{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://foxx.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=398482", "Foxx blasts Senate, talks accomplishments", "2014-11-01", "2014", "2014-11", "Republican", "House", "NC", "Virginia Foxx", "F000450", "foxx.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Five-term U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx understands people have a negative view of Congress. But she thinks part of the problem is that very word: Congress.\u201cCongress is short-hand,\u201d Foxx said. \u201cCongress is both the House (of Representatives) and the Senate. They really need to segment them. The Senate is totally dysfunctional. The House is not.\u201d Foxx said the House \u2013 where she has represented North Carolina\u2019s 5th District for 10 years \u2013 has been enormously productive. \u201cWe\u2019ve passed over 400 bills to the Senate. Almost all of them pass with bipartisan support. Senate has refused to take them up,\u201d Foxx said. Foxx has policy goals that might make Democrats fume. Allowing private medical accounts in lieu of Medicare, repealing the Affordable Care Act and removing government funding from education are just some of the positions she espouses. But she was quick to point to bipartisan successes she\u2019s had in the House to contradict the narrative of her as a hyper-partisan Republican. \u201cI was the first member of my class to get a substantive bill passed,\u201d Foxx said. \u201cThe HERO act, it had broad bipartisan support.\u201d The act, Foxx said, allows servicemen and women to allocate their combat pay \u2013 which is tax-free \u2013 into individual retirement accounts (IRA) without penalties. \u201cThat came from a constituent,\u201d Foxx said. \u201cHis son was overseas and eleven-twelfths of his income was combat pay. And he, thinking of his future which was very smart, tried to set up an IRA. And the IRS came back and sent him a penalty because that income was tax-free.\u201d Foxx said her priority, if she captures a sixth term in Congress, is to help create private sector jobs while increasing the abilities of community colleges and other educational groups. \u201cThere are 4.7 million jobs vacant in this country,\u201d Foxx said. \u201cSo many people don\u2019t have the skills to do them.\u201d Foxx said a bill she introduced, originally called the SKILLS Act, would help consolidate and remove duplicative workforce training programs. \u201cThe (Government Accountability Office) did a major study on these programs that said they we need to consolidate these some of these programs,\u201d Foxx said. \u201cIn President Obama\u2019s 2012 State of the Union, he said we needed to consolidate all these programs into one.\u201d Foxx said her bill did just that and eventually received bipartisan support. \u201cKept reminding the president and the Democrats, that this was something the president himself advocated doing,\u201d Foxx said. \u201cEventually it went to the Senate where it passed with only three dissenting votes. And passed the House with only six dissenting votes, all Republicans. So it had broad support.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://foxx.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=398482"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8025979623198509, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}