▶ 0:19:40>> the committee will come to order. Today we are meeting to vote on the nomination of hal duncan to be the deputy director of the office of management and budget. When senator graham gets here I certainly want to welcome our newest member to the committee. I do want to thank our colleagues on the others it is the aisle for not objecting to the resolution last night for me being chair. I will speak for senator graham.
▶ 0:20:10Neither one of us wanted to take the responsibility the way we did. We are all mourning the loss of senator lindsey graham. That is what this meeting is going to be about. I appreciate senator merkley agreeing to waive the 72 hour notice rule so we can have this business meeting for senators to tell a story about lindsey graham and reminisce. We did that a little last week. It was touching.
▶ 0:20:37I think one of the legacies of lindsay, he was a friend to everyone, right. He told us how to work together. Maybe that's the greatest legacy. I'm hoping that by having a business meeting where we express off the our hearts this is what lindsay meant to us, tell stories about lindsay, maybe america can understand we are not at each other's throats. There are areas of agreement.
▶ 0:21:08Many areas of agreement. If we focus on that maybe we can start healing this deeply divided nation. That is what my hope is. We have issue in terms of taking the vote now. I know senator merkley is going to want to talk about the nominee. I will say that I absolutely support the nomination of hal duncan in his confirmation hearing.
▶ 0:21:30He stated that he was committed to be relentless in the pursuit of a federal government that spends taxpayer dollars wisely, delivers services efficiently, and reduces regulatory burdens. I have been working with him for the past year and a half as liaison and how we are going to spend 100 million dollars that we did appropriate during the first reconciliation package to focus on the management part of omb.
▶ 0:21:57Focusing on line by line evaluation of the budget program by program. Try to root out the waste, fraud, and abuse that I don't think anyone, republican or democrat, wants to see in government. I'm confident he is the right person in the job. I urge people to support his nomination. Senator merkley may have second thoughts. Senator merkley, if you want to make your statement?
▶ 0:22:18Sen. Merkley: Thank you very much. Chair johnson. On this nomination we do have very different perspective on it .
▶ 0:22:31Sen. Merkley: One of the things I really enjoyed about being ranking member hirono was that lindsay and I -- being ranking member here was that lindsay and I have very different perspectives on the reconciliation bills, but as soon as we got through advocating fiercely for our viewpoints, which conflicted dramatically, we still enjoyed each other a great deal. I appreciate that I will have a chance to share some comments shortly.
▶ 0:23:00Sen. Merkley: But in regard to hal duncan's nomination, I urge the committee to reject this nomination. It is a position, the deputy director of omb, of the immense responsibility. His resume in his testimony raise serious concerns. I was thinking about how over the weekend I was in text correspondence with the many cabinet members.
▶ 0:23:26Sen. Merkley: They both got back to me on issues and are trying to help resolve challenges. But in his role with omb before, hal duncan never communicated with the minority side. He just absolutely stonewalled any form of bipartisan cooperation or information. He had the responsibility to make sure that letters were answered. Letters went completely unanswered.
▶ 0:23:55Sen. Merkley: If you had questions for the record, the questions for the record, responses, did not come in in a timely fashion. If they did come in they were complete obfuscations. Given so much goes through omb, having that mentality by the deputy director he just thoroughly unhelpful.
▶ 0:24:22Sen. Merkley: If he wasn't able in his current role to be able to even do the basic courtesy of closing the loop to say "I'm not able to get back to you yet because I don't have the information" -- no, that is not to facilitate government body and for the pupil. Having performed miserably in his former role I certainly am not going to support him in this role.
▶ 0:24:47Chair Johnson: Thanks, senator merkley. Until we have our side here taking the vote I will kick it off in terms of my reminiscing about senator graham. I think we all recognize he was irreplaceable. He was one of a kind. He was a friend to everybody. He will be sorely missed.
