Thomas Massie will wear his ticking debt clock to the State of the Union
The goal is to ‘instill anxiety among my colleagues,’ Kentucky Republican says
By Justin Papp
February 3, 2023
It’s not a doomsday clock or a pedometer, though it’s been confused for both.
The copper-cased ticker affixed to Rep. Thomas Massie’s lapel is a debt clock, tracking the country’s debt in real time using a complicated algorithm of the Kentucky Republican’s design — and raising eyebrows in the process.
Since Massie, who has voiced reservations about hiking the debt ceiling, debuted the device in late January, he’s worn it around the halls of Congress, to votes and at an event in his home district. It’s been the subject of dozens of tweets and a handful of news stories. On Tuesday, Massie will don the provocative accessory at the State of the Union address.
“Say what you will about him, but George Santos had a good idea,” Massie said of his embattled Republican colleague from New York. “He said we should all wear one to the State of Union.”
Despite Santos’ urging, it’s unlikely that other Republicans will start appearing in the halls of Congress with similar debt clocks. Production is simply too time consuming.
Massie, who studied electrical and mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, first got the idea around Christmas and decided to order the parts. They include an Arduino ESP32, an advanced microcontroller that he programmed to scrub current and historic debt totals posted on the U.S. Treasury’s website to approximate the real-time debt, which exceeds $31.5 trillion and has hit the country’s statutory borrowing cap.
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