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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.

“Congress is short-hand,” Foxx said. “Congress is both the House (of Representatives) and the Senate. They really need to segment them. The Senate is totally dysfunctional. The House is not.”

Foxx said the House – where she has represented North Carolina’s 5th District for 10 years – has been enormously productive.

“We’ve passed over 400 bills to the Senate. Almost all of them pass with bipartisan support. Senate has refused to take them up,” 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’s had in the House to contradict the narrative of her as a hyper-partisan Republican.

“I was the first member of my class to get a substantive bill passed,” Foxx said. “The HERO act, it had broad bipartisan support.”

The act, Foxx said, allows servicemen and women to allocate their combat pay – which is tax-free – into individual retirement accounts (IRA) without penalties.

“That came from a constituent,” Foxx said. “His 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.”

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.

“There are 4.7 million jobs vacant in this country,” Foxx said. “So many people don’t have the skills to do them.”

Foxx said a bill she introduced, originally called the SKILLS Act, would help consolidate and remove duplicative workforce training programs.

“The (Government Accountability Office) did a major study on these programs that said they we need to consolidate these some of these programs,” Foxx said. “In President Obama’s 2012 State of the Union, he said we needed to consolidate all these programs into one.”

Foxx said her bill did just that and eventually received bipartisan support.

“Kept reminding the president and the Democrats, that this was something the president himself advocated doing,” Foxx said. “Eventually 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.”