Currently in his eighth term of office, U.S. Rep. Frank Lucas stopped in Kingfisher Wednesday afternoon for a meeting with community leaders.

Speaking at the Chisholm Trail Museum, Lucas said he’s suspended his usual public townhall meetings in favor of smaller groups due to the pandemic.

“The last thing I want to do is host a superspreader event but I still need to know what’s going on back home and share with you what’s going on in Washington,” he said.

Legislative Gridlock

Slim Democrat majority aside, Lucas said “no one party is really in control” of Congress.

“A three-seat difference out of 435 people is not much of a margin,” he said. “The Senate is even more closely divided. That creates a legislative environment where if you can’t move bills, you have to find some other way to get business done.”

The “other way” the Democrats appear to be leaning toward is utilizing the budget reconciliation process to push through the entire Democrat agenda, Lucas said.

Created by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, reconciliation allows for expedited consideration of certain taxing and spending legislation.

Filibuster isn’t allowed, amendments are limited, and a simple majority is sufficient for passage, making it easier to enact controversial taxing and spending measures.

The irony, Lucas said, is that the act was adopted in 1974 to make it easier to reduce the deficit and will likely be used this year to approve $4.5 trillion in spending.

Lucas said another Democrat rule change to allow proxy voting in the House, ostensibly due to the pandemic, needs to be reversed.

“As a result of proxy voting, you have about 100 Democrats who were never in attendance for a single vote in the last year,” Lucas said.

“That means the body as a whole tends to be in the hands of the leadership.”

Afghanistan

Voicing a sentiment shared by every Republican in Congress and even a number of Democrats, Lucas described the Biden Administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan as disastrous and unfocused.

“Even if the President determined it was time to leave, we could have looked at 12 different scenarios that would have been more focused than this,” he said.

In response to a question from Mike Sanders, former Oklahoma house majority leader, Lucas said that since Biden took office, the military operation in Afghanistan “has been run by the State Department.”

“The military has taken a backseat,” he said.

“Why were we running the evacuation from the Kabul airport in the middle of a city surrounded by buildings with vantage points where everyone can shoot at us?” he asked.

Lucas answered his own question by pointing out that before the situation began to fall apart, the U.S. military presence in the country had been reduced to just 600 troops before 6,000 additional troops were deployed in the 11th hour to hold the airport in the final weeks.

He said he was at a meeting with members of the state department and high ranking military personnel when the military representative pointed out that 600 troops would have been insufficient to defend the massive air base at Bagram, a more efficient evacuation location which had been abandoned by the U.S. in the middle of the night in early July.

“You could tell that (the military representative) had pushed back (against the decision to reduce the troop presence so drastically before Americans and allies were safely evacuated), but the state department said no,” he said.

“So the operation was screwed up from day one. The state department was telling Americans they had plenty of time to get home and that was not the case.”

Lucas commended the military for the massive airlift conducted in the final days.

“I think the military did a really good job of getting people out of there, but they weren’t given the resources to do that until the last minute,” he said.

Lucas also said that one of the troops reported injured in the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport was an Oklahoman from his congressional district, but said he had not been provided with the name as of Wednesday.

“I think we’ll ultimately get the majority of Americans back from there, but it could have been much more orderly,” he said.

“I’d say the Taliban is definitely laughing at us now and I expect we’ll see a bloody civil war over there to determine who ultimately is in control.

Oil and Gas Industry

State Sen. Darcy Jech, who attended the meeting along with State Rep. Mike Dobrinski, asked about policies threatening the oil and gas industry.

“We’ve seen a little bit of a rally around here, but the oil and gas industry is important to Oklahoma and this administration is doing things not friendly to our state in that respect,” Jech said.

“In a traditional legislative environment, we (congressmen from oil rich states) can do more to defend ourselves (from destructive energy policies), Lucas said.

“But progressive Democrats are trying to figure out how to advance their entire legislative agenda in one reconciliation bill, which is harder to fight.”

He noted that progressives also are targeting the cattle industry as part of their green agenda, based on the alleged impact of methane gas on the environment.

“My hope is that they create something so hideous (in the reconciliation process) that they can’t get it passed and have to come back to something more rational,” he said.

Farm Bill Delayed

Lucas, who does not currently serve on the agriculture committee, said preparatory work should already have begun on the 2023 Farm Bill.

Instead, committee leadership is focused on a $5 billion Covid relief package to forgive mortgage and operating notes for minority farmers.

In what Lucas called an ironic and unintended consequence, Oklahoma will qualify for about a fourth of the relief package due to its significant minority populations, particularly native Americans, who fall within the definition of minorities.

“Instead of prepping for the Farm Bill, the committee has spent a year addressing a single issue in the most clumsy way possible,” he said.