Hire More Heroes Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, these amendment marathons can often be a bit exhausting around here with all sorts of ideas coming from different directions, but now for something completely different.

Our government is heading to having about a half a million light-duty vehicles, so think of this: As of today, I think we have about 460,000 light-duty vehicles in the fleet of government.

Our amendment is something very, very simple. We all walk around with these supercomputers in our pocket--our smartphones--and we see the technology revolution, the information revolution, that is happening around us, whether it be ride sharing, on-call services, or just the management of data. We have people living next to each other going to the same workplace.

Let's use this information in this new world around us and ask three agencies to reduce their vehicle fleets by engaging in the new world of information, whether it be ride sharing, an Uber model, a Zipcar model, or taxicab model. Maybe it is a hybrid that we have never thought of that gets brought forward.

So the amendment is very, very simple. All we are asking is that three agencies reduce their vehicle fleets by using modern technology, modern means of transportation, modern social transportation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, to my friend on the other side, there was a GAO report--I think it might now have been a couple of years ago--and these three agencies actually were tagged as having the highest number of vehicles as a percentage of, I believe, employment population that sat idle. Agriculture was close to 30,000 vehicles; Interior, 18,000. There was an actual reason.

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, to my colleague from Oregon, one more time, the reference points in the GAO study actually said vehicles that lay idle, and that is why we chose these. There was actually a reason for choosing these three agencies.

Mr. Chairman, a couple of data points: Agriculture, 29,818 light-duty vehicles; Interior, 18,752 light-duty vehicles; the Department of Energy, 7,315 light-duty vehicles.

We are asking them to do the 10 percent reduction of those vehicle fleets over the 4 years. If technology efficiencies, the new gig economy, however you see it, can't accomplish that through the simplest reforms brought to us by the modern era, we are in trouble.

Mr. Chairman, I ask for support of this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, not to belabor this one, because actually, in many ways, our friend from Oregon has spoken to this one. I actually believe we may have some misreading of what the previous one says, but we will adjudicate that again maybe over coffee.

This is basically a similar concept as we were just discussing but is actually trying to produce some data sets for future policy.

Mr. Chairman, my understanding is the gentleman from Oregon is going to accept the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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