Jody Hice: “I thank my good friend for yielding, and I appreciate those kind words. Madam Speaker, I rise with my colleagues this…”

“I thank my good friend for yielding, and I appreciate those kind words. Madam Speaker, I rise with my colleagues this evening in support of the Republican Study Committee budget for 2020. Here in Congress, there are immense problems and vast issues that we deal with, and sometimes they can feel overwhelming. For that reason, it is important that we have a purpose, that we have a vision, that we have a pathway to get us out of some of the issues that we face and to give us a sense of purpose for getting through those things, a playbook, if you will. Madam Speaker, I just want to publicly commend my colleagues who have labored so diligently to put together this draft. I especially want to recognize the RSC chairman, Mike Johnson, and the Spending Task Force chairman, Jim Banks, my good friend. Their leadership has been invaluable, and we are deeply appreciative to all of them. I am particularly pleased that in this budget they have included a proposal to eliminate official time. This is something I have been working on for a long time. For those who may not be familiar with it, official time allows a Federal employee who is part of a union to conduct union activities in the course of their workday even if that means not doing the job that they were hired to do. In many cases, people are hired to do a job and yet 100 percent of their time is spent doing Federal union activities, and so the taxpayer is paying these people to do a job which they are not doing.…”