As he wrapped up an interview and before he left for his next in a long line of stops for the day, Senator James Lankford noticed he was without something.

“I just realized I left my bottle of water back in the shop,” Lankford said. “I’m going to grab it so I don’t leave my trash behind.”

Lankford knew the way as he was fresh off a tour of the facilities of P&K Equipment in Kingfisher by Site Manager Shane Clifton and others in P&K management.

The senator visited Kingfisher on Monday morning as part of a day that also saw him make stops in Enid and Stillwater.

As he stepped out of the rain and into the newly-renovated building at P&K, Lankford offered: “It’s so good to be back in Oklahoma.”

Those with P&K themselves offered what’s good - and maybe not so good - in their industry.

Among those greeting the senator were P&K owners Barry and Roxanne Pollard; Scott Eisenhauer, general manager; Brad Kosanke, aftermarket manager; Preston Pollard, operations manager; Drew Combs, Enid site and sales manager; and Clifton, among others at the Kingfisher site.

After touring the facility, which includes a 30,000 square foot stateof- the-art shop that was completed last fall, the management team had a discussion with Lankford about issues affecting their industry.

The first thing Lankford asked as he was sitting down was, “So how are the tariffs affecting you?” President Donald Trump imposed significantly higher tariffs on a number of imported goods this year, including steel and aluminum.

“I wanted to be able to know what they are experiencing,” Lankford told the KT&FP about his discussion with the P&K staff. “The first comment was, ‘Hey, the tariffs have not affected the prices for John Deere at this point.’” Lankford continued: “But John Deere is paying additional tariffs… corporate costs to them as a company. At this point, it’s not affecting the actual price to the consumerm but it’s only a matter of time that it will.

“And so it’s trying to be able to figure out where is that right now and what’s actually happening?”

Clifton said the group shared with Lankford a number of other concerns, including current commodity prices, the “astronomical” price of farming inputs and high interest rates.

“He acted like he hears that a lot right now,” Clifton said. “And he did talk like they had some ideas.”

Lankford did discuss the benefit of a change in the recently-passed “One Big Beautiful Bill” that should benefit farmers, he said.

It’s “full expensing,” which is a change that allows businesses to immediately write off the full expense of large equipment purchases like tractors and trucks in the year of the purchase rather than depreciating them over several years.

“The full expensing, I think, is the most significant piece of the tax bill that we actually got done,” Lankford told the KT&FP. “I’m not just saying that because that was my part of it.”

Lankford said it was “really significant” for someone making big purchases.

“If they have a really good year, a really good crop and they need to be able to prepare for the future and for efficiency, they’re able to buy a piece of equipment, expense it under that year and not have as big of a tax burden in that year, but also make them more productive for the next years,” he said.

“That does nothing but help us as a country. And so I want to make sure that can continue to happen on it, that they’re not having to worry about how they’re actually doing the depreciation.”

Lankford was also asked about a couple of topics he touched on when he last spoke in Kingfisher in June 2023.

One was broadband infrastructure, which has a local tie not only with that being the primary focus of Pioneer Telephone Cooperative, which is headquartered in Kingfisher, but the Oklahoma Broadband Office executive director, Mike Sanders, resides in Kingfisher.

“He’s doing a lot of good work right now,” said Lankford of Sanders, whose office is tasked with providing reliable, affordable, high-speed internet access to all Oklahomans.

One obstacle, said Lankford, was a number of restrictions placed on the federal dollars for the program by the Biden administration, which he said “took years to actually put the money out the door and they added all kinds of new restrictions.”

“When the Trump administration came in, they stripped that away and they just said, ‘Let’s get the money out the door.’” Lankford said he expressed his concerns to Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick.

Through those conversations and with Sanders’ office following up, Lankford said, “they were good to their word” and several restrictions were released, making access to the money more readily available.

The OBO recently announced the release of its Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) final proposal, which it termed a “key milestone” in getting internet to the entire state.

Sanders called the final proposal “the roadmap to closing the digital divide in our state.”

Another topic was pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), which are often accused of driving up prescription prices with practices like spread pricing, steering patients toward expensive drugs and imposing hidden fees.

Lankford said PBMs hurt independent pharmacists - of which there are several in Kingfisher - and consumers the most.

In 2023, Lankford said he was ready to introduce some bills to counter the PBMs.

Lankford played in a signifi cant role in writing the Pharmacy Benefit Manager Transparency Act of 2023.

It unanimously passed through the Senate Committee on Finance, of which Lankford is a member, but didn’t make a full Senate vote.

Lankford said “this is the next big thing for us to be able work on in the committee.

“The local pharmacies, especially the independents, they’re getting killed by the PBMs. It’s real.”

Among those joining Lankford during his visit was Peyton Burns of Kingfi sher, who is the senator’s field representative for northwest Oklahoma.