Sen. Bob Corker says vote for tax bill may be worst of his career

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bob Corker lamented Wednesday that his recent vote for the GOP tax bill could be one of the worst of his career if projections that it will add nearly $2 trillion to the deficit prove to be accurate.

“None of us have covered ourselves in glory,” the Tennessee Republican, who is retiring at the end of the year, said at a Senate Budget Committee hearing. “This Congress and this administration likely will go down as one of the most fiscally irresponsible administrations and Congresses that we’ve had.”

Corker was referring to a recent report by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which concluded that recent tax-and-spending legislation passed by Congress is helping to drive up the federal deficit and push the national debt as a percent of annual economic output to levels not seen since just after World War II.

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The nonpartisan group’s analysis showed that the vote to increase the discretionary spending caps in the recent $1.4 trillion spending package, if made permanent, would add $2 trillion to the national debt, including interest costs.

Corker voted against the spending bill, calling it “one of the most grotesque pieces of legislation I can remember.”

But in December, he voted in favor of the Republican tax reform bill after voting against an earlier version of the legislation.

Corker, who was the only Republican senator to vote against the earlier version of the bill, had complained that the legislation did not do enough to address the national deficit.

But he later said he changed his mind after much consideration and decided to support the final bill because it offered a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to make U.S. businesses more productive and internationally competitive.

At Wednesday’s budget committee hearing, Corker suggested he regrets that vote.

“If it ends up costing what has been laid out here, it could well be one of the worst votes I’ve made,” he said. “I hope that’s not the case.”

Corker, who called the budget committee "the least serious committee I work on," said the best vote he has made in the Senate was for the Budget Control Act of 2011 because “we at least capped domestic spending for a time.”

Spending and tax reform have increased the deficit, he said. In fact, the $1.4 trillion spending bill that passed in March would add around the same amount of debt over a 10-year period as the tax reform legislation passed in December, he said.

Members of both parties have been careless on deficits and have been incapable of addressing the nation’s fiscal stability, Corker said.

“Let’s face it … both sides of the aisle are totally remiss as it relates to deficits,” he said. “I listen to this partisan bickering over blaming people, it’s ridiculous. We are absolutely not capable of dealing with our country’s finances and, of course, a big part of it is the American people don’t really want it to be controlled.”

Corker's tax vote also is the subject of a billboard in Nashville off Interstate 40 criticizing the senator over the vote. The billboards have a large black and white photograph of Corker's face and accuse him of voting for a tax bill to personally enrich himself. Corker has denied similar accusations when they were raised by others shortly after the vote.

"We're doing this because congressional Republicans voted to line their own pockets, and the American people deserve to know the truth about the GOP tax law," Tim Hogan, a spokesman for the group Not One Penny, said by email. "They need to be called out for putting themselves ahead of their constituents."

The group said it is targeting other lawmakers around the country with the billboards, one in Nashville off Interstate 24 that criticizes Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

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