Corker speaks truth about Senate’s failure on budget

Congress headed home for its six-week, pre-election break on Sept. 22, after the U.S. Senate voted just past midnight to give final approval to a short-term budget measure that will keep the federal government running for another six months.

The decision to approve a short-term budget fix instead of passing a spending plan for the entire fiscal year that begins Monday again set off a debate about whether lawmakers were acting irresponsibly.

“We haven’t passed a budget in more than three years and not a single appropriations bill has been brought to the floor this year,” U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said in a press release explaining why he voted against the shortterm measure.

Corker argued Congress should not be passing the short-term measure, known as a continuing resolution, or any spending bill until it has prioritized how taxpayer dollars are to be spent and at what levels.

“If the Senate can’t perform its most basic responsibilities,” Corker said, “I worry about how we’re going to make the tough decisions and do the hard work that will be necessary to get our country on a path to fiscal solvency.”

To back up the senator’s claim about congressional inaction on a budget and spending bills, Corker’s office pointed us to two documents compiled by Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee.

The first was a timeline indicating that the last

shot. One of the pistols his son had when he was killed was a 9mm Ruger used to kill Spray, authorities said.

Dye- stained money taken in bank robberies in the Nashville area after the postal shootings also was recovered from the two men, officials said.

Defense attorneys Michael Scholl and C. Anne Tipton say, however, that the evidence should be suppressed – along with Montgomery’s statement – because of what they contend were numerous constitutional violations.

They also say their client was supposed to be on anti-psychotic medication at the time of his arrest and that – although he had worked as a corrections officer at the state DeBerry Special Needs Facility in Nashville since 2002 – tests show Montgomery is mentally retarded with an IQ of 61, which would make him ineligible for the death penalty.

Scholl said Montgomery also was diagnosed with “Psychotic Disorder Not Otherwise Specified.”

Federal prosecutors are in the process of having their own mental evaluation conducted on Montgomery before they decide whether to seek the death penalty.

No trial date has been set, though U.S. Dist. Judge Jon McCalla has said the case is a priority on his docket.