America is A Great Nation

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, my father is a proud west Texan, also a proud graduate of Texas Tech University, as the gentleman well knows. And I just appreciate the gentleman's passion for this country and what he is doing by giving us this time to talk in defense of the greatness of our Nation.

Now, I wouldn't think I would be standing on the floor of the House of Representatives having to defend the greatness of the United States of America. We were sitting in this very Chamber, in the State of the Union address, when the President of the United States was touting the greatness of this country, and only about half of this body stood up to clap its hands to agree about the greatness of this country.

I just want to say, you know, as a Member of this body, of one-435th, and one-half of one-third of the Federal Government, I believe this country is great.

I am proud of this country. I am unapologetically proud to be an American. Flaws we have because we are flawed men and flawed women. We know that. It is certainly a tenet of my faith, and that is faith in the Almighty and faith in the Lord and my Savior Jesus Christ. But for Him, I would be condemned because we are flawed. But we have to remember that this country has stood for something greater.

Just a few weeks ago, I went up to Independence Hall in Philadelphia on the 244th anniversary of our separation from the crown. I went into Independence Hall on that day on July 2, the actual day that we separated from the crown. It was an honor to be there. I went up there to record a video. I never thought I would have to record a video saying why this building, Independence Hall, and why these monuments are important.

It is not the bricks; it is not the mortar; it is not the marble; and it is not the iron. It is the ideals they represent. It is the ideals that this country was founded upon, and it is those ideals that carry forward.

We will never measure up to those ideals because we are flawed human beings, but we will always be striving to achieve the greatness that our Founders laid out for us and that our forefathers and our current brothers and sisters have died and bled for.

When we go down to the World War II Memorial and see 4,000--and I can't remember the exact number--4,100 almost stars on that monument, that is one for every 100 Americans who gave their life thousands of miles away in Europe and in the Pacific, fighting for something far greater than they.

It wasn't for conquest. It was to stop tyranny. It was to stop fascism. It was to stop the spread of that around the globe. That is what our country represents.

We had the great clash in our Civil War a mere 80 years after our founding. Few republics in the history of mankind would have survived that. But it was because it was for the fulfillment of the Declaration. It was a fight for the fulfillment of those ideals and the greatness of this country.

That greatness is exemplified by our heritage. My grandmother was a single mom in west Texas, in Sweetwater, Texas, because my grandfather died of cancer when my dad was 7 years old. Now, imagine her finding out my father had polio--a pandemic--in September 1949 while my grandfather was dying of cancer. Then he passes away in November, and my dad coming home from the hospital for a few days each week to be able to see his dad, whom he had only seen for 2 years because his dad was in the Pacific.

Then my grandmother, a single mom in west Texas, runs and becomes the first woman elected county clerk in Nolan County, Texas. She raises my dad and gets him through therapy. My dad is still alive and walking today because of her hard work, taking on double jobs.

He goes on to be the first to go to college, Texas Tech. I go on to be the first to go to graduate school, and now here I am in Congress.

This story is not unique. Each and every one of us has one of those stories. That is the greatness of this country. Her dad, my grandmother's dad, had lost the farm in the Depression.

How many stories do you know like that?

He went on to be the janitor in a church in Sweetwater, Texas, for the rest of his life after he lost the farm. It was noble. It was noble because he was raising my grandmother and raising my dad, who was newly without a father.

That was what we do. That is what we do as Americans. That is our greatness. I am just, frankly, not going to apologize for it. I am not. I love this country.

As we sit here in the face of a pandemic, why is our leadership telling our country to cower in fear? That is not the American way. That polio that struck my father? We beat it.

Mr. Speaker, 30,000 kids died and 300,000 got injured. Mitch McConnell is one of them. My dad is one of them. He walks with a hobble today. But we beat it with the Salk vaccine.

We beat the Germans. We beat the Japanese. We have been fighting and standing up against the evils of totalitarianism. We took down the Soviet Union when Mr. Reagan said ``tear down that wall'' to Mr. Gorbachev. That is who we are as a country. I am just not going to apologize for it.

Here is the thing: Why aren't we talking as a group together on a bipartisan basis instead of tearing each other down? Why aren't we talking about the great things that we have been achieving?

Fifty million tests. Think about that. Fifty million tests--more than Russia, India, and the U.K. combined. That is an extraordinary achievement.

How many ventilators? How many PPE, et cetera?

I have all sorts of numbers, but we have an extraordinary production: 19 billion gloves, 775 million surgical masks, 187 million N95 respirators, 32 million face shields, and we keep pumping them out.

