Well, well, well — looks like not everyone is swooning over Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY), Washington’s resident libertarian buzzkill, took to the Senate floor to debate Trump’s shiny tax-and-spend monstrosity, calling it what it is: a “debt bomb ticking.”
Massie, one of only two Republicans with the courage to vote against the MAGA mega-bill, didn’t mince words. While most of his GOP colleagues were busy clapping like trained seals for tax cuts and red-meat spending hikes, Massie was doing the math — and folks, the numbers don’t lie.
“If you were trying to hasten the financial collapse of our country and bribe voters to go along with it, the strategy wouldn’t look much different than what Congress is doing today,” Massie previously wrote on X.
According to USA Today, Massie said after the vote, “You watch: Next year, we’ll spend more money than we did this year, and the year after that we will too. This budget will add at least $30 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years, and it’s a Republican budget.”
What’s in this “Big Beautiful Bill”?
So why is Massie so opposed to Trump’s bill? Trump’s new baby is a grab bag of election-year sugar: permanent extensions of the 2017 tax cuts (because trickle-down worked the first time), a tax exemption on tipped income (hello, baristas for Trump), and billions of dollars funneled into border walls and bombs.
The bill locks in Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, giving them a second life beyond their scheduled expiration. It also eliminates the income tax on tips, a move aimed at wooing service workers and low-wage earners. At the same time, it throws hundreds of billions of dollars at the military and immigration enforcement, because nothing says fiscal conservatism like massively inflated defense budgets.
To help “pay” for all this, the bill guts domestic programs like Medicaid and SNAP, effectively balancing tax cuts for the wealthy on the backs of the poor. And despite all the tough talk on spending, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the plan would balloon the national debt by somewhere between $2.4 trillion and $3.8 trillion over the next decade.
It passed by a nail-biting 216-214, because what’s American democracy without a little reckless brinkmanship?
Trump vs. Massie: round 7,384
Massie and Trump have history — and not the friendly kind. During the 2020 COVID stimulus circus, Trump dubbed Massie a “third-rate grandstander” for demanding a recorded vote. Massie shrugged and kept doing his job. Fast-forward to 2025, and Trump’s still fuming that one of his own has the gall to care about, you know, numbers.
While Trump’s MAGA machine has gone full populist with a credit card, Massie’s over here trying to remind people that debt is, like, bad. Naturally, the former President responded the way any mature statesman would: by threatening to primary Massie and publicly roasting him online.
As for the “big, beautiful, bill,” Massie wasn’t having it. “You can’t cut taxes without cutting spending, and they’re not really cutting spending,” he explained, which is Econ 101 unless you’re campaigning in Trumpworld.
And on X, Massie broke down how this “conservative” budget will add $300 billion per year in deficits compared to simply letting Trump’s original tax cuts expire. Total damage? A cool $20 trillion in extra debt over a decade. But hey, at least we’ll get cheaper Margaritas at Chili’s thanks to that tip exemption.
GOP: Party of fiscal responsibility, what now?
Massie’s crusade highlights the GOP’s identity crisis: Are Republicans still the party of fiscal conservatism, or are they just the party of flashy tax cuts and trillion-dollar toys? For now, Trump’s version is winning, but Massie is betting that voters will eventually notice when the bill (literally) comes due.
As the bill heads to the Senate for more performative yelling and last-minute amendments, Massie’s lonely stand might be remembered as the moment someone actually read the thing.
Published: May 22, 2025 01:10 pm