Chuck Fleischmann, first term Congressman from TN

Dear Samuel, 
 

Serving in my first term as your Congressman, I wanted to let you know about how I am keeping the promises I made to the people of East Tennessee to cut government spending and red tape, repeal Obamacare, and create jobs.

This spring I have been working with my colleagues in Congress to pass important legislation, and have introduced 3 bills to cut spending and hold government accountable. 

One of the most important bills that I voted for this year is H.R. 9, the  Small Business Tax Cut Act.  With small business struggling under high taxes, this bill gives a needed 20% cut to America’s small businesses so that business owners have more money to hire workers and grow their business. In addition, many small businesses are having difficulty getting loans, especially with local community banks suffering under the crippling regulations of Dodd-Frank. While I support repealing Dodd-Frank entirely, I joined my colleagues in voting for H.R. 3336, the Small Business Credit Availability Act, which exempts small banks from Dodd-Frank. This is a good first step in freeing up capital for community banks that are the financial foundation for our communities.   I also supported H.R. 3606, the Jumpstart our Business Startups Act, which removes additional regulations for small banks and helps startup companies raise money to grow their businesses and create jobs.

Continuing to cut spending and reduce the size of government has been a major initiative that I have lead the fight on as well. I recently introduced H.R. 4060, the  Freeze Government Spending Act of 2012   which, sets discretionary spending at $949 billion, and freezes it at that level through Fiscal Year 2021. This is a 9% cut from last year and returns us to pre-Obama spending levels. This commonsense bill saves $856 billion more than the recent debt ceiling legislation, and prevents the crippling defense cuts imposed by sequestration. It also saves $1.66 trillion compared to President Obama’s FY 2013 budget proposal.

We’ve also continued to fight for the Keystone XL pipeline in the House of Representatives. Despite inaction from the President, I have joined my colleagues in aggressively pushing for approval of the Keystone XL project, which could create  20,000 jobs at no cost to the US taxpayer. Keystone XL could provide hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day from Canada, one of our closest allies and our largest trading partner. This is a fight we will continue to have with the President until it is approved. A recent vote on the Keystone XL pipeline found  69 Democratic Congressmen voting for Keystone, making support for the project bipartisan. I will continue to work for approval of Keystone XL and other energy legislation such as the PIONEERS Act, as additional energy exploration can provide thousands of high paying jobs and price relief at the gas pump. 

Holding government accountable has been a key part of my work this spring as well. I believe accountability starts at the top, so I cosponsored and voted for the STOCK Act, which bans insider trading by Members of Congress, Senators, or their staffs.   I firmly believe that Congress must play by the rules that we create, and must be aggressive in maintaining the public trust. In order to help save the federal government money by encouraging federal employees to spot wasteful spending, I introduced H.R. 4237, the  EASY Savings Act ,  which provides incentives for federal employees who identify ways to save the taxpayer money.   Additionally, I sponsored H.R. 4454, the  ACCOUNT Act , in the wake of the GSA conference scandal . The ACCOUNT Act requires any agency hosting a conference costing $25,000 or more to have their agency head certify that the conference is vital to agency needs, to report online the conference details, and to submit a report of conference expenses to the relevant Congressional committee at the end of the fiscal year. With federal agencies spending $2 billion on conferences between 2000 and 2006, the ACCOUNT Act is an easy way to save taxpayer money.

I look forward to continuing my work to create jobs, cut spending, reduce regulatory and tax burdens, and hold government accountable. I hope you have found this newsletter informative, and that you will not hesitate to  contact me if you have any questions or concerns about what I am doing in Congress. After all, I work for you! 

 

Sincerely,

Chuck Fleischmann