Thomas Massie: 'The Next Speaker Is Going To Go Back to the Old Testament'

The libertarian-adjacent Kentucky congressman says he's against the effort to depose Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

(UPDATE: The House of Representatives voted 216-206 on Tuesday afternoon to remove Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.) as speaker of the House, with eight Republicans voting in favor of his dismissal. It is the first time in U.S. history that a sitting speaker has been ousted in this manner. The position will remain vacant until a majority of the House votes to appoint a new speaker.)

Ahead of what could be a dramatic afternoon in the House of Representatives, Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) occupies an unusual and possibly unique position.

Massie is the closest thing to a libertarian that you'll find in the House and a frequent ally of the right-wing Freedom Caucus—some members of which are aiming to topple Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in a vote that could come this afternoon. But in an interview with Reason on Tuesday morning, Massie offered a defense of McCarthy's speakership, and he warned that the Republican rebels might not understand the damage they would do by firing him.

"In many ways, this is a referendum on whether the House is going to try regular order or not, because the next speaker—if Kevin is deposed today—is not going to say 'oh, if only we had tried more regular order, this could have worked out,'" Massie told Reason. "The next speaker is going to go back to the Old Testament…and we're going to devolve to the former method, which was an omnibus bill every year and gang warfare to try and get your thing in the omnibus bill."

For Massie—and for anyone who wants to see Congress budget more responsibly— regular order is a big deal. Effectively, that means that Congress should bring each of its 12 annual spending bills to the floor via the process that everyone learns in civics class: with committees voting on what to include in each, then amendments, and debate on the House floor before a final vote. Congress hasn't correctly completed that process on time since 1996.

As part of the compromise McCarthy reached with the House Freedom Caucus in January, he agreed to go back to that system.

He's been criticized for failing to follow through. While there are certainly personal issues involved in Rep. Matt Gaetz's (R–Fla.) attempt to dump McCarthy from the speakership, some of Gaetz's criticism is focused on McCarthy's unwillingness to send single-subject bills to the House floor.

Gaetz filed the motion to vacate—a rarely used procedural tool that allows the full House to vote to remove a speaker—after McCarthy suspended the rules to bring a continuing resolution to the House floor on Sunday to prevent the government from shutting down. The bill passed with support from Democrats and against the objections of the Freedom Caucus.

Massie voted against the continuing resolution but said Tuesday it was "the least worst of a bunch of bad options." If the House bill hadn't passed, he said, it's likely that a Senate-drafted continuing resolution including a higher level of spending—mostly because of added military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, which was left out of the House measure—would have become law.

McCarthy's defenders argue that he's working to reform the budget process and needs more time to see it through.

Massie points out that McCarthy has allowed two Freedom Caucus members—Reps. Chip Roy (R–Texas) and Ralph Norman (R–S.C.)—onto the Rules Committee. Together with Massie, that's a voting block that can effectively control what bills reach the House floor, something that Massie says would have been unthinkable under previous Republican speakers.

"They have been listening to us and we have been guiding the process," he says.

Norman has also voiced support for keeping McCarthy in charge of the House. "I have been profoundly disappointed in several elements of Speaker McCarthy's leadership, but now is not the time to pursue a Motion to Vacate," he wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Tuesday morning.

If McCarthy survives today's vote, does that mean regular order will prevail and Congress will pass all 12 budget bills before the new continuing resolution expires in mid-November? Massie says there's "a good chance" that will happen.

On the other hand, "if Kevin fails today, we're going to get the Schumer-McConnell special," he says, referring to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.), who Massie believes will have the upper hand in any dealings with a leaderless House GOP caucus.

"And it's going to be an omnibus," Massie added, "and it's not going to be pretty."