mr. lankford: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from from oklahoma. mr. lankford: 18 years ago today my office in oklahoma city, a fellow staff member poked her head in the office and said to me, there is a freak accident that's happened in new york city. a plane flew into the world trade center. she went down the hallway and pulled in a rolling cart -- the younger generation will have no idea what that is. a rolling cart with a tv on top of it. we plugged it in and watched it. the second plane flew in and both of us stood there solicitly thinking, that's -- there silently thinking, that's no accident. that's murder on a massive scale and terror like i'd never witnessed with my own eyes. when i didn't know was at that moment how many thousands of lives would be affected and how much our nation would be changed. that morning 18 years ago, seven oklahomans died. but our nation was forever changed. common terms we think about today like t.s.a. or terror watch list or department of homeland security, or body scanners or the patriot act -- those didn't exist on

mr. president, i askt unanimous consent that the votet series begin following the remarks of senators daines, columns, lankford and cotton. >> without objection. >> mr. president, 18 years ago on a bright clear sky september morning, without warning our nation was attacked. many of us probably remember where we were on that horrible day. i had that morning all. i was at home with my nearly two-year-old daughter. we didn't have the tv on. we had a couple of gentlemen at the house. i was getting a brand-new furnace on that day. what would be normally a couple our installation turned into an all day event, as those men would take time off from installing our new furnace to run into the other room so we could see what was going on on the television.ls so i had to make phone calls that morning. the first was early. it was from a neighbor, and she said, joanie, do you have the tv on? and i said, no, wanda, i don't get what's going on? she said you just need to turn the tv on. so i did. i saw the horrible events unfolding right in front of us. the second on call i got was from my ibook army national guard unit. capta

mr. lankford: i send a cloture motion to the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the cloture motion. the clerk: cloture motion, we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination of brian mcguire of new york to be deputy under secretary of the treasury, signed by 17 senators as follows. mcconnell, cotton -- mr. lankford: i request the reading of the names be waived. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. lankford: i ask unanimous consent the senate be in a period of morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. lankford: i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today it adjourn until 10:00 a.m., thursday, september 19. further, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed and the

mr. lankford: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. lankford: september 18, 1787, this grand experiment was final isled to be able to try to formula they considered a more perfect union and the bunch our constitution happened. this was a radical experiment in self-government that most of the rest of the world at the time stared at what we call our founding fathers now and thought that will never work. that'll never work. it wasn't a parliamentary system. it wasn't a monarchy. it was a representative republic, and it was pulling something out of the thoughts and the hearts of people to say, this is inherently what we think would work. beginning with the simple concept of checks and balances, that one person would check another person would check another person and to be able to put that into a governmental structure. to have three coequal branches, an executive, the legislative, the judicial branch, that we don't have one over the other. they stand on equal footing between the three. in and each of them watches the other. and the unique

mr. lankford: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. lankford: the permanent subcommittee for investigation just finished a major research project. i happen to sit on the committee, led by rob portman, who has done a phenomenal job trying to pull all the information together to try to study government shutdowns. government shutdowns are not new to us. we hear about them a lot lately, but in the last 40 years we've had 21 government shutdowns. 21. we've seen this issue over and over again, that when we get to a point of contention and argument we end up shutting the government down to be able to resolve it, so the point of discussion is not just here in d.c., it's all over the country. the question is, how does that really affect the country and how does that affect the united states government? the basic study that p.s.i. did to be able to go back and look at this was they found that the federal workforce in the last shutdown lost 57,000 years of productivity. if you spread out all the federal workers that were furloughed, the time they