Congress has struggled for months to adopt a budget for a fiscal year that is now nearly half over, but even with limits on discretionary spending, the budget plan ultimately negotiated by House and Senate leaders for fiscal 2024 would pump billions of dollars into East Tennessee, including the biggest budget earmark anywhere in the country in Chattanooga.
U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, the Chattanooga Republican who chairs the House funding panel for energy and water projects, said he has used his leadership role to help secure one of the biggest budgets ever for the military, energy and cleanup projects in Oak Ridge while pushing through an extra $237 million to pay for unexpected costs to finish construction of a new replacement lock at the Chickamauga Dam in Chattanooga.
The spending package also includes earmarked federal funding to build an Alton Park connector trail and bike path on the Southside of Chattanooga, the widening of Cummings Highway in Lookout Valley and federal grants to both EPB and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
“The energy and water bill that I helped negotiate is probably the best for the state of Tennessee that we’ve seen in a long time, especially for Chattanooga and Hamilton County,” Fleischmann said in a telephone interview after the 1,050-page appropriations package for six major areas of government was released Sunday night. “As chairman of the energy and water subcommittee, I’ve tried to fix a lot of problems.”
(READ MORE: Rep. Chuck Fleischmann ‘very concerned’ about budget process heading into 2024)