Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky was one of only two Republicans to vote against President Donald Trump’s comprehensive tax and spending bill, dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which narrowly passed the U.S. House of Representatives early Thursday, May 22, by a 215-214 vote. Massie’s opposition centered on his conviction that the bill would significantly worsen the national debt.
The legislation encompasses key aspects of Trump’s domestic agenda, including changes to Medicaid, food stamps, taxes, and border security, and aims to eliminate taxes on workers’ tips and overtime. Its passage came after days of intense internal Republican negotiations, with Trump actively lobbying for the bill and criticizing holdouts as “grandstanders.” All Democrats, along with Massie and Ohio Representative Warren Davidson, voted against the measure.
Massie, a vocal fiscal conservative, clearly articulated his reasons for opposing the bill, including in posts on social media platform X. “I’d love to stand here and tell the American people ‘we can cut your taxes and increase spending and everything will be fine,'” Massie posted. “But I can’t because I’m here to deliver a dose of reality about the ticking debt bomb known as the ‘Big Beautiful Bill.'”
He emphasized the need for immediate, rather than delayed, spending cuts. “I agree with @WarrenDavidson,” Massie wrote. “If we were serious, we’d be cutting spending now, instead of promising to cut spending years from now.”
Massie also raised concerns about the bill’s potential impact on the financial markets, stating on X, “Here’s a sign of what’s in store if the big beautiful bill passes. Congress can do fantasy math, but when investors put money on the line, the math gets real. Bond markets are already demanding higher returns because Congress isn’t serious. The Fed no longer controls rates.”
While nonpartisan research groups cited by Time estimated the bill could add over $2.5 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade, an analysis from the Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated a $3.3 trillion increase over the same period. Massie, in an Instagram post, stated his belief that the bill would add $20 trillion to the federal debt over 10 years.
Massie’s defiance has drawn direct criticism from President Trump, who has previously called for Massie to be primaried and stated he “should be voted out of office.”
The bill now advances to the Senate, where further revisions are anticipated.
The above article assumes things about national debts that are not true. Its conclusion is contained within the faulty premise that excessive spending of fiat currency by governments can create personal obligations for individual persons and corporate associations of individual persons who form companies.
We should not worry about the national debt. Such a “debt” can only exist in the mind, never in tangible ways that involve actual property has been lent to a borrower. Nothing is stolen from a supposed lender if nothing is borrowed. This should be obvious to a child. Such false ideas of metaphysical debts is purely a metaphysical belief (credit-credo) because nothing physical was borrowed! National “debts” cannot lawfully exist as real obligations. This is a swindle. However, it takes at least two to make a swindle!
The fiat currency that is demanded as payment is only used or valued by the people because legal tender “laws” are enforced by the improper use of police powers to support edicts regarding taxation that are demanded to be paid in fiat currency and/or by electronic transfers of the same idea.
More leaders like Gospel pastors and magistrates should declare that money which has no true value cannot be “used” to create true debts. Thus, the national debt may exist in the people’s collective imagination, but not because anything was borrowed by the so-called “debtor” (taxpayer). Such “debts” do not exist a real ethical obligations that are defined by weights and measures or that are subject to the law of God.
It would be a more interesting article if some time was spent with a little humor about how our political leaders are concerned about “over spending” and “paying the national debts”. God laughs at this sort of vanity and foolishness. We should laugh with Him! Ha! Ha! Ha!