GOP Congressman Proposes Clean Bills For Hurricane Relief, Debt Limit: ‘This Isn’t Complicated’

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie is calling for clean, solely focused bills to provide disaster relief for Hurricane victims, provide aid to farmers and more amidst the ongoing budget battle on Capitol Hill.

Earlier this week, President-elect Donald Trump called on Republican lawmakers to reject a massive, 1,547 page government funding resolution. The bill included a provision that would have allowed a national emergency declaration over climate change, expand the government’s ability to impose pandemic-related lockdown measures and allocated billions of dollars to foreign countries. The bill also failed to include any meaningful border security funding.

As a result, Trump opposed the bill and urged Republicans to do the same. The initial legislation was followed up by a much shorter, 116-page bill that cut out pork, though a number of conservative lawmakers took issue with amended version as well, which would have funded the government through 2027.

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The shorter bill was ultimately defeated on Thursday evening after 38 Republicans joined all Democrats in voting against it.

“It’s embarrassing. It’s shameful,” U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said in a tense speech on the House floor. “Yes, I think this bill is better than it was yesterday on certain respects. But to take this bill yesterday and congratulate yourself because it’s shorter in pages, but increases the debt by $5 trillion is asinine.”

38 House Republicans voted no new GOP interim spending bill and 9 did not vote pic.twitter.com/wHPdjKkEQj

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As negotiations continue, U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is calling on lawmakers to separate major, pressing issues from the wider bill and vote on them separately. “This isn’t complicated. Separate the bills and vote on them separately,” Massie wrote in an X post.

“One vote on the clean CR, one vote on the debt limit, one vote on disaster relief, one vote on farm bailouts,” he continued. “Radical right? Individual bills for each issue.”

U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) explained that he was forced to vote no since he was not given enough time to read the bill. “It’s over a trillion dollars and we never even got to read the bill. A hundred billion in disaster assistance that we’re giving to this administration to spend in the next 30 days. We don’t trust them with 50 cents, much less a hundred billion unchecked,” he said.

“5.7 billion in there for submarines. You’ve got to ask yourself, what does that have to do with this? Why is it in there? Just a lot of things. I guess it just goes back to actual spending. And then it is a continuation of Pelosi-Schumer spending levels. God damn it, we can do better. This is not the way to run a government.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has stated that he is in communication with Republican holdouts and will be reintroducing another amended bill in the near future. “Congress should now move a clean CR through March 14th that raises the debt ceiling by $1.7T and keeps PAYGO intact at $1.7T, which will offset any increase in spending. This bill should be moved in tandem with disaster relief and a clean one-year extension of the Farm Bill,” U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) wrote in an X post.