John Barrow: “I thank the gentlelady for the time. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to reach across the aisle in support of the Cutting FUEL…”

“I thank the gentlelady for the time. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to reach across the aisle in support of the Cutting FUEL Act, a commonsense bill to cut wasteful government spending by reducing the number of nonessential vehicles purchased by the Federal Government. Any family or business knows that you can't spend beyond your means. The government should work the same way. Buying brand new cars the Federal Government doesn't need is a waste of hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and this bill puts an end to that. The government spends $4 billion a year to maintain and operate over 650,000 vehicles. Since 2006, the Federal Government has added over 20,000 vehicles to this fleet, and the cost of operating these vehicles has gone up 5.4 percent. I recently introduced H.R. 6144, which also cuts the Federal vehicle fleet by 20 percent. Like the Cutting FUEL Act, it makes an exception for vehicles that are essential to national security while reducing the size of the nonessential Federal Government fleet by 20 percent. This is just one of the many recommendations of the bipartisan Simpson- Bowles commission, and over the next 10 years it will save literally hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money. I'm pleased to join my colleague, Representative Hanna, in support of his version of this legislation, because acting in a bipartisan fashion isn't just the right way to do things around here, it's the only way to actually get things done around here.…”