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ASHLAND,
Ky.—U.S.
Rep. Thomas Massie lives off the electrical grid in a
solar-powered home on a 1,200-acre farm in the Appalachian
foothills. The first-year congressman and engineering graduate
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology built the house
from lumber he logged and milled.
The
Kentucky Republican also lives off the grid politically. Just
a few weeks after his election, he helped spearhead an
unsuccessful coup against House Speaker John Boehner and has
since voted regularly against party
priorities.
The
defiant posture of Mr. Massie and a dozen or more like-minded
conservatives has changed the agenda in Washington. In a capital
where partisan power is nearly evenly balanced, he and a small
but committed group of new House activists have discovered
that they have the ability to block not just Democrats but
their own party's leaders—and they are willing to use
it.
"I'm
going to hang in here like a hair in a biscuit," said Mr.
Massie, who has twice appeared on the TV show "Junkyard Wars,"
as one of the competitors who build machines from scrounged
objects. "I'm digging in for the long haul. This place is
worse than I thought."
Republicans
hold just a 17-vote majority in the House, which means such a
relatively small but cohesive bloc can derail just about any
measure that doesn't draw Democratic support. That already
happened when Mr. Boehner was unable to bring the
conservatives into line on a big farm bill, compelling unhappy
Republican leaders to make wholesale changes in the
legislation. Trouble also lies ahead on a proposed immigration
overhaul, as well as efforts to fund the government and extend
the U.S. borrowing
authority this fall.
Mr.
Boehner has told audiences in New
York and Washington not to expect
much activity from the House for the rest of the year. The
speaker was forced to rely on Democrats, for example, to help
pass disaster relief for superstorm Sandy,
the Violence Against Women Act and an extension of Bush-era
tax rates for people who make less than
$400,000.
Mr.
Massie, 42 years old, represents a potent strain of
small-government conservatism. He and his colleagues, unlike
some of their predecessors, didn't come to Washington content to trim
government. Instead, they believe wide swaths of what
government does need to be reconsidered from the ground up to
deal with deficits and a potential explosion in entitlement
spending.
These
lawmakers, who now are the front line of the tea-party
movement, are unwilling to fall in line with GOP colleagues.
They are, however, willing to vote against what is perceived
as their own political interests, as some did in opposing farm
subsidies popular back home.
"There
are a bunch of zombies here," Mr. Massie said in an interview,
referring to lawmakers in both parties. "Most of them come
here with the purest of intentions, but they just get bitten…I
don't know whether to hug 'em or hit 'em with a baseball
bat."
The
White House has concluded that this conservative bloc is so
formidable that it now is, in effect, seeking to work its
agenda through the Senate instead of the
House.
Mr.
Massie is hard to pigeonhole, though he leans to the
libertarian wing of the Republican Party. He drives an $80,000
Tesla electric sedan with a license plate that says, "Friends
of Kentucky Coal." He wants lower taxes and less federal
spending. He has sponsored or co-sponsored 61 bills, including
ones to abolish the Federal Reserve and the new health-care
law, as well as a measure to make legal possession of guns in
a school zone.
He
and his wife, Rhonda, grew up in Lewis County, Ky., population
13,870. They left after high school to attend MIT, where Mr.
Massie, with the help of scholarships and financial aid,
earned degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering, as
well as the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, known as
the Oscar for inventors.
At
MIT, the couple started a company in their apartment to sell a
virtual-reality computer technology Mr. Massie created, using
some of the 24 patents he developed.
In
2003, after building the company to a 60-person team that
raised $30 million from investors, the Massies sold their
stake and moved back to Kentucky to raise their four
children on the farm where Rhonda Massie grew up. Mr. Massie's
father, a beer distributor, and his mother, a nurse, still
live in Mr. Massie's childhood home, about 15 miles away in
Vanceburg, Ky.
Mr.
Massie took a one-week course to learn how to build a
timber-framed house on his farm, which he bought from his
in-laws. He used a bulldozer to fell the 600 trees he used and
assembled the solar electricity system himself. He later
acquired 50 head of grass-fed cattle.
Mr.
Massie said he began reading the Lewis County Leader, a local
newspaper, where he learned county officials had proposed a
levy to build a government office to lure a branch of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture.
Mr.
Massie, who estimated the levy would have cost him $100, wrote
letters to the newspaper and staged a protest that drew 150
opponents. Officials later dropped the idea, and Mr. Massie
was soon drawn to politics by the small-government wave that
washed across the U.S. in 2010. That
year he ran his first political campaign and was voted the top
elected official in Lewis County.
As
the county's judge-executive, Mr. Massie scoured financial
records and halted services he thought the county didn't need.
To save money, he installed a new water tank at the county
jail himself.
When
Mr. Massie ran for Congress in 2012, his maverick reputation
had already reached Washington. Majority Whip
Kevin McCarthy and other House Republicans donated more than
$50,000 to Mr. Massie's top rival in the GOP primary,
according to the Federal Election
Commission.
Mr.
Massie used the donations to reinforce his portrayal of his
opponent as beholden to Washington. "Once she wore
the establishment hat," he said, "it was all
over."
He
won over college student John Ramsey, who had given $3 million
of his inheritance to build a group that backs free-market,
small-government conservatives in the mold of former U.S. Rep.
Ron Paul. The group, Liberty for All PAC, spent
more than $640,000 on Mr. Massie's behalf, according to the
Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that
tracks political donations.
Mr.
