15th District Congresswoman Mary Miller is joining her fellow National Freedom Caucus members in drawing a hard line on national spending.
The caucus is pushing for 12 appropriation bills to be approved to get their support to avoid a government shutdown. Some of bills include holding the government to spending below what was agreed upon this year during the debt ceiling debate, building more walls at the southern border and a general stance against more funding for Ukraine.
Miller told RFD Illinois that she supports the hard line stance and won’t believe that there isn’t time to get those bills voted on: “I want 12 appropriations bills to move, and I’m working towards that. I haven’t been out there [in Washington D.C.] for twenty years. I’ve been there for three, so it’s a little bit new to me. We’ve got issues out there, so I don’t know. I can’t predict.”
The Senate is now pressing hard on short-term stop gap measures to keep the government open.
Miller was recently heavily criticized on her stances on federal spending. In an article in the Champaign News Gazette published on August 28th, Miller’s district was highlighted as having no community project funding dollars. The district, which is the largest Congressional District by landmass in the state, has seen no federal tax dollars come back. By comparison, 13th District Democrat Nikki Budzinski’s district saw $86 million worth of projects while 16th District Republican Congressman Darin LaHood’s district saw $25 million.
Miller has joined some of her fellow Freedom Caucus members in pledging not to take the federal money back to her district, while some other members of the caucus have recently relented on that pledge.
Adams County Republican Chairman Dave Bockhold blasted Miller’s practice in an op-ed in Muddy River News for the district not getting any return on investment of tax dollars for the district. Bockhold went on to note that there are many projects in the district that could possibly receive funding, but Miller refuses to advocate for them in Congress. Bockhold says Miller should take lessons from fellow Republican congressmen in the state on how to use the practice.