How Tennessee Voted on Jobs Bill

The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed a $15 billion jobs bill Thursday. Every Democratic congressman from Tennessee and one Republican voted for it.

The bill includes highway spending, and tax incentives for companies to hire unemployed workers and make capital investments.

Unemployment in Tennessee is hovering around 10-percent – a problem Congressman Lincoln Davis from Pall Mall says this legislation will help address.

“I hope what this does is encourage small business folks to start hiring again, especially with the tax incentives in this legislation.”

Davis is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition of fiscally conservative Democrats. Fellow party member and Blue Dog, Representative Jim Cooper from Nashville, helped push for changes to the bill that made it more palatable to fiscal conservatives.

The Blue Dogs wanted wanted the jobs bill to comply with newly enacted “pay-as-you-go” rules. In the end, they got what they wanted.

“We went to the Ways and Means Committee and got them to come up with provisions that will more than pay for the bill. This is enforcement of the pay as you g o process, which is the way every family in America needs to live and the government should live by those rules too.”

The Senate already passed the legislation and is expected to okay the House changes before sending it to the President.

John Duncan, who represents Knoxville, was the only Tennessee Republican to vote for the bill.

This report was produced by Capitol News Connection reporter, Manuel Quinones.