[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6057]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           VOICING SUPPORT FOR SCIENTISTS AND FEDERAL WORKERS

  (Mr. FOSTER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to voice support for the 
dedicated public servants who make this country great.
  President Trump campaigned on a promise to drain the swamp, and 
instead he nominated unqualified Wall Street executives and career 
politicians for Cabinet and senior-level positions, leaving the next 
level of appointments almost entirely unfilled, all while threatening 
to cut the experienced Federal workforce who make our government work 
well every day.
  As the only Ph.D. physicist in Congress, I know that many of these 
Federal workers and their support staff are scientists who work every 
day to advance innovation and improve our standard of living. The 
Department of Energy, for example, relies on scientists with technical 
expertise to run our national labs. The success of their work depends 
on long-term sustained funding and a continuity of competent leadership 
to make their new ideas a reality.
  But our President's skinny budget would destroy scientific funding 
and force us to give up our place as a leader in innovation, and many 
of his appointments are insulting jokes. So last weekend I joined the 
March for Science because it is clear that this administration does not 
value science and scientific enterprise.
  I call on my colleagues here today to support scientists and Federal 
workers. And if a swamp needs to be drained, the place to start is Mar-
a-Lago.

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