Representative Duties Quotes

Part of my role, I suppose, is to run government business in the House of Representatives, and try to ensure that people know exactly what's going on in the Chamber is an important part of that.

In the 114th Congress, I had the privilege of serving on two of the most important Committees in the House of Representatives: the House Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Being an MP is quite a strange job, because you do it in two different places. Half the time I'm in Westminster and the other half I'm in my constituency and the job is different in both of them.

The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.

It's nice not to have to worry about constituents.

It's my job to represent the concerns and address the concerns my constituents have, and those concerns change over time.

Mr. Speaker, having received unanimous consent to extend my remarks in the RECORD, I would like to indicate that I am not really speaking these words. Try as I might, I could not get the floor to deliver my plea on behalf of the coal miners.... I do not want to kid anybody into thinking that I am now on my feet delivering a stirring oration. As a matter of fact, I am back in my office typing this out on my own hot little typewriter. Such is the pretense of the House that it would have been just as easy to quietly include these remarks in the RECORD, issue a brave press release, and convince thousands of cheering constituents that I was in there every step of the way, influencing the course of history in the heat of debate.

An old theory holds that air conditioning ruined Congress. Members no longer had to flee the Washington heat to spend the summer back home. The long vacation forced them to bond with their constituents.

By the time I land in Iowa, I feel like my mind is more open to the reality of being back home and focusing on the problems of the people in my district.

The great interests of an agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing nation are so linked in union together that no permanent cause of prosperity to one of them can operate without extending its influence to the others. All these interests are alike under the protecting power of the legislative authority, and the duties of the representative bodies are to conciliate them in harmony together.

I don't know if there's any secret recipe. Just a lot of hard work. Pay attention to your constituents. I always had a great Iowa staff that did all my great constituent service work. And I found that people would forgive me for a lot of my "liberal sins" because I paid attention to the home front.