The $1.2 trillion federal budget package signed into law over the weekend came nearly halfway through the current fiscal year following three temporary continuing resolutions and what U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann called "the most arduous budget process" in his more than 13 years in Congress.
But Fleischmann said Tennessee fared well in the final spending agreement, with nearly $330 million of special community projects funded in Tennessee's 3rd Congressional District, including the largest such earmark for a specific project anywhere in America at the Chickamauga Dam in Chattanooga.
Despite opposition to the budget agreement by most Republican members of the U.S. House last week, Fleischmann on Monday praised the package for funding more than a dozen targeted projects he requested in his East Tennessee congressional district to make road, police, infrastructure and employment upgrades and to fund new quantum and transportation research in Chattanooga.
"I want everyone to know as Tennessee's only appropriator (on the House Appropriations Committee that shapes the budget) I will continue to fight for the key projects not only in my district but across our state," Fleischmann said Monday during a news conference at Chattanooga City Hall to highlight the extra funding coming to the city.
What the budget has for Chattanooga
— $237 million for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete the new Chickamauga Lock.
— $6.4 million for the Alton Park connector trail on the Southside.
— $5 million for widening of Cummings Highway in Lookout Valley.
— $4 million for EPB quantum projects.
— $3.5 million for the UTC Quantum Center.
— $3.5 million for Broad Street redesign.
— $2.4 million for UTC Mobility Ecosystems project.
— $1.5 million for 211 expansion by United Way of Greater Chattanooga.
— $850,000 for Chattanooga Police Department technology upgrades.
Source: Congressional budget proposal
At Fleischmann's urging, Congress provided another $237 million to pay for cost overruns by the contractor building a new lock at the Chickamauga Dam. The new and bigger replacement lock is about 70% complete.
Four years ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it had enough money to finish building the new river passageway through the 80-year-old Chickamauga Dam. The contractor building the new Chickamauga Lock, Shimmick Construction, said the project costs escalated after the pandemic and delays in the project stretching over more than two decades.
(READ MORE: Fleischmann tops Congress earmark list)
The final cost of the lock is approaching $1 billion, or more than triple the initial cost projection for the project. Fleischmann's request for the extra $237 million to complete the lock represents the biggest targeted or earmarked funding anywhere in the new budget and reversed the decadelong policy of the GOP maintained in the 2011 to 2020 budget years to avoid what critics denounced as pork barrel and often wasteful spending from earmarks.
The conservative nonprofit group Citizens Against Government Waste has denounced earmarks for "presenting opportunities for corruption and influence peddling" and claims such spending is contrary to what the Founding Fathers envisioned of the role of Congress.
"President James Monroe said in 1822 that federal money should be limited 'to great national works only, since if it were unlimited it would be liable to abuse and might be productive of evil,'" Sean Kennedy, director of research for Citizens Against Government Waste, wrote in a study of earmark spending. "His prescient words became a reality after high-profile boondoggles and an explosion of earmarks that culminated in a record $29 billion in 2006 and led to jail terms for several members of Congress."
But Fleischmann, who is one of a dozen chairs of key appropriation subcommittee in the U.S. House who write the federal budget, said when Congress restored congressional earmarks in January 2021, the amount of such targeted spending was capped and members had to disclose details of each project and swear off any personal gain.
Budget wins approval
Despite GOP and conservative opposition to the new budget, the spending plan was adopted last week in the U.S. Senate by a vote of 74 to 24 after advancing in the U.S. House in a 286-134 vote. Both of Tennessee's U.S. senators voted no. Biden signed the budget deal Saturday.
The new budget also provides $4 million for Chattanooga's Electric Power Board to build out its quantum communications network and provides $5.9 million for new research at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to expand UTC's mobility ecosystem and smart corridor research to Cleveland and to establish a UTC Quantum Center to fund more research using EPB's first-in-the-nation commercial quantum network.
(READ MORE: EPB launches next frontier with quantum network in Chattanooga)
Such programs are an outgrowth of Chattanooga's research with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory just up the road in Anderson County where the federal government spends nearly $8 billion a year on nuclear weapons development, energy research and other Department of Energy projects.
UTC Chancellor Steve Angle said the university's partnerships with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is DOE's biggest lab, "have a huge impact on UTC and Chattanooga" in propelling new scientific breakthroughs.
Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly, who asked Fleischmann to help provide federal funds for a number of city agencies, praised the Ooltewah lawyer-turned-congressman for helping the city secure needed funding for such special projects as the Alton Park connector, the redesign of Broad Street downtown and the widening of Cummings Highway.
"Infrastructure investments help economic development," Kelly said during Monday's news conference at City Hall.
Infrastructure politics
Fleischmann has been wary of seeking some federal infrastructure funds in the past, voting against a $1 trillion infrastructure spending bill in 2021 during the first year of Biden's term in the White House.
But Fleischmann said the projects he backed with his budget earmarks in the fiscal 2024 budget are needed programs that should help propel Tennessee's growing quantum research, nuclear power designs and transportation programs.
"Bottom line, we probably had the most successful energy and water spending bill in decades," said Fleischmann, chair of the Approprations Committee's energy and water subcommittee. "While I don't think this budget deal is a perfect package, it kept the government open and will fund some key programs in Chattanooga."
Fleischmann said work has already begun on the fiscal 2025 federal budget, which he hopes can be adopted before the next fiscal year begins Oct. 1 to avoid another series of temporary continuing resolutions to keep the government funded and functioning. The city and EPB have already submitted requests for more community project funding next year, and so far, Fleischmann said "the outlook looks good" for such projects in fiscal 2025.
But with only a one- or two-vote partisan margin in the House of Representatives, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, "has a very difficult task" getting majority support for measures in the House during a contentious election year, Fleischmann said.
Last week in response to the new federal budget plan, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Northwest Georgia, called for the removal of Johnson as speaker of the House and vowed to fight spending bills that don't address the problems at the U.S. border with Mexico.
Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Northeast Georgia, called the new budget package and the funded programs in it "garbage" and urged his GOP colleagues not to vote for such a budget.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6340.