▶ 0:25:08Chair Johnson: My story, quite honestly, how to do with during the first reconciliation we were down in mar-a-lago, kind of game planning it out. I was driving back to the hotel on the bus with him sitting next to each other. I don't think it is any secret that lindsay's primary focus was on foreign relations. Budget, he wasn't big into the details.
▶ 0:25:34Chair Johnson: He got the big picture right. He encouraged me with my financial background to get involved, fight for what you believe in. Even though he knew that I would fight for some things that might give him some headaches. It shifted from him being encouraging to me to get involved to talk about his role in foreign relations. He was as respected and as influential around the world because he put in the work.
▶ 0:26:01Chair Johnson: Those of you who traveled with him understood what that work entailed. It's arduous. You get done thursday night, you hop on a plane, 8, 10, 12 hours, a full day meeting, have dinner, try to do that, repeat that two days in a row and you are back here in a week. During the conversation lindsay confided in me that it took a toll on his personal life and his health.
▶ 0:26:31Chair Johnson: I think the point I want to have everybody recognize about lindsey graham, whether you agree with him or disagree with him on things, he dedicated his life to this country. And I think in the end he gave his life for this country. I think the last two weeks of travel over to turkey come into ukraine -- over to turkey, ukraine, I think cost him his life. That is his lasting legacy.
▶ 0:26:58Chair Johnson: He dedicated his life, he gave his life to this country, and he showed us how to work together. I think that's incredibly important. Do we have the quorum now? Not quite? [indiscernible] senator graham, welcome. I will give you the first opportunity.
▶ 0:27:20Chair Johnson: I mentioned earlier before you were here that neither one of us wanted to assume this responsibility the way that we assumed it, but we take it seriously. I called this business meeting and I thanked senator merkley for waiving the 72 hour period so that we can tell the stories, so the public understands what lindsay meant to all of us, what he meant to our nation. If you would like to speak now I am happy to have you. Tell us your story.
▶ 0:27:47Sen. Graham: Thank you for doing that. That means a lot to me. I was at a prayer breakfast sharing the absolute outpouring of love and support. All of the personal stories. How he personally touched so many people is absolutely amazing to me. That has meant so much to me over the past week. It has been so difficult hearing how he touched so many people.
▶ 0:28:17Sen. Graham: That has helped get me through. He was an amazing person. You mentioned how hard he worked. He worked harder than anyone I've ever known. I'm not just saying that because he is my brother. I begged him to slow down. I knew it was not going to be good. And I had already prayed and knew in my heart that one day something was going to happen.
▶ 0:28:43Sen. Graham: But I had a peace knowing that if it did it happen with him doing what he loved. He was not going to stop. He loved serving the people of south carolina. He loved serving this country. And I ultimately, like you, feel like it took him from us. But his legacy will live on. And thank you so much.
▶ 0:29:07Chair Johnson: I thought it was an inspired choice to have you fill out his term and we want to welcome you to the committee and offer you our sincere condolences.
▶ 0:29:17Sen. Graham: Thank you. Thank you so much.
▶ 0:29:21Chair Johnson: Senator merkley, do you have further thoughts on senator graham?
▶ 0:29:25Sen. Merkley: Well, welcome so much, to the senate and to this committee. And I am sure if lindsey had known the path that lay ahead 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 loss of your parents.
▶ 0:29:57Sen. Merkley: And that is kind of a beautiful human act for a brother to stand in and really support a younger sister in multiple ways. Lindsey and I are both blue-collar kids. There are not that many of us here in the senate. I think it brings a different perspective.
▶ 0:30:22Sen. Merkley: There are a lot of senators here who come from a background that is very elite, very wealthy, and they have a hard time understanding the challenges ordinary families face. That certainly wasn't a challenge for lindsey, and I think the senate is far better to have more folks who understand the challenges of families that are struggling.
