FLEISCHMANN AND SPENDING

U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Chattanooga, campaigned in his initial race for Congress in 2010 for major cuts in federal spending and believed entitlements should be on the table. Seven years, later, he still believes entitlements should be on the table.

The federal spending? Well, he’s going to fight tooth and nail for it if it’s in the 3rd Congressional District.

“Until we address mandatory spending,” Fleischmann told Times Free Press editors and reports Thursday, the country will be unable to get its fiscal house in order.

In the meantime, the fourth-term congressman says he’s proudly parochial.

It’s critical for him to be cognizant of how federal spending affects his constituents, Fleischmann said, ticking off the Chickamauga lock, the Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratory, the Oak Ridge Y-12 plant, workforce development and the opioid crisis.

Unfortunately, since 434 other members of Congress are doing the same thing in their districts, federal spending is unlikely to go on a diet anytime soon.

Fleischmann, indeed, called attention to the state’s recent ranking in the Roll Call Clout Index, which said “no state in this decade has seen a more meaningful boost than Tennessee in institutionalized congressional influence.”

In other words, our representatives do a good job in bringing home the bacon.

The Volunteer State is ninth among the 50 states, trailing only states “with much bigger delegations because they’re much more populous,” Roll Call said.

The state, it said, was 27th in the index six years ago and 14th two years ago.

Fleischmann is so protective of 3rd District spending, he said, that he was the only Republican member of the Tennessee House delegation to vote for the recent omnibus budget bill, which restored nearly all the cuts President Trump had suggested, including those for Planned Parenthood, the National Institute for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

However, it continued to provide money for the replacement Chickamauga Dam lock and for the various Oak Ridge projects that both provide employment for district residents and as the congressman noted, do important work for the country. Plus, he said, the omnibus bill included needed additional military spending, including for service personnel pay raises and Veterans Administration benefits.

“Is there an ideal situation and bill?” he asked rhetorically. “No.” But, he said, it protects 3rd District priorities.

Fleischmann is correct about the mandatory, or entitlement, spending, though. If nothing is done about it, he said, within the next decade or so it will eat up all the discretionary budget. So there will be no money for the Chickamauga lock, much less for Planned Parenthood, the Environmental Protection Agency and foreign aid, all three of which Trump campaigned to zero out or decrease.

Indeed, it was those type of promises that voters said they liked about Trump, an association the congressman deemed “fascinating.”

“There’s a certain brand of populism Trump espouses that people ascribe to,” Fleischmann said, “a certain status that the Bushes, [Sen. John] McCain and [Gov. Mitt] Romney didn’t. They feel Donald Trump is out there every day caring about them, fighting for them. It’s not in the country clubs where [he] is most popular. It’s a connection I haven’t seen since Ronald Reagan.”

He said where he is “careful” with his words, Trump is “not scripted. It’s refreshing.”

Fleischmann compared Trump’s brash, candid style to a father who glanced at the “D” on his child’s report card and, instead of saying at least it wasn’t worse, said he thought the child should bring the grade up to a “B” the next time.

“People are tired of political double-talk, of political sugar-coating,” he said.

Nevertheless, Trump, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House together must work together to solve the riddle that is the growing discretionary spending problem.

“Neither party is dealing with that ,” F leis ch mann said, and neither is the administration. “If we could deal with that, it would free up [discretionary] dollars.”

In the meantime, he said, “the discretionary side is continuing to squeeze.”

Doing nothing about mandatory spending, Fleischmann said, ultimately will mean 3rd District priorities will have to be touched.

For today, though, “the vast majority of our constituents feel very comfortable” both with Trump and with the congressman’s votes on spending federal dollars.

Make no mistake, though. Without mandatory spending reforms, the day of reckoning is coming.

If that time comes, Fleischmann said, “we’ll make some tough choices.”

Unfortunately, those reforms will take a kind of political courage few seem to have in Washington, D.C., today.