On Tuesday, September 1, 2026, a reporter asked Mike Johnson whether Congressman Thomas Massie was right that House leaders would cancel voting days in September.

The Speaker said no:

"Republicans are here to work. We have a schedule, a calendar that's been out for a year. We are abiding by that calendar. We are going to work all the way through September and every day that's on the calendar, so long as people like him don't stop the progress."

Two days later, on September 3, the House canceled the last two weeks of September.

Then on Wednesday, September 16, Johnson cut one more day. The House had been set to stay through Thursday. Instead it took its last votes Wednesday and went home. It is not expected back until November 9 — after the election.

That one lost Thursday was the day a vote on impeaching the Secretary of Defense could have been forced.

What didn't get a vote

On Tuesday, September 15, Massie — a Kentucky Republican — filed eight articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. According to The Hill, they accuse Hegseth of running an illegal war against Iran and killing suspected drug smugglers without proper oversight.

Massie filed it as a "privileged" resolution, which Axios reported gave the House two legislative days to act. Canceling Thursday pushed it past the election. Massie told CNN he had timed it so leaders couldn't do exactly that:

"If I were to offer this tomorrow instead of today, they could have punted this until after the election."

Then they found another way. When the schedule change came out, Massie wrote:

"And there it is. Just as I predicted. They're canceling Congress tomorrow to avoid the vote on IMPEACHING @SecWar."

Johnson called that claim "ridiculous," called the impeachment a "publicity stunt," and said he expects the House to set it aside when members come back. He also said, according to the Associated Press, that "Secretary Hegseth has done an extraordinary job at the Department of War."

It wasn't just impeachment. Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna are gathering signatures on a petition to force a vote on a new Epstein files bill — a follow-up to the Epstein files law the House passed last year. It takes 218 signatures. Massie said it had about 190 on Tuesday night, and that sending everyone home would "make it harder" to get there before the election. He told Axios he has already lined up the last Republican he needs: "We have the votes."

The AP's summary: both efforts are "being left behind, blocked from votes."

"We're in the majority"

Massie took over the House floor for an hour on Wednesday to object.

"We're calling off Congress? And we're in the majority?"

"I'm trying to get justice for the Epstein survivors. I'm trying to stop a war."

"Why would we be canceling days when the country is burning? We should stay here for every day that's on the calendar and we should debate."

Afterward, he made the point more plainly to reporters:

"We're in the majority. We didn't lose the election. Why are we taking days off our calendar? We should be adding days to our calendar while we've got these last few remaining days."

That's the heart of it. A party that controls the House, the Senate and the White House has every reason to use every day it has. Massie had made the same point back in July, when he posted the House calendar and wrote: "It looks like we're intent on squandering a majority, until you understand Uniparty IS always the majority."

He isn't the only Republican saying it. South Carolina's Ralph Norman wrote on X: "Canceling yet another day of votes is unacceptable.… The Founders did not envision taking this much time off and still getting paid."

To be fair to the calendar: Axios notes it's not unusual for the House to take all of October off in an election year. But this isn't just the usual October break. By one count the AP cited, the House has cut 28 scheduled days this year and added back four — a net loss of 24 days, about one-fourth of everything on the calendar.

Why: the votes they're skipping are votes against Trump

The AP put it bluntly. Johnson "has repeatedly and abruptly canceled House voting days to send lawmakers home rather than manage the disruptions from his own rebellious flank — particularly those legislative efforts that threatened to rebuke President Donald Trump."

Look at what has happened on the floor this year. More and more, the House has voted against Trump.

• Tariffs. In February 2026, the House voted 219 to 211 against Trump's tariffs on Canada, with six Republicans crossing over. In 2025, leaders had blocked tariff votes like it with a rule declaring that days would no longer count as "calendar days."
• The Iran war. The House has voted three times to order Trump to stop a war Congress has never voted to authorize — in June and in July, and again on Tuesday, September 15, by 220 to 204 — after three earlier attempts, in March, April and May, fell short. The day after that third loss, Johnson sent everyone home.
• The Epstein files. Last fall, Johnson kept the House out for nearly two months during the shutdown, while Massie accused him of stalling the first Epstein petition. The House held no recorded votes for 54 days. When the bill finally reached the floor, it passed 427 to 1.

