Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) held nothing back on Monday as he explained how Washington really works, sparing neither party in his rebuke of Speaker Mike Johnson's stopgap spending plan.
Unsurprisingly, the Kentucky Republican is a “no” on a continuing resolution to temporarily fund the government, noting that the fight over funding issues is nothing more than “political theater.”
“Can we be honest with the American people about what's going on here?” he asked colleagues during a Committee on Rules meeting convened to discuss the Continuing Appropriations and Other Matters Act, 2025. “This is political theater and I’m going to call out both sides right here. It’s all posturing, it’s fake fighting, we all know where it ends up.”
Massie likened the spending fight to “groundhog day,” noting it doesn’t matter whether there’s a Democrat or Republican speaker in the House.
“We always get a CR in September and then we get an omnibus,” he said, with the only real difference being that some years the latter comes before Christmas, and sometimes after.
Why does Congress never cut spending? To Massie, the answer is easy: “Because Democrats want to grow the welfare state and Republicans want to grow the military industrial complex.”
He went on to emphasize that one of the most important tools Congress has is the power of the purse through Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. But lawmakers don't want to use that power.
After almost two years of hearings that “exposed lies at the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], shortcuts at the [Food and Drug Administration], unconstitutional gun bans at the [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives], over prosecution of January Sixers, the [Department of Justice] targeting common citizens… spying by the [National Security Agency], illegal mandates for livestock by the [U.S. Department of Agriculture], targeting transgenic plant vaccines at the [National Science Foundation], and the censorship industrial complex of which the NSF is part of, automobile kill switch at the [Department of Transportation],” Republicans continue the funding, he said.
“I think most Democrats are just fine with this kind of totalitarian state that the bureaucrats are pushing on us, but Republicans at least pretend to be against these things. But what are we going to do this September? We’re gonna fund every freaking one of those things that we have exposed," he added.
He said the funding continues because Congress is addicted to spending.
Massie also took aim at this year’s “bright shiny object” attached to the CR: the SAVE Act, which requires proof of citizenship to register to vote.
The Kentucky Republican said it’s nothing more than “political theater” since “almost every Democrat [will] cast a vote so that illegals can vote in our elections.”
But in reality, while Americans are “revved up,” thinking it will help “save these elections,” the legislation is too little too late.
“How are you going to do that in like six weeks [before the election]?” he wondered. “They're already registered, if they're going to vote, some of them probably already voted,” Massie said, referring to illegal immigrants.
“This SAVE Act ain't going to save anything,” he continued. “It ain't ever going to become law. It's a false promise to get all the Republicans half pregnant. Then you're going to get fully pregnant by the end of September when you vote for this CR,” which will no longer have the SAVE Act attached because Republicans will cave.
“This is political theater. We all know where it ends up. I've been here 12 years. I've seen it 12 times. I refuse to be a thespian in this failure theater.”
Massie's remarks are well worth watching in their entirety below:
I refuse to be a thespian in the Speaker’s failure theater.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) September 9, 2024
The 6 month continuing resolution with the SAVE Act attached is an insult to Americans’ intelligence.
The CR doesn’t cut spending, and the shiny object attached to it will be dropped like a hot potato before passage. pic.twitter.com/0FdHRYTm1q