Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen of the House… First, I want to thank you for your willingness to serve your fellow Iowans. You have each made sacrifices to be here and it is an honor to serve with you in this Chamber. It is an even greater honor to serve you, my colleagues, as the Speaker Pro Tem. I want to also thank my constituents back home who have provided me with the opportunity to represent them these past 5 years.
Before I go much further, there are some very special people that I must thank because they make tremendous sacrifices so that I can serve here in Des Moines. They are my wife, Cami, and our three children, Seth, Wes, and Mariah. I have missed events, been gone when something broke down, and forgotten more than I should because of the commitment to being a legislator. They deserve a huge thank you from me.
Each of us in this chamber have different priorities and desires that our constituents have sent us here for. I look forward to working with each one of you to accomplish these priorities in a bipartisan fashion. There will be times that we don’t agree with one another, but we all understand that our shared goal is to make the lives of our fellow Iowans better. My hope is that we are able serve the people of Iowa with a government that is smaller and smarter.
Regardless where you stand on many of the issues that we will address this session, we have a solemn responsibility to work through those issues and bring a just conclusion to our citizens. My goal as a legislator, as is many of you, is to wisely spend the taxpayer’s dollar, provide efficiency of government services, advance our freedoms and liberties, and ensure our government works for the people, not the other way around.
May God bless each of you and the Great State of Iowa! Thank you for your attention and let’s get to business.
