Mike Conaway: “Mr. Speaker, I stand tonight in support of our efforts to aggressively eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in our Federal…”

“Mr. Speaker, I stand tonight in support of our efforts to aggressively eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in our Federal spending. I am a CPA by profession. I have over 30 years of practice in helping clients and others deal with this issue in the world outside of government, and it is incredibly important in that arena, as it is in Federal Government. I once spent 5 years working with President George W. Bush as his business partner in Midland, Texas, the chief financial officer of the oil and gas exploration company that we co-owned, and it was an exercise in meeting payrolls and providing jobs for people of west Texas, but doing so in a cost-effective and efficient manner. We were getting other people's money to spend in the oil business to drill with, and it was incumbent upon us to spend those dollars as if we were spending our own money, wisely and with an understanding of how scarce they were, because folks trusted us with that money. We in Congress have much the same role in that regard.”