Sen. Lankford at Sen. Mullin DHS Confirmation Hearing: Somebody That I’ve Seen Work Hard ‘To Be Ready for Every Single Task’

EXCERPT:

LANKFORD: "Markwayne, I am proud that you're here. I got the honor in getting the chance to be able to recognize and introduce my friend, Markwayne Mullin, my fellow senator from the state of Oklahoma and somebody that I’ve seen work incredibly hard to be ready for every single task you’ve ever taken on and to be able to not only do it, but do it well. There are lot of folks that think they know you. I actually get to know you and I have had the opportunity to be able to serve beside you for now over a decade and have seen your tenacity and your work effort. Folks may not know that the first time that we really got to know each other, ironically enough, was around a natural disaster, a theme of that. It was Briarwood Elementary in 2013, when a tornado came right through the heart of Oklahoma. You had literally just been elected a few weeks before that and had just taken the oath of office. The Oklahoma delegation all gathered together at the very tragic event, their Briarwood Elementary, and while we were meeting with the principal and meeting with teachers and families and walking through the debris field that was that elementary school, we turned around to be able to look for Markwayne, and for a minute we couldn’t find him because in one of the debris, piles, that was water shooting out of the middle of it and his plumber instinct said, 'I gotta go find that and figure out how to solve that.' And so while everyone else was shaking hands and meeting people, he was digging through the debris field to find a way to be able to shut off the water that was shooting through the middle of that destroyed elementary school. And I remember smiling and thinking, 'He's got it in his mind to get his hands dirty to actually go solve the problem. Where there’s a problem he can solve, he’s going to do whatever it takes to actually solve it.'”