Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) recently shared a video on social media, shedding light on why he stood alone in opposition to the Trump-backed Continuing Resolution (CR) passed by the House.
Massie made his case clear in a video recorded before the vote, which he promptly released after the bill’s passage. He warned that Mike Johnson has forged another agreement with Senate Democrats, Senate leadership, and even Hakeem Jeffries.
The House managed to pass the Continuing Resolution with a narrow vote of 217-213, with Massie being the sole Republican holdout.
JUST IN: House Passes Trump-Backed CR Bill – Massie is Lone Republican Holdout
— The source
Massie criticized the bill as a “UNIPARTY deal,” noting that while it fails to fund the border wall, it does allocate funds to USAID. In response, President Trump has declared a primary challenge against Massie, a move that many of his supporters view as controversial. Trump compared Massie to Liz Cheney, but Massie’s situation is quite distinct as he enjoys significant backing from MAGA conservatives who trust him to resist the Deep State, big government, and perpetual conflicts.
In his X post featuring the video, Massie remarked, “The low down on this CR. It’s a fake fight here in the House that will become obvious when the Senate Democrats vote for this stinker.”
Massie pointed out that Senate Democrats will back this bill, predicting that if 40 Republicans defected in the House, 40 Democrats would step in to ensure its passage. He questioned the timing, asking rhetorically if House Democrats would miss their offsite retreat over the weekend.
Consistent with his predictions, Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) joined Republicans in voting for the CR, while Massie was the sole Republican dissenter.
Massie voiced his concerns about the bill, suggesting that the threat of a government shutdown “can get conservatives to vote for liberal things.”
He questioned, “Why are we going to fund all of the waste, fraud, and abuse that DOGE found? Why are we going to cut, copy, paste that budget?”
He continued, “I thought we were going to get rid of that stuff. Well, it seems like we’re not.”
Massie’s full statement is available below:
Massie: I thought you’d like to know about the fake fight that’s going on in the House of Representatives right now over this CR. They’re trying to pitch it as a conservative CR versus liberal Democrats, and even the Democrats are going along in the House. But let me tell you why that’s a fake fight. They plan to pass it with all Republicans here in the House, but after we leave town, the Democrats are going to vote for it in the Senate. That’s right. They’re going to need about eight Democrat Senators to vote for this thing over in the Senate. That means that this deal has already been cut, that Mike Johnson has cut a deal with the Senate Democrats, Senate leadership, and even Hakeem Jeffries; he’s in on this so that they can pitch their fake fight here in the House.
Now, why am I so certain this is going to pass in the Senate when it gets over there with eight Democrats or however many Democrats they need? Well, Mike Johnson is sending us home a day early. We’re going to vote on this thing and skip town. If you thought there was really a threat of them not passing it in the Senate, why would you leave town? The other thing that’s going on is the Democrats have a retreat, an offsite retreat, where they’re going to get together and party and have, you know, guest speakers and stuff. That starts tomorrow and runs through Thursday and Friday. You think they’re not going to let this pass? What would happen if, lets say, the Freedom Caucus decided to take the conservative stance on this CR and oppose it? Well, they would be about 30-40 votes short here in the House, the Republicans would, but Hakeem Jeffries wouldn’t be able to pretend, along with Mike Johnson and his fake fight, that there’s this conservative vs. liberal battle in the House, and he would just hand over at least 40 Democrats. And once you get to 40 Democrats, it’d probably be a whole lot more Democrats.
So, that’s what’s going on. It’s all a fake fight. You’re going to find this out when it goes over to the Senate and you have Democrats in the Senate voting for it. Now, here’s the other thing a lot of people aren’t telling you about this bill. In the Fiscal Responsibility Act… that passed a couple years ago under Kevin McCarthy, the deal that was cut between myself and others on the Rules Committee was that, if you will guarantee a 1% cut in spending on any CR that goes past April 30, and put that into law, use the sequester language and put that into law, then we would raise the debt limit or suspend the debt limit for a period of time.
I voted for this because a 1% cut seemed like a wonderful thing if they would go and do a CR for a full year, which seemed like almost a certainty at some point in the next two years. Well, here we are under Mike Johnson, and we’ve got the one year CR that they’re going to do; it’s actually a six month CR because we’re already six months into this. And it’s going to go past April 30. It should trigger the sequester. But, guess what? Mike Johnson’s folks and lawyers have said, we’re just going to ignore that. We’re going to treat this continuing resolution as 12 appropriations bills or an omnibus for the purposes of this sequester, because it goes all the way to September 30. In other words, they’re saying this really isn’t a CR for the purposes of that deal we cut two years ago. We’re going to call this basically an omnibus in CR clothing so we don’t have to follow the law, the agreement, that we did before.
Really, what we should be doing is what I’ve said all along—I’ve been here 12 years—we should be doing 12 separate bills. That’s kind of plain to say, if you ask me, and that way there’s no threat of a shutdown. It. The reality is that the Democrats and Republicans love to have the threat of a shutdown. They can get conservatives to vote for liberal things if there’s a shutdown looming, especially when you have a president who says, Oh, we don’t want a shutdown under my watch. By the way, this is not Trump’s agenda. This is Biden’s spending agenda. The CR extends Biden spending levels until the end of the year. The Biden spending levels that he enjoyed for the last 15 months of his presidency will now be locked in until September 30.
Massie emphasized honoring the 1% cut already enshrined in law, which he accuses Mike Johnson of ignoring. He insists on eliminating wasteful spending identified by DOGE, urging against simply replicating that budget.
