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Thursday, November 12, 2026Nov 12

Opinion: Fleischmann in minority among members of state Republican delegation in debt limit vote

Staff File Photo By Matt Hamilton / U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tennessee, speaks during the Veterans Day Ceremony at the Collegedale Commons on Nov. 11, 2022.
Staff File Photo By Matt Hamilton / U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tennessee, speaks during the Veterans Day Ceremony at the Collegedale Commons on Nov. 11, 2022. Staff File Photo By Matt Hamilton / U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tennessee, speaks during the Veterans Day Ceremony at the Collegedale Commons on Nov. 11, 2022.

Tennessee Republican members of the United States House of Representatives apparently have different ideas about how the country’s fiscal house is to be put in order.

The House voted 314-77 to pass the Fiscal Responsibility Act Wednesday, which would raise the country’s debt ceiling and stave off a potential government shutdown.

In explaining their votes on the bill — for or against — Volunteer State GOP members cited identical language.

“I came to Congress to work to get our fiscal house back in order,” U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Ooltewah, said in a news release. “That is why I voted to pass the [bill] — the largest spending cut in our nation’s history.” He said he also wanted to put the country “back on the road to economic prosperity … for our children and grandchildren.”

“I came [to Washington, D.C.] to put our fiscal house in order,” U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Columbia, said after voting against the measure, “and protect the future generations of Tennesseans.”