NASHVILLE – Former U.S. House Budget Committee Chairman Diane Black was one of five congressmen who skipped voting earlier this morning on a two-year $400 billion budget deal that boosts federal spending and ended a brief government shutdown.
Black’s congressional spokeswoman, Heather Douglass, said the Republican congressman opposed the measure, which came about in a compromise with Senate Democrats and gubernatorial hopeful’s time was “better spent meeting with business leaders in Tennessee.”
“After Rep. Black worked to craft a budget that supported our military and reined in wasteful spending, Republicans went in another direction and cut a deal with Chuck Schumer and the Democrats to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on inefficient and wasteful government programs,” Douglass said by email when asked about Black’s absence.
She said the congressman’s “no vote wouldn’t have prevented the bill’s passage and her time was better spent meeting with business leaders in Tennessee.”
Efforts to learn what business leaders were involved were not immediately successful.
The other eight members of Tennessee’s House delegation were present with five Republicans, Reps. Chuck Fleischman, Marsha Blackburn, Scott DesJarlais, David Kustoff all voting yes while Rep. John Duncan voted no.
Rep. Jim Cooper and Rep. Steve Cohen, both Democrats, split with Cooper voting no while Cohen vote aye.
U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., also split with Corker voting no while Alexander voted yes.
In a statement, Fleischmann cited concerns voiced by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis about the need for fiscal stability for U.S. military service members.
“The current governing trend of short-term solutions and budgetary instability is detrimental to the security of our nation,” the Chattanooga congressman said.
More over, the Republican said, “our nation’s infrastructure has been neglected due to short-term fixes in place of long-term solutions. This budget agreement provides funding for infrastructure projects including bridge repair and construction.”
He said in East Tennessee, “short-term continuing resolutions have hampered the progress of the Chickamauga Lock, an essential infrastructural investment.”
“In this difficult situation, my priority remains with East Tennesseans, our troops, and our nation, and that is why I support this legislation,” Fleischmann said.
Corker, another Chattanooga, said the agreement boosted discretionary spending caps by nearly $300 billion over the next two years and “perpetuates the abuse” of a military “overseas contingency operations” fund which is intended to provide emergency spending on overseas military operations.
The senator charged the fund has been “abused to fund normal operations” at the Defense and State Departments.
“It is also only partially offset, and most of those offsets occur years from now, doubling down on the irresponsible mentality in Congress of spend-now-pay-later,” Corker said. “To say I am discouraged by the outcome of these negotiations would be an understatement.”
But Alexander said in his own statement that “this 2-year budget agreement sets important priorities for our nation: fighting the opioid crisis, ending the sequestration funding restrictions on our military, and improving our nation’s roads, bridges, locks and dams.”
Alexander said it also “extends funding for the community health centers that nearly 400,000 Tennesseans rely on for their health care, and extends funding for CoverKids, which provides health insurance to nearly 74,000 Tennessee children and pregnant women.”
Black skips congressional budget deal vote, condemns ‘wasteful’ spending