▶ 0:30:50Sen. Merkley: Lindsey and I disagreed on a whole lot of things but we often did conspire behind the scenes on amendments and appropriations and plotted out how we could get one more vote to pass an amendment in that committee. Sometimes he would say, this is not something I can help you with publicly, but I will see what I can do to boost the outcome. And other times we shared a vision on an amendment. Here in this committee we fiercely disagreed.
▶ 0:31:19Sen. Merkley: But as soon as we were through proclaiming how our vision was right end of the other side's vision was wrong we have a good time together. That is what I think the chairman was referring to about the ability to disagree on policy and still respect and work together and enjoy each other. The senate has much less of that now that our families generally don't live here and don't know each other.
▶ 0:31:47Sen. Merkley: Lindsey was an element that tied us together in ways that we need a lot more of here. Welcome. It is a pleasure to have you here. I hope I can conspire with you a few times in the years ahead.
▶ 0:32:05Chair Johnson: Thank you. Thank you, senator merkley. A quorum now being present we moved to the vote. The clerk will call the room. >> [clerk calling the roll] -- Mr. marino. Mr. scott. Ms. graham. Mr. merkley.
▶ 0:32:37Chair Johnson: Ms. murray. Mr. widen. -- Mr. wyden. Mr. sanders. Mr. whitehouse. Mr. warner. Mr. kaine. Mr. van hollen. Mr. luján. Mr. padilla. Mr. chairman? Mr. chairman, the yays are 11 the nays r 10.
▶ 0:33:08Chair Johnson: The people who want to reminisce about lindsey, we have senator cornyn, kaine, and rickets and ricketts.
▶ 0:33:31Sen. Cornyn: I have to leave to go to the finance committee but I wanted to welcome darline into the committee. We all have our memories of lindsey. I think he is one of the funniest human beings I've ever met. I always thought that being compared to me, short in stature, that growing up you must have been one of those kids who got everybody who started trouble, and it then left it to the bigger kids to fight it out.
▶ 0:34:05Sen. Cornyn: But he always -- he was so well spoken that he could, basically, talk an eskimo into buying an icehouse. He was a very talented guy. I know he loved this country. I know he loved darline and his family.
▶ 0:34:28Sen. Cornyn: Eddie was dedicated to our national security in -- and he was dedicated to our national security in a way that was extraordinary. One of the questions people have asked me is who is going to fill that gap. I said, it is not obvious to me who could or who will try to fill that gap. The other talent that he had that is extraordinary as his ability to communicate with president trump. And I don't know whether there is anybody who can fill those shoes. But we certainly will miss him.
▶ 0:35:01Sen. Cornyn: Thank you for giving me a chance to say a few words.
▶ 0:35:03Chair Johnson: Thanks, senator cornyn. Senator whitehouse, I know you traveled a lot with lindsey. Led the delegation to munich conference a number of times.
▶ 0:35:16Sen. Whitehouse: I had the chance as ranking member and environment and public works where lindsey served to say a few words when the drape and flowers were still on his seat. So I will just welcome lindsey's sister to the senate and to this committee. I think the senate suffers as a result of this loss.
▶ 0:35:43Sen. Whitehouse: We are a grimer and dumber place without lindsey graham. Our prospects as a body are narrower. Our boundaries are more constrained and, frankly, more tedious.
▶ 0:36:09Sen. Whitehouse: 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 in this body.
▶ 0:36:29Chair Johnson: Let's dedicate ourselves to make sure that is not a self-fulfilling prophecy. We are going to miss his wit, his demonstration of how to work together. It is maybe a wake-up call. I appreciate the friendship you had with him, and I know -- again, we all deeply miss him. Thanks for those comments. Senator ricketts.
▶ 0:36:58Sen. Ricketts: Thank you, Mr. chairman. Darline, welcome to the senate. We all wish it was introduced for -- we all wish it was under different circumstances. Once he was a friend of mine as well. The thing I will highlight -- you know this, how blunt he was sometimes. He would dive into different topics in areas where some would be more circumspect.