A Hegseth impeachment likely wouldn't pass. Axios says it has "dim prospects." But it "would have forced members to go on the record on Hegseth just weeks before the midterms."

Johnson has told us whose side he's on. In June, he told a room of conservative activists that Democrats would investigate "the cabinet" and Trump's donors and friends, and promised: "I run the protection program."

Massie's read on who Johnson answers to: "The day that Donald Trump doesn't want him to be speaker, he will no longer be the speaker."

How many days the House has actually voted

You don't have to trust anyone's tally for this. The House Clerk publishes every recorded vote of 2026 with its date. We counted the days.

From January 1 through September 16, 2026, the House held at least one recorded vote on 72 days.

To put that in perspective:

• There have been 259 days so far this year. The House voted on 72 of them.
• There have been 185 weekdays — ordinary workdays — so far this year. The House voted on fewer than 4 in 10.
• In May, the House voted on 6 days the whole month.
• After its last vote on July 23, the House didn't vote again until August 31.
• If the House returns November 9 as expected, the stretch after Wednesday's votes will be another 54 days with no votes — the same length as last fall's shutdown gap.

The House has a name for the time off. It calls it a "district work period." But impeaching an official, stopping a war or forcing out the Epstein files takes a vote, and there are no votes in a district work period.

What they're paid

Rank-and-file members of the House and Senate are paid $174,000 a year, according to the Congressional Research Service. The Speaker — Johnson — is paid $223,500.

Here's the math, using the House's own vote record:

• By the end of September, three-quarters of the year is gone. That's $130,500 in salary for each rank-and-file member.
• Divide that by the 72 days the House has voted, and it works out to about $1,800 for every day with a vote.
• For the Speaker, three-quarters of his salary is $167,625 — about $2,300 per voting day.

"The most productive" Congress?

Johnson's defense is the record. This has "literally been the most productive and successful and aggressive Congress" in decades, he said earlier this month. On its last day before leaving, the House passed a batch of bills — including a Russia sanctions package and, the AP noted, a bill naming the American mastodon the national fossil mammal.

Here's how many laws this Congress has actually produced. GovTrack, which tracks every bill, counts 110 laws enacted since this Congress began on January 3, 2025.

Every full two-year Congress in GovTrack's records, going back to 1973, enacted at least 274. That low was set by the last Congress. This one has about five weeks of lame-duck session left before it ends in January, so it isn't finished — but it would need to pass another 164 laws just to tie the lowest full-Congress total in those records.

GovTrack itself cautions that bill counts aren't everything: Congress now passes fewer, bigger bills, so a falling count "does not reflect less legislative work is occurring." Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill," which the AP calls Johnson's biggest win, is his best argument. But "fewer, bigger bills" still means votes, and this House keeps finding reasons not to hold them.

What the record shows

On September 1, Mike Johnson promised the House would work "every day that's on the calendar." Two days later he canceled the last two weeks of September, and on September 16 he canceled one more day — sending members home before Thomas Massie could force a vote on impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and with Massie's Epstein files petition still short of 218 signatures. The AP reports Johnson has repeatedly canceled voting days rather than deal with his own party's rebels, particularly efforts "that threatened to rebuke" Trump — and the House has voted against Trump on tariffs in February and, since June, three times on the Iran war. House members are paid $174,000 a year and Johnson $223,500; the House Clerk's records show the House has voted on 72 of the 259 days of 2026, and GovTrack counts 110 laws enacted this Congress, against a previous low of 274 for a full Congress.

Source

This post is based on the Associated Press report "Speaker Johnson recesses House early, blocking Massie's push to impeach Hegseth" (Lisa Mascaro, via PBS News, Sept. 16, 2026) and Axios's "Johnson-Massie feud boils over" (Kate Santaliz, Sept. 16, 2026), with vote days counted from the House Clerk's 2026 roll-call record. Photo: Aaron Schwartz/Reuters.