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Why Thomas Massie, Greg Steube voted against ending government shutdown; Republican lawmakers' actions explained
The House on Wednesday passed a Bill to end the government shutdown, which has now been sent to President Donald Trump for his signature.
The House on Wednesday passed a bill which would end the longest government shutdown in US history. This will now be sent to President Donald Trump for his signature. While six Democrats joined the Republicans in approving the Bill, two Republicans voted 'no'. They are Thomas Massie, the Kentucky representative, and Greg Steube, the lawmaker from Florida.
The two GOP members voted against the bill to end the government shutdown. Here's why they broke from party lines.
Thomas Massie, Greg Steube voted against ending shutdown
Massie and Steube both voted against ending the shutdown, but for widely different reasons.
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Steube's apparent inclination to vote ‘no’ was revealed sometime before voting for the Bill got underway. Ryan Schmelz of Fox News Radio had said Steube shared his plans for voting 'no'. The Republican lawmaker had an issue with the provision allowing some GOP Senators to sue over Arctic Frost.
“I don't think I can vote to give half a million dollars to Lindsey Graham,” he was reported saying.
While Arctic Frost started out as an investigation into whether President Trump had committed any wrongdoing in the alleged “false electors scheme” after the 2020 election, whistleblowers over the last three years have said that it transformed into illegal surveillance of GOP members and their allies.
Massie, meanwhile, was expected to vote no to the Senate funding measure, as per The Hill. He has long been a detractor of Speaker Mike Johnson, but it is the Republican lawmaker's longstanding political belief that has played out here.
Massie has had a long history of saying no to government funding bills even if it is his party that's crafting them. This is his way of protesting levels of spending that Massie considers unsustainable. He was also one of the two GOP members to oppose the party's continuing resolution (CR) in September, because Massie believed it continued to spend at current levels – which were largely adopted under former President Biden – and had not incorporated any of the steep cuts that he favored.
