Mark Green: Recent Spending Bill ‘is No Way to Govern’

 

U.S. Rep. Mark Green (R-TN-07) criticized the process by which Congress has funded the federal government in a recent newsletter to his constituents.

“The House passed two spending bills to fund the government, but the process is broken and needs to be fixed. Releasing 2,313 pages of the funding bills less than 24 hours before the vote and only days before the funding deadline is no way to govern. We must do better,” Green wrote.

“While the defense bill is far from perfect, I voted in favor of it because it gives our troops the pay raise they deserve and properly funds our national security priorities. I voted against the 1,773-page domestic spending package because it was loaded with pet projects and radical policy riders that would increase the national debt. I will continue to push the Democratic majority in the House to focus on the work that the American people sent us to Washington to do.”

In the newsletter, Green also said the following:

• U.S. Republican President Donald Trumphas issued a Major Disaster Declaration for the State of Tennessee involving all 10 counties in Tennessee’s Seventh District. This,  after severe storms caused significant damage and loss of life in October.

• Troops will get a 3.1 percent pay raise, per the National Defense Authorization Act bill.

• Green recently sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo requesting that he designate dangerous Mexican drug cartels as members of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Green said “these cartels destabilize countries, assassinate members of law enforcement, and traffic in dangerous narcotics.”

• Green voted against what he described as “the Democrats’ radically partisan prescription drug legislation, H.R. 3,” saying it “would impose more Washington control and government price fixing, and the President’s Council of Economic Advisers found that it could prevent 100 new cures from coming to market over the next decade.” Green said he has sponsored a bipartisan alternative, H.R. 19, the Lower Costs, More Cures Act that he says will unleash cures for millions of patients. The bill, Green went on to say “would encourage the innovation of new medicines and cures, promote more low-cost options for patients, and increase transparency in the pharmaceutical market.”

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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].