Rep. Joe Carr takes over $18,000 for bogus hotel expenses when he lives 30 miles from the state Capitol!
QUESTION: Who is the member of the Tennessee House of Representatives who has taken more per diems than any other legislator on Capitol Hill?
ANSWER: It’s none other than Rutherford County’s Republican freshman Rep. Joe Carr (R-48). Here’s part of the Tennessee Democratic Party press release last week:
“Mr. Carr seems to be talking out of both sides of his mouth on this issue,” Forrester said. “Back home he rants about taxes, but he sure comes to Nashville often to collect his per diem, which reimburses lawmakers for their expenses while doing official business.
“Speaker Kent Williams even sent a letter recently to House members encouraging them to limit use of expense money they collect from the state.”
It must be embarrassing for Rep. Carr to know voters pay attention to these things. For months, Rep. Carr ignored his own party’s leadership warning him and other free -loaders to stop using per diems as his personal unemployment check, but that’s exactly what he’s done.
What’s worse is Rep. Carr doesn’t feel he owes anyone an explanation.
Like many of his constituents, Rep. Carr has fallen on hard times in this 1 1/2 year long Bush recession. But instead of trying to help his district recover from the results of 8 years of failed conservative economic policy, Rep. Carr drafted legislation demanding Gov. Bredesen deny extended jobless benefits to the growing unemployed in Lascassas when they needed it the most. Rep. Carr told listeners on 1450 WGNS that extending their unemployment benefits “would cost too much of the tax payer’s money.”
Now we find out that Rep. Carr, who has no job himself, has been taking his own personal stimulus check directly from tax payers through bogus $171 a day per diem requests meant to pay for hotel and meals for out of town legislators. Rep. Joe Carr claimed more than $18,000 for hotels and meals, even though he lives 30 miles from Nashville. More than $7,000 of that was since July when nothing is going on at the Capitol!
Don’t take our word for it. You can view the public record posted for everyone to see right on the state legislature’s website.
Lascassas deserves an honest, hard working Representative who doesn’t spend as much tax money as Memphis legislators who actually need hotel rooms. The voters ought to ask Rep. Carr what on earth he did with their money.
[...] because it seems so audacious that I can’t quite believe that there’s not more to it. Legislators who live near Nashville are really charging Tennessee taxpayers to come into the office? (That story’s particularly funny and galling because this is the same guy who didn’t [...]
More unemployment extensions are very much needed, look at the state of unemployment in Tennessee:
http://www.localetrends.com/st/tn_tennessee_unemployment.php?MAP_TYPE=curr_ue
As a democrat and someone who voted for Rep. Carr I would appreciate an explanation from Chairman Fagan with regard to the information.
1) The link above does not give the 2nd quarter House per diem numbers. Where did you get that his per diem was more than $7,000 since July? Please provide a link.
2) “…even though he lives 30 miles from Nashville.”
I checked with mapquest Rep. Carr lives 52.4 miles from the Capital. Whatever.
3) “Who is the member of the Tennessee House of Representatives who has taken more per diems than any other legislator on Capitol Hill?”
You claim that is is Rep. Carr but with all due respect this is not true according to one of your pervious links.
http://www.nashvilleistalking.com/2009/08/rep-jason-mumpower-tops-list-of-house-per-diem-requests/
I know that for Democrats facts are important. Thank you for your attention to my questions.
By the way the reason I voted for Rep. Carr is I have known him since he graduated fom Riverdale in 1976. I am proud to be a Democrat and will always be a Democrat but as a friend of Rep. Carr’s I hope you can give me an expalnation. Your description of him seems different from the man I have known for over 40 years. Again thanks.
Ha, this guy has some balls.
I commute 80 miles a day for my job (roundtrip from M’boro to Nashville + a few miles out of the way to carpool with my husband), and I’m pretty sure my employer would laugh its ass off if I tried to put in an expense report for travel, food, etc.
And in a time when the state has been struggling with its budget, too. I wonder what all those state employees who got laid off last year think about this?
Susan,
All of the per diem payments are public knowledge, since taxpayers pay for it. You can call the state capitol and find it out. Ain’t too hard for anyone with a 6th grade education or more. And if you question the numbers, how about you check out today’s Tennessean:
http://tennessean.com/article/20090816/NEWS02/908160378/Tennessee+legislators+rack+up+more+than++1+million+in+expenses
Susan,
1) You don’t have to wait until the second quarter per diems are posted on the wesbite. You can go to the legislative offices and look at these documents. When they are posted you will see exactly where RCDP, the Tennessean and everyone else that is reporting this got their numbers if you can’t make the trip yourself. But don’t let not being able or willing to drive to find these things out make you blindly vote for this man again.
2) I live in Joe Carr’s district and commute to work on Charlotte, blocks from the capitol. I trip is 27 miles. If Joe Carr lives anywhere near 52 miles away from the Capitol, he has some explaining to do.
3) In the previous link, you are totaling mileage and per diem requests. If you look just at per diem requests, no one beat Rep. Joe Carr because not a single legislator in the entire House, even Memphis Democrats and Jason Mumpower from Bristol, TN requested as much as Joe Carr.
Carr had the nerve to claim $171 in daily hotel and meal expenses he never purchased in the first place to stuff his pockets with his own personal stimulus check. At the same time he pushed legislation he had Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey help him write to deny extended unemployment benefits to his own constituents. This man is crook and a con.