Massie won the seven-candidate GOP primary with 45% of the
vote, and then beat Democrat Bill Adkins by nearly 30
percentage points.
House
freshmen used to be a quiet breed. But consecutive elections
have swept away older lawmakers and replaced them with newer
faces, instilling younger members with a measure of power over
party elders.
In
Washington, Mr. Massie
joined a handful of freshmen who won seats despite opposition
from congressional Republicans. First-year U.S. Reps. Jim Bridenstine of
Oklahoma and Ted Yoho of
Florida both beat incumbent
Republicans.
It
took Mr. Massie just a few weeks to run afoul of party
leaders. In late December, Mr. Boehner was negotiating with
President Barack Obama to avoid a combination of pending tax
increases and spending cuts that was nicknamed the fiscal
cliff. As talks fizzled, Mr. Boehner asked the House to
approve extending tax rates for all but million-dollar
earners.
Mr.
Massie, who was sworn in early after his predecessor resigned,
opposed raising tax rates and voted to block
it.
Mr.
McCarthy, the No. 3 Republican in the House, bounded across
the House floor to scold the newcomer, Mr. Massie recalled.
Mr. McCarthy then turned to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, ringleader
of the revolt, and said: "Jim, he doesn't even know what he's
doing. He doesn't know what you're getting him
into."
After
Mr. McCarthy left, other Republicans congratulated the
freshman for standing his ground, Mr. Massie said. Mr. Boehner
pulled the bill.
Mr.
Massie's reputation was cemented weeks later when he tried to
deny Mr. Boehner's re-election as speaker. Although the plot
fizzled, 12 Republicans voted for someone else or abstained,
the most defections by fellow party members for a speaker
since 1923.
Mr.
Massie and his allies are supported by a network that raises
money and builds support outside the party structure. Club for
Growth, FreedomWorks and the Heritage Action for
America use social
media and direct outreach to congressional offices to fan
discontent among conservative voters nationwide over
legislation they oppose.
"The
internal forces here in Washington, D.C., don't produce the
right answer," Mr. Massie said. "We need to rally people on
the outside."
In
March, Mr. Massie and 15 other Republicans nearly upended
legislation to fund the government. Some opposed the bill
because it failed to cut funds for the health-care law. Others
were annoyed that party leaders denied an amendment to prevent
Mr. Obama from spending taxpayer money to play
golf.
Democrats
say the infighting helps them paint the GOP as out of step
with voters, while tamping enthusiasm among conservative
activists.
"You've
got the far right worrying about the far, far right and
pulling the entire party out-of-step with independents," said
Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee.
GOP
leaders tried to bring the agitators into the fold. They
scored a victory in March by persuading Mr. Bridenstine to
support a budget blueprint that Mr. Massie and nine other
Republicans opposed.
To
win his vote, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) spent
more than an hour with the freshman, trying to quell Mr.
Bridenstine's concerns about increased spending. During
voting, House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon (R., Calif.)
sat next to Mr. Bridenstine to prevent others from lobbying
him against the bill. Mr. Bridenstine said the Ryan plan "was
the best we could do" to stabilize the
debt.
Republican
leaders aren't likely to try a similar effort with Mr. Massie.
He told his staff to give his cellphone number only to his
most fiscally conservative colleagues. Of Mr. McCarthy, the
GOP majority whip, Mr. Massie said, "I run around tying shoes
and Kevin runs around untying them."
The
rhetoric by House Republicans has cooled since party leaders
put off until fall a fight over extending the
U.S. borrowing
limit. The controversies buffeting Mr. Obama have also
galvanized Republicans, including the targeting of
conservative groups by the Internal Revenue
Service.
"The
energy has dissipated some," Mr. Massie said. Party leaders
"have succeeded in peeling off some members." He recently
attended a session with Mr. Boehner in the speaker's Capitol
office. Mr. Boehner told the group to be patient. Change, he
said, takes time.
Mr.
Massie used the meeting to lobby Mr. Boehner on one of his
favorite causes, telling the speaker to oppose legislation
that would give states the authority to collect sales tax on
Internet transactions. Mr. Boehner told him the bill would
never reach the floor, Mr. Massie said.
Representatives
of retailers Best Buy, Home Depot, Target and others had piled
into Mr. Massie's office in June to give him an earful about
how online retailers now have a pricing advantage, according
to participants in the talks.
The
speaker recently promised his rank-and-file he wouldn't allow
a vote on an immigration bill unless a majority of his caucus
supported it—a nod to Mr. Massie and
others.
Mr.
Massie also made a concession to party leaders when he backed
a revised farm bill after GOP brass, bowing to conservative
pressure, stripped money for food stamps.
But
the Kentucky Republican and his allies were back at it last
week, nearly passing a measure to defund the National Security
Agency's data-collection program.
Back
in his district, Mr. Massie revels in his outsider status. He
returns to Kentucky on
weekends and during the week he stays in the basement of his
aunt's house in Virginia.
At
a town-hall meeting this spring, he told constituents about a
recent flight home from Washington. His 4th
congressional district, which is heavily Republican and 92%
white, favored former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the
2012 election by 29%.
The
congressman took his seat in the last row of the plane when a
man next to him jabbed him in the ribs. "Do you realize who's
on this flight," the man said, gesturing to Senate Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ohio Sen. Rob
Portman, all fellow Republicans.
"I
was sitting there," Mr. Massie said, "hoping he doesn't ask me
what I do for a living."
The original front page WSJ article
can be read here.
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