After garnering thousands of votes in a political career spanning six decades, U. S. Sen. Jim Inhofe neared retirement this month with just a few more. Rightly so, among the last were votes to bolster the nation’s military might and build things in Oklahoma.
“Defending America and infrastructure — those are my two focus spaces,” the senator said in a recent interview. “I’m proud of that. “
The annual bill for defence policy is named after him. The $1. 7 trillion spending bill, his last Senate vote, included piles of millions of dollars for army construction, roads and water projects he had ordered for his home state.
Inhofe, 88, the definition of a career politician, will officially leave the Senate when the new Congress begins on Jan. 3. He has served in the Senate since 1994 and is the U. S. Senator. He has been the longest-serving U. S. in Oklahoma’s history. Senate, he was a member of the U. S. House of Representatives. UU for 8 years. He spent 4 years as mayor of Tulsa and 10 years in the Oklahoma Legislature. He was the Republican candidate for governor in 1974, but lost to Democrat David Boren, the guy he would overcome. It is difficult to succeed in the Senate.
Asked if politics is an honorable profession, Inhofe replied: “I think so. “
He said he would spend time in Tulsa and South Texas with his wife of many years, Kay.
“We want to spend more time together,” he said. “We’ll make some trips. “
Inhofe is a traveler. He flew his plane around the world in 1991, following the direction of aviation pioneer Wiley Post of Oklahoma. He later attracted media and FAA attention for landing his plane on a closed runway in South Texas. He made normal trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, once he fired, but missed, on a plane over Baghdad with 3 other members of Congress. He has visited U. S. Army bases. U. S. worldwide. He did his “Jesus thing” in African countries, at least once a year.
In 2009, he went to Copenhagen, the site of a foreign convention on global warming, to say it was all a hoax. That’s a few years before it went off in the Senate to resolve that point.
When asked in 2020 if he regretted the snowball in the Senate, Inhofe told El Oklahoman, “No. I’m trying to sense who got angry because it’s a nice thing. . . People take things too seriously. “
Inhofe chose to run for a six-year term in 2020 because he said he wanted to continue competing with then-President Donald Trump on rebuilding the military. However, later that year, Trump vetoed the defense bill Inhofe had written as president. of the Armed Services Committee because the president sought to have Inhofe introduce a provision on the liability of social media companies. Congress easily overturned that veto.
A few days later, on January 6, 2021, Inhofe watched Trump supporters loot his Senate on television.
Inhofe was one of the few Republicans to break with Trump and vote to certify all Electoral College votes. A few days earlier he had announced that the constitution required lawmakers to certify votes.
This position angered some leaders of the Oklahoma Republican Party, who tried, in vain, to censure him. Inhofe: Jim Inhofe himself, who had fought Republican battles decades before the Republican Party ruled Oklahoma and even before the so-called conservatives were born. Inhofe ended up giving a poorly received explanation, accompanied by a slideshow, of his position on the Electoral College votes at a state convention.
Inhofe has spoken out in public appearances about his highest rating in conservative groups, based on his voting record. He probably didn’t want to remind people of that. However, he also became known for the friendships he forged with Democrats, adding former California Senator Barbara Boxer. The two fought for years over surrounding policy and the public works committee, but worked together to draft topway and water bills.
Inhofe also told the story of physically helping ailing Senator Ted Kennedy, Massachusetts’ vanquished liberal lion, get out of the Senate chamber one day.
The Senate is known as the most exclusive club in the world. Members are known to keep their club until very old ages.
Inhofe has struggled in recent years and acknowledges the decline in cognitive talent: he blames COVID.
But, with the help of a staff that includes veterans and military experts, he co-authored the James M. National Defense Authorization Act. Inhofe for fiscal year 2023, which allowed more cash than President Joe Biden had asked for and included more ships, more planes and other Inhofe priorities. He also legalized primary structure projects for Oklahoma Army installations, which Inhofe spent decades maintaining as the hawk he was.
Oklahoma’s bases flourished even as others lost missions. When the KC-46, the next generation of airborne refueling aircraft, was still on the drawing board, Inhofe made sure that education was carried out at Altus Air Force Base and maintenance was carried out at Tinker Air Force Base.
“This didn’t happen by chance,” Inhofe said last week of his project for the Oklahoma facility. “It took a lot of work. “
Biden signed the bill Friday.
And Inhofe’s latest vote came on a bill that allocates money to the Defense Department and the rest of the government, as well as the millions of dollars in special projects he has asked for communities across the state.
An old-school politician, Inhofe considers special projects, also known as appropriations, also known as red meat, as a lawmaker’s prerogative, part of the hand force granted to Congress, the president, in the Constitution.
For Inhofe, it is a grave injustice that the federal investment formula for the road structure has overlooked Oklahoma for decades. State motorists paid more fuel taxes than the state earned from the road fund, which it funded with fuel tax revenues.
He couldn’t replace the formula enough, so he added enough Oklahoma projects to highway expenses to make sure the state received its fair share.
“I think we’re chosen to make sure we get treated in Oklahoma,” Inhofe said last week.