▶ 0:37:26Sen. Ricketts: There are a lot of stories we can't share on a public forum like this. One of them was we were at a residence for dinner waiting for lindsey to show up. He had gone to the embassy instead of the residence. We sat down for dinner because we had been waiting a wild. We set it down for dinner. Lindsey walks in. We are sitting down for dinner with the french ambassador.
▶ 0:37:56Sen. Ricketts: Without saying anything else he sits down at the table, turns to the french ambassador and says, so, we are going to start putting boots on the ground in ukraine? It was right after macron said something to that effect. Not even a hello. The french ambassador was like whoa, whoa, we will talk about that. It broke the ice and we had a lovely evening.
▶ 0:38:20Sen. Ricketts: It was a ton of fun it was one of the ways lindsey got to the heart of the matter around things that people wanted to talk about. Just get straight into it. You don't need to fuss around things. So I will miss him personally as a friend. Again, all of the things people were saying as far as his wit and intelligence were absolutely true. He loved this country. Cared about making sure we were a strong nation and cared about people in other nations.
▶ 0:38:49Sen. Ricketts: His concern for ukraine, israel, and pushing back on dictators was something he always thought we were safer when the dictators were losing. So we are going to miss that. And his ability to work with all the senators here and really represent us in the white house from both the republican side and the democrat side.
▶ 0:39:13Sen. Ricketts: So I agree with my colleague there that we are going to miss him as far as bringing us together as a body, and not just as republicans and democrats but just as republicans too. Mr. chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about my friend lindsey graham. He was a patriot by definition and we are going to miss him greatly.
▶ 0:39:36Chair Johnson: Senator kaine.
▶ 0:39:40Sen. Kaine: Thank you, Mr. chairman, for doing this. I really appreciate we can do this. Senator graham, welcome. I told you when I met you the other day, the simple thing, we really loved your brother. I want to make a comment and then tell a very funny story. It might be my favorite story from my entire service in the senate and it is a story about lindsey. The serious comment is that is. Politics is so hard that those of us who are in the senate we kind of trauma bond because we are so uniquely publicly hated by so many.
▶ 0:40:12Sen. Kaine: Now, that is not to say we are not also appreciated by so many. We go out and people thanked us for this and that. So we are not complaining about it but if anyone looks at any of our social media accounts and reads the comments you can see how heated we are. Yesterday we confirmed on a party-line vote a judge who had said really nasty things about lindsey. A few months ago we confirmed in a party-line vote many ambassador who had said really nasty things about lindsey. And that was from the republican side.
▶ 0:40:42Sen. Kaine: I know what a lot democrats in virginia say about lindsey. There are a lot of people who trashed lindsey even in the aftermath of his tragic death. I'm reading things in social media, articles, people are trashing him. I have had some folks say to me, you put out a nice statement about lindsey after he died. How could you do that because of x, y, or z? I've had people say things to me about other colleagues in the same way and I always give the same answer.
▶ 0:41:12Sen. Kaine: It is like, anybody in your family you have political disagreements with? The answer is always "of course?" do you love them or do you hate them? "I love them." should it be any different? Should it be any different? We have political disagreements but this is a family in many ways. It is six years we are together. Not every two years in the house.
▶ 0:41:38Sen. Kaine: We work together and it becomes a little like a family 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? I do really -- I'm thankful I had a chance since 2013 to have lindsey as a friend. There were many things we agreed on and worked on together and many things we didn't. But it is a family.
▶ 0:42:02Sen. Kaine: In some ways if the senate can't model to the american public, who I actually believe really want to see this -- if the senate can't model collegiality amidst disagreement, who is going to do it? I don't think the house is going to do it. I'm not sure the executive is going to do it. If the senate can't do it who is going to do it? You said, Mr. chairman, maybe we ought to step up our game a little bit.
▶ 0:42:31Sen. Kaine: Here is my favorite story serving in the senate and, of course, it has to deal with traveling with lindsey and in late january, early february of 2015. 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. We wanted to look people in the eye and hear what they had to say. We went to saudi arabia, jordan, and israel.
