mr. lankford: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. lankford: mr. president, on may 5 of this year, nasa launched the unsight rocket -- the insight rocket. that the pressuring the inside probe has traveled 300 million miles since may of this year and touched down safely on mars. it's a remarkable achievement. the united states is the only country in the world that has any probes on mars and we have several now, both moving around and stable. the technology behind that, the thought, the design, the engineering, the work is a remarkable achievement for the science community. 300-plus million miles that it's traveled since may is a remarkable achievement and to be able to land safely. now i compare that 300 million-mile journey of the insight probe and safely landing on mars to our now two decade-long conversation trying to solve immigration. we as americans have figured out how to travel 300 million miles, but we've not been able to figure out how to be able to manage our own immigration policy. this is the tenth time i've come to this floor to talk a

mr. lankford: mr. president, earlier this year congress created a bipartisan committee, eight republicans, eight democrats, half from the house 0, -- house, half from the senate. their mission was to reform the budget process. it was an acknowledgment that our debt is climbing and there's no structure in place to even address that debt. any time our debt is addressed, it seems to be haphazard or accidental or an ad hoc committee is formed to go after debt every ten years or so. this is spiraling and we need to have something done and it needs to be built into the structure. starting in april, these 16 members of congress started to meet with these instructions, quote, to significantly reform the budget appropriations process. the idea was simple. we're getting a bad budget product, we probably need to look at the budget process and to be able to find out what's happening with the process. you see, this process that we have was are started in 1974, right after watergate, congress created this new proc