Speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives about Speaker Johnson’s plan to try to pass the SAVE Act, which its proponents contend would stop illegal voting, Rep. Thomas Massie called out Speaker Johnson and said that the current plan is just to engage in “failure theater” where the Democrats get what they want and the Republicans get nothing other than the opportunity to posture.
Beginning, Rep. Massie called out the fake fighting he sees as about to happen and what he thinks will really happen as this fight over the spending bill begins, namely that both sides will pretend do fight to make a good bit of theater. Beginning, he said, “Can we be honest with the American people about what’s going on here? This is political theater.”
Continuing, he argued that this is all going to be fake, pretend fighting, saying, “I’m going to call out both sides right here. It’s all posturing. It’s fake fighting. We all know where this ends up. This is Groundhog Day. I don’t care if the Democrat is the speaker, or republican is the speaker. We always get a CR in September, and then we get an omnibus.
He then, after joking about the various ways the omnibus could be passed, said that what will happen before it is just theater and that the story is always the same. He said, “And in the meantime, it’s political theater. You know, we’ve got some good theater. We’ve got great writers. I wish they’d just come up with a new plot.”
Building on that, he noted that it’s the same thing every year and that what must happen is the omnibus must be split up into its component parts, on which the House can vote. He said, “It’s the same plot every fiscal year. What should we be doing? It’s already been discussed. We should have done 12 separate bills. We should have done 12 separate bills. But again, whether Democrats are in control or Republicans are in control. We never do the 12 separate bills.”
Then, questioning the spending levels and what is responsible for ever-increasing spending, Rep. Massie said, “Why do we always spend at least as much as we did last year? And why do we never cut spending? It’s because Democrats want to grow the welfare state and Republicans want to grow the military industrial complex. And we’re we’re eventually going to get together and they’re both going to go up, I guarantee it.”
He also commented on the rise of bureaucracy in America, saying, “And both parties are just fine letting the bureaucrats do their thing, which should be our thing, according to Article One, Section eight in the Constitution, we are empowered with these things. Most important of the things we do is the funding, and that’s the big lever we have sat through now almost two years of hearings in this Congress, where we’ve exposed lies at the CDC shortcuts at the FDA, unconstitutional gun bans. At the ATF over prosecution of January Sixers, at the DOJ, targeting common citizens. At the FBI, spying by the NSA, illegal mandates for livestock by the USDA targeting plant vaccine, or transgenic plant vaccine, the NSF and censorship, the censored industrial complex at the of which the NSF is part of automobile kill switch at the DOT now these are all things.”
Further emphasizing that same point, he added, “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 going to fund every freaking one of those things that we have exposed.”
Building on that to try to get his fellow Republicans to understand the importance of the funding, “That is the tool that we have, is the funding. Why are we funding things we don’t like? We don’t have to. Well, it’s because we’re addicted to spending, and this doesn’t do anything about the addiction at all. So why? . . . You know, a couple years ago or a summer and a half ago, I suppose now we did something where we allowed the debt limit to be increased, but as as a condition of that, we said, if you do a CR that last past April 30, everything’s going to get cut 1% and that to me, seemed like at least a little tangent. Fiscal responsibility was creeping in. But now I notice that this CR, instead of going one year and giving us time to do the 12 appropriations bills, is going to go six months.”
A bit later, he commented more on that and said, “The 1% cut is on the tee, and Republicans won’t even swing at it. So instead, we’re going to do a six-month CR, instead of a one-year CR, that sets up this another crisis next spring. We can do another pretend fight sometime around March, and that fight will it’ll be the same fight regardless of who wins the presidency and who’s in charge of the Senate and the House, and we’re basically going to get pretty much the same result, but that’s six months from now. In the meantime, we can kick the can down the road all of these things that we’ve exposed and all of these hearings are going to continue to get funded.”
And, mocking the GOP tendency to keep passing bills with some small shiny object on them, he said, “But wait, there’s a bright shiny object on this CR I’ve never seen one of these. I have never seen a bright shiny object attached to one of these. Must pass bills. Oh, wait, no, it actually happens there always is a bright shiny object, a bauble, if you will, little something. To get excited about this SAVE act. It’s going to save us all right. And by the way, this is good political theater. I do like this part of it that we’re going to see almost every Democrat cast a vote so that illegals can vote in our elections. I mean, that’s pretty clever on the part of our Speaker, to set that up, make you all take that vote. But here’s what he’s going to do after you take that vote. He’s going to take it off the bright, shiny object goes away.”
Then, making the point that the public and Republicans keep getting duped, Massie said, “It’s Lucy in the football again, and the American public is all revved up. Yeah, we’re going to get to save it. We’re going to save these elections. We’re going to stop the illegals from voting. Really? How are you going to do that in like, six weeks? I think they’re already registered if they’re going to vote, some of them probably already voted. This SAVE Act ain’t going to save anything, and particularly because it ain’t ever going to become law. It’s a it’s a false promise to get all the Republicans half pregnant, and then you’re going to get fully pregnant by the end of September when you vote for this CR.”
Watch him here:
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