutely true. Uh, he loved this country, cared about making sure we were a strong nation and cared about people in other nations. His, you know, concern for Ukraine and Israel and pushing back on dictators, uh, was something that he always thought we were safer when the dictators were losing. So, uh, we're gonna miss that. And then of course, uh, his ability to work with, uh, all the senators here and really represent us uh in the white house from both uh the republican side and the democrat side so i agree with um uh my colleague there that uh we're gonna miss him as far as bringing us together as a a body and uh not just uh on as republics and democrats but also as republicans too so thank you mr. chair and i appreciate the opportunity to talk about my friend lise graham uh he was a patriot by definition and

Thanks, Senator Ricketts. Senator Kaine.

Thank you, Mister Chair, and thanks for doing this, I really appreciate that we can do this. And Senator Graham, welcome, I told you when I met you the other day, just the simple thing, we really loved your brother. And I wanna uh make a serious comment and then tell a very funny story. It might be my my favorite story for my entire service in the Senate, and it's a story about Lindsay. The serious comment is this. Politics is so hard that those of us who are in the Senate, we kind of trauma bond because we're so uniquely publicly hated by so many.

Exactly.

Now, now, that's not to say we're aren't we're not also appreciated by so many. We we go out and people thank us for this and that. So, I'm not complaining about it, but if if anybody looks at any of our social media accounts and reads the comments, you can see how hated we are. Um, yesterday we we confirmed in a party line vote, um, a judge who had said really nasty things about Lindsay. And a few months ago we confirmed in a party line vote, an ambassador who had said really nasty things about Lindsay. And that was from the Republican side. And I know what a lot of Democrats in Virginia say about Lindsay. There's a lot of people who trash Lindsay even in the aftermath of his tragic death. You know, I'm reading things on social media or articles where people are trashing him. Um, and I've had some folks say to me, you put out a nice statement about Lindsay after you died. I mean, how c- how could you do that because of X, Y, or Z? And I've had people say things to me about other colleagues that are in the same way, and i always sort of give the same answer it's like anybody in your family you have political disagreements with and the answer is always of course so do you do you love them or you hate them well i love them ok so should it be any different i mean should it be any different we have political disagreements but this is a family in a lot of ways i mean these six year terms and then we're together it's not like every two years in the house where everybody somebody change that work together and it becomes a little bit like a family and and disagreements within family on politics and all kinds of things are so normal and we accept that, why can't that be accepted so easily in politics? Um, and I I do really I'm just thankful that I had a chance since twenty thirteen to have Lindsay as a friend, and there were many things we agreed on and worked on together, many things we didn't. But um, it is a family, and and in some ways if the senate can't to the american public who i actually believe really wanna see this if the senate can't model collegiality amidst disagreement like who's gonna do it i i i don't think the house is gonna do it i'm not sure the executive is gonna do it if the senate can't do it who's gonna do it so as you said mr. chair like maybe we ought to you know step up our game a little bit so here's my favorite story uh in serving in the senate and of course it deals with traveling with lindsey and Late January, early February of twenty fifteen. A bipartisan group of us decided to go to the Middle East to interview people about then President Obama's ongoing negotiation with Iran over the JCPOA. And we wanted to look people in the eye and hear what they had to say. Went to Saudi Arabia, went to Jordan, went to Israel. And in Israel, we we visited, you know, current the PM and current Knesset members and You know, Shin Bet and Mossad members. The last meeting. Before we boarded the plane to fly back to Washington, was at the HQ of the Mossad in Tel Aviv. This intelligence agency. And we wanted to hear what the then head of the Mossad thought about this. Potential negotiation. And we were gonna be there at like ten in the morning. We were gonna have an hour long meeting. They were going right to the airport to fly back. And it had been one of those very long weeks. And you guys all know how Lindsay would sleep. wedged in behind the chairs like in the middle section of the plane. I mean, he could do something that none of us could do the way he could, the way he could nap. And it had been a long week and we're really tired. We walk into the, talked to this guy, Tamir Pardo, who's the head of the Mossad at this point. And this guy, Pardo, he looked like a complete spy. He, he had so many lines on his face. You couldn't tell whether he was twenty five years old or a hundred and twenty five years old. Real world weary guy. We walk in. At one end of the conference room is a full bar, it's ten in the morning. But it's a full bar with every, you know, alcohol, soft drink, espresso maker, anything you would ever wanna drink and the world was right there. And Lindsay, and and this was a bipartisan group, it was Joe, Don, Liangus, King and me, it was Bob Corker, Lindsay, John McCain, maybe some others. We walk in and the first thing Pardo says to Lindsay is, " Would you care for something to drink?" And Lindsay goes, and i gotta censor this well you're the effing masaj you should know what i want to drink this guy's right hand then went coke zero sir i mean he didn't pause two seconds he had a right hand guy that had already poured a coke zero and so anyway just they they know a lot about us i mean i'll just say but we all in the bus to the airport we all said ok well

well thanks senator kane uh senator scott

welcome to the senate um so i i ran uh for the senate in eighteen and i was not supposed to win i was running against an incumbent and um so nobody wanted to come down campaign because i was gonna lose but but uh lindsey came down and so he had just done

mmm

they just had the kavanaugh hearings and so lindsey was a superstar and so you wouldn't believe the crowds we got um we did uh two cities and um

mmm

everybody loved lindsey and he just i mean he loved it and he just told stories the whole time and uh he could have gone on and people would have stayed forever cause they love lindsey um for lot of reasons but he just done the cavernon thing then we got up here um with sheldon we went to the munich conference and lindsey knew everybody and he knew everybody and what was fun uh during the week is if you just got five minutes with lindsey you could listen to where he traveled cause he just somewhere i think it seemed like every weekend

mmm

and he had he had a story he could tell you and the last so and the last thing is lindsay was an encourager he he always showed up if you needed him and he always was very encouraging he just it was a sad day uh when we lost lindsay so glad you're here

thank you so much thank you

well again thanks sanders graff thank all of you for telling those stories again i hope hope for public listen cause as you said you know, Senator Kaine, I mean, we're not loved, you know, and uh, there are so many cruel things written about Lindsey while he was alive and even after he was dead it's just so grossly unfair. Uh, so you know, I think there are so many areas of agreement. There's, there's all kinds of things we disagree on. But, you know, having had conversations uh off and on with, with all of you, there are things we agree on. So I know I've got this job for about six months. Um, I wanna use those six months to find those areas of agreement. So what Senator Whitehouse was talking about does not come to pass, that we actually do figure out how to how to how to work together for the benefit of the American public. There are plenty of things we can do. There are plenty of things we agree on. Let's let's try and make that happen. So that's my dedication. And then again, let's do that in honor of Lindsay, because again, I think his legacy truly is he taught us, he showed us, he demonstrated how to work together. That's what we need to do. Um, so the record will remain open until twelve p m tomorrow for submission of statements to the committee clerk. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you all.