Jimmy Quillen

First surfacing as a federal legislative issue after the U.S. Congress decided to automatically link social security benefit increases to the consumer price index beginning in 1972, a cohort of social security retirees born during the period of 1910 through 1916 received undue windfall of payments from the federal taxpayers through the Social Security Administration miscalculating social security benefits based upon the 1910–1916 cohort. Social security retirees born immediately afterwards during the so-called "notch" period running approximately from 1917 to 1921–such as Quillen's wife Cecile–perceived agency mistreatment and petitioned members of Congress for a similar upward and unwarranted windfall adjustment for payments to their own social security benefits.[4][5]

Quillen voted twice against the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub.L. 88–352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964) is a landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States[7] that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.[8] It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public (known as "public accommodations").

Quillen first voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on February 10, 1964, and again on July 2, 1964 when the bill came back to the U.S. House of Representatives for a final vote with an amendment attached to the original bill by the U.S. Senate. Congress asserted its authority to legislate under several different parts of the United States Constitution, principally its power to regulate interstate commerce under Article One (section 8), its duty to guarantee all citizens equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment, and its duty to protect voting rights under the Fifteenth Amendment. The final version of Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law later on that same day by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964, at the White House.[9][10]

In April 1971, U.S. Representative Olin Teague of Texas introduced a bill to create five medical schools in conjunction with established VA hospitals and U.S. Senator Alan Cranston of California introduced a companion bill within the U.S. Senate. Known as the Teague-Cranston Act, the federal legislative proposal called for the creation of five new medical schools in five states to meet the needs of the medically underserved areas of the country.

Quillen frequently reported to Tennessee news media that he himself had introduced an amendment to the Teague-Cranston Act legislation which required that any university to be considered for acceptance into this pilot program must be on government property contiguous and adjacent to a VA hospital, as East Tennessee State University was adjacent to the Mountain Home VA Hospital. However, the October 4, 1993 edition of the Kingsport Times-News released an investigative report entitled "Story of ETSU medical school's founding not always in agreement with facts" documented several facts pertaining to the Teague-Cranston Act that disputed Quillen's district claim of his amendment sponsorship:[11]

• one of the Teague-Cranston Act medical schools "was established at Texas A&M" within the district of U.S. Rep. Olin Teague and located about seventy miles away from the nearest Veterans Administration hospital;
• Quillen only become a signatory sponsor two months after Teague had introduced the original bill specifying the creation of medical colleges in medically under served areas of the United States;
• the Teague-Cranston Act was never in any danger of failing within the U.S. House of Representatives, and the legislation had actually been passed in the House by an overwhelming margin. and;
• a memo from the Nixon Administration indicates that Nixon signed the bill "... primarily as an election-year gesture toward veterans."

The Teague-Cranston Act passed without a dissenting vote in October 1972, and was signed by U.S. President Richard Nixon.

While serving as Governor of Tennessee, fellow Republican Winfield Dunn incurred Quillen's wrath by opposing the establishment of a medical school at East Tennessee State University. Dunn claimed that Tennessee lacked the resources to adequately staff and fund two first-rate medical schools and that more resources should instead be devoted to the existing medical school in Memphis, which was approximately 500 miles from Quillen's district.

One reason for Quillen's anger may have been that Dunn was from Memphis himself, and perhaps Quillen felt that Dunn was showing too much favoritism to his hometown. There has been considerable acrimony between East Tennessee and the state's other grand divisions dating back to settlement times. Whatever the case, Quillen never forgave Dunn, and it came back to haunt Dunn when he ran for governor again in 1986. Quillen made it known in East Tennessee Republican circles that Dunn was not to be supported. Dunn managed to overcome Quillen's opposition and won the nomination. However, without significant support in East Tennessee, Dunn stood almost no chance against the popular Democratic State House Speaker, Ned McWherter. Only a large turnout in his former Memphis base kept the margin of defeat to under nine points.

The ETSU medical school was subsequently built anyway as the ETSU Quillen-Dishner College of Medicine, "before a homosexual sex scandal linked to one of the school's early benefactors and teachers removed Dishner's name from institutional signage",[12] and is now officially known as the East Tennessee State University James H. Quillen College of Medicine.

In 1972, a public interest task force led by Ralph Nader pointed a very public finger at Rep. Quillen, accusing the congressman of using his elected office to "...promote his business interests, specifically insurance sales through Kingsport Development Co., Inc.", a Kingsport-based real estate and insurance agency owned by Quillen.[13]

In 1980, UPI Washington syndicated news reported that the United States Postal Service was "...investigating whether Rep. James H. Quillen, R-Tenn. illegally purchased hundreds of commemorative Olympic postage stamps after they were recalled" after the "stamps were ordered recalled last March 11 because of the U.S. boycott of the summer games in Moscow, and those stamps had been previously sold became collectors' items." A USPS spokesman said that postal inspectors were looking into whether Quillen had purchased the stamps before or after the recall order.[14]

In 1989, Quillen (also a banker) worked against pending legislation for the savings and loan industry that would prohibit S&Ls from carrying "supervisory goodwill"—a form of phantom capital to count toward their capital requirements" for accounting and regulatory reports.[13]

Quillen's fellow Republicans passed him over in 1990 for consideration as ranking Republican on the House Rules Committee in favor of Gerald Solomon of New York, even though Quillen was the committee's most senior member. An unnamed fellow committee member was once quoted by the Kingsport Times-News (October 4, 1992) as saying, "Jimmy's one helluva nice guy, ... but let's face it. He couldn't organize a one-car funeral." He thus lost a chance to become the committee's chairman when the Republicans later gained control of Congress after the 1994 elections—thus making him one of the longest-serving congressmen to have never chaired a committee.

The October 25, 1992 edition of the Johnson City Press reported that both Quillen and former U.S. Senate Howard Baker, while in Jonesborough, Tennessee on their Bush/Quayle/Quillen Victory Bus tour, attacked the character of U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton with Quillen telling the assembled crowd, "We don't want a draft dodger as President of the United States.," and referring to the 1992 elections as "a national crisis".[15] Quillen had himself avoided conscription into military service during the early 1940s, but later served in the U.S. Navy from late 1942 to 1946.

In 1993, a study first featured within the Orlando Sentinel used a baseball hitting percentages statistical analogy to rate the effectiveness of members of the U.S. Congress, listed Quillen with a .000 average.[16]

Quillen voted for approval of the 1994 modifications to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement.