Most voters agree that Washington is a political disaster. Our federal politicians have racked up $30 trillion in debt. Recent reports indicate that President Joe Biden has been responsible for $2 trillion in just one year.
Furthermore, people don’t seem all that trusting of scientists in the Biden administration, who seem to shift messaging every few weeks on the coronavirus response. The public is losing what little trust they had for the leaders of both parties.
In short, liberty-loving conservatives need more politicians like Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie. Not enough leaders in Washington call for spending cuts while eliminating obsolete programs. There was a time that a conservative litmus test was to advocate to eliminate the Department of Education, and Massie has a bill to do so. That effort will put public education right back where it belongs — in the hands of state and local government.
Don’t get me wrong — there are a handful of exceptional members of Congress, such as my former boss Sen. Rand Paul, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, and Rep. Chip Roy. But Massie has stood out over the past year on two big issues that have divided the nation — big spending programs and mandates.
In 2020, Massie fought a lonely fight against a massive Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act proposal that has hurt the economy. The unintended and intended consequences of the government’s attempt to put a political Band-Aid over the economic displacement caused by the coronavirus pandemic have caused many of the problems infecting the economy today.
Back in 2008, when the financial sector melted down over toxic assets, Congress rushed to pass a massive bailout of Wall Street. Many conservatives fought it — and for many of the same reasons they should have pushed back against the CARES Act. The original Troubled Assets Relief Program was a $700 billion three-page bill proposed by the Bush administration to purchase bad mortgage-backed securities from the financial institutions that held the assets. Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain issued a joint statement supporting the idea. Conservatives in Congress banded together and killed that first version of the bill on Sept. 29, 2008, with a 205-228 vote. A redrafted version of the bill passed, but the fight at least served the purpose of dialing back the bailout provisions.
Fast forward to 2020. We saw another overbroad idea coming from the federal government in the form of the $950 billion Paycheck Protection Program that was part of the CARES Act. This law has proven problematic for several reasons. First, the government was paying people not to work. As a result, we now have unprecedented numbers of people dropping out of the workforce with a supply chain problem that can be tied directly to that program. Second, the law enabled and empowered state governors to shut down states because they could rely on federal dollars flowing to unemployed individuals and PPP money going to harmed businesses during the shutdown.
Also, many small businesses never got the promised money and, as the New York Times reported, about 15% of the PPP program was flat-out fraud. Finally, the CARES Act enabled the Federal Reserve to engage in a massive expansion of the money supply that many say caused the inflation hammering households today.
When one brave House member tried to force a recorded vote on the program, he was attacked by the leaders of both parties. Politico reported on March 27, 2020, “Thomas Massie might be the least popular man in Washington. The Kentucky congressman attempted unsuccessfully on Friday to require House members to take a recorded vote in order to pass a $2 trillion coronavirus relief package.” This should have been an easy issue for members who rode the Tea Party to Washington, yet they largely stayed silent while Massie fought merely to get a recorded vote on the biggest government spending program in American history.
The second big issue Massie has adopted is that of stopping government mandates. Military men and women are being tossed from service because they refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine. The congressman has a bill that would block the Biden administration from imposing a vaccine mandate on the military. Even though the courts have stopped the Biden mandate on private businesses, there still are mandates in place that will cause healthcare and armed services personnel to lose jobs when they are needed the most.
We need more liberty-loving leaders like Massie to battle big government Biden and squishy Republicans in these big-spending times and less of the career-minded politicians who care more about what Beltway insiders think than the voters.
Brian Darling is the former counsel and senior communications director for Sen. Rand Paul.
