Advanced Fuels Infrastructure Research And Development Act

Floor Speech

ADVANCED FUELS INFRASTRUCTURE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT ACT -- (House of Representatives - February 08, 2007)

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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I want to identify a little bit with my colleague from Georgia who was here talking about this being the smoke-and-mirrors Congress. There are so many things being talked about that aren't true. Today, I was speaking with one of my constituents at home from Wilkes County, Angela Henley. The issue of airplanes came up, and she said to me, you know, I think the officials should adopt the principle to lead by example and not by extravagance. I said, you know, these are the kinds of things, this is the reason we ought to be going home more instead of spending all this time we are spending in Washington.

The majority party wants people to believe that you have got to be in Washington, because that is where all the wisdom of the world is. But I think it is this Beltway mentality that gets us in trouble all the time, and gets people to thinking that we as Members of Congress are here to be served, not to serve.

I said here this morning in opening remarks that I am very troubled by this whole affair. I came here to serve the people of the Fifth District of North Carolina. I don't think that we are supposed to be treated like kings and queens.

We came here to do the work of the people. It is called the people's House, and I think it is very important that we do that.

What is happening is, the mentality of the majority party is that all the wisdom of the world is in Washington, D.C., the only work that gets done is in Washington, D.C. We should be here 5 days a week, not be in our district with the average American citizen.

Well, you lose track of what the average American citizen is dealing with. That is why I thought Angela Henley's comments were so brilliant today when I talked to her.

Again, elected officials should adopt the principle to lead by example and not by extravagance. That is the message that needs to be sent. That is not the message that is being sent by the majority party and by the Speaker in her example.

What we need to be doing is we need to make sure we are doing what is right by the American people and not putting additional burdens on them by adding costs.

The other thing I want to mention is, there has been a lot made about the fact that the Department of Defense has approved this. This was a headline in yesterday's paper saying the appropriators are going to get out of the departments what they want by twisting the arms of the various departments and agencies. And we all know that there is a close relationship between some of the appropriators and the Speaker, and I have no doubt that the appropriators are going to get from the departments what it is they want from them, to justify anything at all that they want to justify whether it is extravagant or not.

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