▶ 0:43:00Sen. Kaine: In israel we visited the current pm members and past members. The last evening before we flew back to washington was at the hq of the mossad, the intelligence agency. We wanted to hear what masada thought about this potential negotiation.
▶ 0:43:27Sen. Kaine: We were going to be there at 10:00 in the morning, an hour-long meeting, going straight to the airport to fly back. It was a long week and you know how lindsey would sleep wedged behind the chairs in the middle section of the plane. He could do something that none of us could do. The way that he could nap. It had been a long weekend we were really tired. We walked into talk to the head of mossad at this point. This guy looked like a complete spy.
▶ 0:43:57Sen. Kaine: He had so many lines on his face you couldn't tell whether he was 25 years old or 125 years old. Real world-weary guy. We walk into his conference room. At one end of the conference room is a full bar, 10:00 in the morning. A full bar with every alcohol, soft drink, espresso maker, anything you would want to drink in the world was right there. Lindsey -- this was a bipartisan group. Lindsey, john mccain, some others.
▶ 0:44:27Sen. Kaine: We walked in and the first thing pardo says to lindsey is, would you care for something to drink? Lindsey goes -- I got a sense of this -- well, you are the f-ing spy, you should know what I want to drink. [laughter] this guy then went, coke zero, sir? He didn't pause for two seconds.
▶ 0:44:57Sen. Kaine: He had a right hand guy who already poured a coke zero. They know a lot about us. I will say. In the airport we said, lindsey, you set that up. That was a great party trick. He said I did not set that up here that was completely natural. I think that he had been in that room a number of times and they had files. But just that challenge. You are the f-ing mossad, you should know what I want to drink.
▶ 0:45:28Sen. Kaine: That was very much a lindsey and we will miss him.
▶ 0:45:30Chair Johnson: Senator scott.
▶ 0:45:33Sen. Scott: Welcome to the senate. I ran for senate in 2018 and I was not supposed to win. I was running against an incumbent. No one wanted to campaign because I was going to lose. Lindsey came down. He had just had the kavanaugh hearings. So lindsey was a superstar. You wouldn't believe the crowds we got. We did two cities and everybody loved lindsey.
▶ 0:46:07Sen. Scott: He he relished in it, of course. He loved it. You just told stories the whole time. He could have gone on and people would have stayed forever because they loved lindsey -- for a lot of reasons, but he had just done the kavanaugh thing. Then we got here with sheldon, we went to the munich conference. Lindsey knew everybody. Everybody. What was fun during the week was, if you got five minutes with lindsey you could listen to where he traveled.
▶ 0:46:37Sen. Scott: He went somewhere it seemed every weekend. He had a story he could tell you. In the last thing is, lindsey was an encourager. He always showed up if you needed him and he was very encouraging. It was a saturday when we lost lindsey. Glad you are here.
▶ 0:46:59Chair Johnson: Thank you for telling those stories. I hope the public will listen. As you said, senator kaine, we are not loved, you know. There are so many cruel things written about lindsey while he was alive and even after he is dead, it is so grossly unfair. I think there are so many areas of agreement.
▶ 0:47:23Chair Johnson: There are all kinds of things we disagree on but having had conversations off and on with all of you there are things we agree on. I know I got this job for about six months. I want to use them six months to find those areas of agreement. Senator whitehouse is talking about, so it doesn't come to pass, so we figure out how to work together for the benefit of the american public. There are plenty of things we can do. Plenty of things we agree on. Let's try to make that happen.
▶ 0:47:54Chair Johnson: That is my dedication. Again, let's do that in honor of lindsey, because, again, I think his legacy truly is. He taught us. He showed us. He demonstrated how to work together. So the record will remain open until 12:00 p.m. Tomorrow for additional statements to the committee clerk. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you all. [gavel falls]