On Friday, the talking heads and Twitterati excoriating Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kent.) were so scandalized that they couldn’t quite get to telling us what terrible thing he had done.
“GOP’s Massie outrages House,” screamed The Washington Post headline. The paper informed that “the Republican from northern Kentucky has frequently voted no on issues large and small, even against the wishes of GOP leaders.”
Wow, is that allowed?
With Congress poised to shovel $2.2 trillion to citizens and businesses by unanimous consent, i.e., without a recorded roll call vote, Mr. Massie balked, thereby requiring a quorum to physically come to the capitol to vote on the relief package.
“I came here to make sure our Republic doesn’t die by unanimous consent in an empty chamber,” Massie declared on the House floor, “and I request a recorded vote.”
President Trump urged the “third rate Grandstander” be tossed out of the Grand Old Party. And former U.S. Senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry noted — of all things — his complete agreement with Trump, tweeting that “Massie has tested positive for being an a**hole. He must be quarantined to prevent the spread of his massive stupidity.”
Rep. Max Rose (D-N.Y.) offered that Massie was “disgusting” and “inhumane,” and that if the vote was pushed “back 24 hours there will be blood on [his] hands.”
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) boasted of having asked the congressman, “Why don’t you just back off?”
Facing the biggest spending bill of all time, Massie’s notion of Congresspeople voting on the record? Hardly radical. But in the face of the COVID-19 threat, bringing legislators back to the capitol entailed real risk.
Yet come back they did. And just to show Massie how wrong he was in alleging a cover-up, they agreed to a roll-call vote so that there was full accountability.
Take THAT, Massie!
Wait . . . Congress didn’t go on the record?!
They came back and yet, as Massie pointed out, “they still refused to have a recorded vote.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Note: One spending item, which Massie had specifically complained about, was $25 million for the Kennedy Center. Then, mere hours after President Trump signed the legislation, the Kennedy Center honchos fired the National Symphony Orchestra, informing them “that paychecks would end this week.”
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
