Congressman Zach Wamp, 3rd District Tennessee

Congressman Zach Wamp is part of a growing trend in which representatives work in Washington but -- in the truest sense -- stay close to the people they serve.

When the House is in session, Wamp is in the nation's capital; but each weekend -- and every other chance he gets -- the Congressman heads back to the 3rd District where he lives with his family and 542,000 of the best people in America.

This reflects his determined focus on the needs and interests of the people in the 3rd District. In only his first term, he got $25 million authorized for flood control in East Ridge at the Southern edge of his district and helped to obtain funding for a badly needed Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) to serve Southeast Tennessee. And he is becoming the guiding force of an effort to grow high-tech industries and family wage jobs through the development of the East Tennessee Technology Corridor.

As the 105th Congress convened in 1997, the 39-year-old representative began his second term and received a highly desirable appointment to the House Appropriations Committee, a post usually reserved for people who have been in Congress much longer. He is the first member of his party from Tennessee to serve on the influential committee since 1910. The House Appropriations Committee is perceived as the most powerful in Congress because it controls all annual federal spending.

Wamp also serves on these Appropriations subcommittees: Interior, which funds research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and our national parks; Military Construction, with jurisdiction over armed services installations world-wide, and Legislative Branch dealing with Congressional operations and reform.

In another achievement unusual for someone only beginning his second term, Wamp was elected Chairman of the TVA Caucus, which includes members of both political parties in the House and Senate from the seven TVA states. He is also co-chairman of the Republican "Blue Dogs," a group of main-stream conservatives who work for civility and cooperation between Republicans and Democrats.

The Congressman laid the groundwork for his second term by what he accomplished in the first. He was a leader of the watershed freshman class of 1994 after the 73 new Republicans elected him as their representative on the Majority Steering Committee. He also served on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Science Committee, which have jurisdiction over TVA and the Department of Energy complex in Oak Ridge. And he was a member of the Small Business Committee, where he promoted an empowerment agenda for all small business persons.

Wamp, who has never accepted contributions from special-interest Political Action Committees (PACs), was active in the fight to reform campaign finance laws and received 95 percent of his campaign contributions from within the State of Tennessee. He gained national attention with appearances on ABC's "Nightline" with Ted Koppel and NBC's "Meet the Press." He was a regular panelist on PBS's "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer" and was featured in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek Magazine and The New York Times.

Before his election to Congress in 1994, he spent more than a dozen years working in the private sector as a small businessman and commercial real estate broker. Wamp grew up in Chattanooga where he attended the McCallie School. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Tennessee. Wamp and his wife, Kim, have a son, Weston, and a daughter, Coty. They are active members of Red Bank Baptist Church.

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Debbie Boone
P.O. Box 117
Oak Ridge, TN 37831-0117
(423) 576-3776/FAX (423) 576-3643
E-mail: booned@orau.gov