Dear Friends,I’m writing to you following an eventful day in our district, where I visited a local nonprofit, toured one of our many 6th District small businesses, and enjoyed a good lunch for an even better cause at the annual “Cooking on the Square” event in Cookeville benefiting Putnam County Habitat for Humanity.
After the eventful week we’ve had in Washington, it was great to be back home talking with Tennesseans about the issues of the day and where I stand. Here is a quick rundown of the three items I have heard about the most from my conversations with many of you:Voting Against Corporate Welfare at the Ex-Im Bank
I’ve always believed that the federal government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers in the private sector. That is why I voted against reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank of the United States this week. First started under President Franklin D. Roosevelt to improve trade with the Soviet Union, the Ex-Im Bank guarantees loans and provides financing to foreign companies in order to encourage them to purchase products and services from the U.S. Today, the bank is rife with crony capitalism – over 60 percent of its lending benefits 10 major corporations and only two percent of U.S. exports stem from the bank’s activities.
What’s more, the bank’s loans are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. If a borrower defaults on their payments, you as an American taxpayer are left holding the bag. I see no reason whatsoever for this to continue. I was proud to vote against reauthorizing the Ex-Im Bank back in 2012, and to do so again this week. While the bill to renew the bank’s charter passed over my objections, we will continue to make our view known. Corporate welfare is not a conservative value and we must rid it from our economy wherever we can.A Bad Budget
I’ve always said that Members of Congress should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good – but we also need to recognize a bad bill when we see one. That was the case with this week’s so-called Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015. This budget ‘deal’ is a raw deal for conservatives and for taxpayers who are already shouldered with an $18 trillion debt burden in Washington. It was a deal brokered in backrooms and released to the public the day before Congress was expected to vote on it; a violation of House Republicans’ 2010 “Pledge to America” which guaranteed three days for Americans to read the contents of major bills and weigh in before a vote.
What’s more, the deal breaks the spending caps in sequestration – an imperfect but successful means of reducing our deficit – and it suspends the debt ceiling (the federal government’s borrowing authority) altogether until 2017, giving this Administration free rein to continue piling on new debt that our children and grandchildren will inherit. I came to Congress with the promise of working to return fiscal sanity to Washington and I could not, in good faith, support this deeply flawed agreement.
I spoke with TheBlaze this week and explained more about why I oppose this deal. You can read their write-up following our interview HERE.Welcoming Speaker Paul Ryan
This week began a new chapter for our House Republican Conference. I was proud to join all of my Tennessee House Republican colleagues in voting to elect Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Speaker Ryan is a friend and a fellow conservative. I had the privilege of serving with him on both the Ways and Means Committee and Budget Committee, where I saw his character and his convictions up close. In his remarks before Congress yesterday, he acknowledged an important truth: Congress is broken, but it can be fixed with a new vision and a return to regular order. He also encouraged Members of Congress to pray for one another. I’ll certainly be keeping him, his wife Janna, and his children at the top of my list and hope you will too. We’ve got a lot of work to do, and Speaker Ryan is the right person to lead us forward “for such a time as this.”
