Before his service in Congress, James served students and families for more than 20 years in ministry, including 15 years as the Director of Student Ministry for the Baptist Convention of Oklahoma and Director of the Falls Creek Youth Camp, the largest youth camp in the United States, with more than 51,000 individuals attending each summer.
James and his staff enjoy serving people from all backgrounds across Oklahoma. As Ranking Member of the Government Operations and Border Management Subcommittee, which covers border security, management, and operations; regulatory reform; and the federal workforce. He demands we have a secure, more fiscally responsible, and transparent federal government, and our nation remains the world leader. He believes that the federal government has an important role in our nation, but empowered families, individual people, and private businesses grow our economy and pass down our values.
Senator Lankford, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, joined Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) and their Senate Republican colleagues to raise serious questions and concerns with the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) announcement of a major expansion of its collaboration with ID.me that will require taxpayers to have an ID.me account to access key IRS online resources. In order to register with ID.me, taxpayers will need to submit to ID.me a trove of personal information, including sensitive biometric data, starting in the summer of 2022. Folloing Lankford and his colleagues' probe into their plans, the IRS announced they would transition away from using a third-party service for facial recognition to help authenticate people creating new online accounts.