Diane Black calls current GOP senators ‘incompetent’

Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) blasted her GOP counterparts in the Senate in an interview on Wednesday, calling them “incompetent.”

In a radio clip posted to Black’s Twitter account Wednesday morning, Black sharply criticized Republicans in the upper chamber for their ineffectiveness in achieving President Trump’s legislative agenda.

“Right now what I see in the Republicans in the Senate over there is they’re utterly incompetent,” Black said. “We have major pieces of legislation that would help this country and the people I represent, things like Dodd-Frank.”

Black was referring to the Republican rewrite of the 2010 financial reform law passed after the financial crisis of 2008. 

{mosads}”We passed [Dodd-Frank] over there to them, they still haven’t done anything with it. We passed 12 appropriations bills, they haven’t done anything with it,” Black continued. “Sanctuary cities bills…nothing with it. Repeal and replace, which we know needs to be done.”

The Tennessee Republican, who is running to be the state’s next governor, blasted the Senate for doing nothing while people in her district are “suffering.” She pointed to news from the Senate concerning the budget process as the latest evidence.

“People in my district are suffering, Sean, and now we’ve passed over a budget to them, and the piece of information that at least came out of their committee that they’re going to be voting on, that piece of legislation doesn’t do nearly as much as our budget does,” she said.

Black, who chairs the House Budget Committee, called on her Senate colleagues to embrace “fiscal responsibility” and reform the way Congress spends money. 

“So I’m calling on them to stand up, and do what the American people want us to do, and that’s some fiscal responsibility, put some mandatory reforms in there, reform our mandatory spending, and get us out of spending more than we bring in,” Black said.

The remarks represent a continuation of Black’s sharp criticism of the Senate in recent days. On Tuesday, she ripped Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) for calling the White House an “adult day care,” remaking that the term more accurately applies to the upper chamber of Congress.

“Look, if you talk about an adult day care center, I’m sorry, but I think the Senate is an adult day care center. They can’t get anything done over there,” she said.