Doctors have been working through the night, trying to figure out how to keep people alive and work through this pandemic and fight through it. Our fatality rate is going down, and it has been going down for 12 consecutive weeks.

We should be applauding that and championing that. We shouldn't be backbiting about what the President says or what somebody in this body says. We should be championing the greatness of this country to overcome this pandemic because that is what we are doing.

We should be making the American people confident to be able to get their kids back to school. Why? Because this virus--God, thank You-- this virus doesn't attack our kids, at least the data currently shows that. We can adapt if that changes. But that is the clear truth.

Let's listen to the epidemiologists from Stanford like Dr. Ioannidis and Dr. Scott Atlas. Let's listen to the reports from Oxford and Yale, hardly some institutions of far-rightwing extremism. These are doctors who are telling us that our kids can go back to school, that we can go back to work, and that we can keep our country open.

Why does that matter? Because being closed is harming our kids and harming our society. Forty-five percent of Black-owned businesses have been crippled, crushed, and closed during this. A study by Harvard said that 110,000 American small businesses would likely close their doors permanently. We have seen the jobless claims, almost 50 million jobless claims. I think we are hovering around 20 million still. These are real people, real people's lives.

Next week is the 9-year anniversary since I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. I walked into the doctor's office, and I asked the doctor: Well, what are my chances, doc?

I have stage 3.

He said: Well, I am not going to tell you that number because, for you, it is zero percent or 100 percent. What are you going to choose?

I chose 100 percent because I wanted to live. I wanted to see my then-4-month-old daughter grow up. I wanted to see my then-2-year-old son grow up. That is what we need for this country.

Choose 100 percent. Choose the way for us to succeed as a country and march forward.

When I saw that great doctor, a great man from Syria, he told me that story, and he gave me his plan for me for my treatment. It is now the treatment--it was a trial drug that is now the standard of care for Hodgkin's lymphoma patients. But I went and got a second opinion, a third opinion, and a fourth opinion. Why? Because that is what you do, and that is what we should be doing right now, listening to all the experts.

This body should have hearing after hearing, calling in people for the experts. But we are not having these hearings. Why not? Why have we only met something like, ballpark, 13 of the last 90-something days? Someone explain that to me.

Someone explain to me how the Founding Fathers in 1793, when 5,000 out of 50,000 Philadelphians died from yellow fever, they found a way to meet and have this body meet. Instead, what do we get? Proxy voting.

Do you know what that means, American people? We have people on boats, calling in to hearings to register their votes. Think about that. That is not what the Constitution means.

I am proud to be in court tomorrow, litigating that against the Speaker of the House. We will be right here in court because it is unconstitutional.

But more important than that, it means we are not here leading. We are not here on the floor of the House of Representatives doing our job and projecting confidence to the American people that we can all meet and do what we are supposed to do.

We should have hearing after hearing after hearing, calling epidemiology experts about what we can do to ensure that the American people go back to work confidently, go to school, go to work, create wealth, create opportunity, and get back on our feet.

I am not going to use up much more of the gentleman's time, but I do want to say this: This stuff is all related. If you think the lawlessness on the streets of Portland and the dead babies--Black, White, and otherwise in Chicago, New York, and Atlanta; the 8-year-old girl who got killed with her mom; the gentleman walking across the street holding his 8-year-old daughter's hand; a Black man and a Black girl, he got gunned down in the streets of New York; a 1- year-old infant in New York; a 3-year-old Black baby boy in Chicago; a 19-year-old Black young man in a so-called autonomous zone in Seattle-- they are dead and they are gone because of lawlessness, because we are refusing to do our job to stand up for the very rule of law that sets this country apart from the rest of the world and always has. That is all related.

When you shut your country down, Mr. Speaker, the mental impact of that is real. And that is not just me. There are smart doctors who believe that.

John Ioannidis, whom I said was from Stanford University, asserted that extended lockdowns might not be the best approach. One of the bottom lines is that we don't know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health.

Ioannidis wrote: ``Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric.''

I feel extremely sad that my predictions were verified.

The leaders of this body, all 435 of us, have an obligation to be here to do our job, to hold hearings, to speak the truth, to seek the truth, and to speak the truth to the American people.

I don't take it cavalierly. My 77-year-old father, I didn't see him between Christmas and July Fourth to protect him. My kids are going back to school on August 20 in Austin, Texas.

Do I worry about my family? Of course I do. But we are going to get back in the saddle, and we are going to get back to do our jobs and get this country moving forward.

To my friend from Texas, I am sorry I took up too much time. I thank my friend for doing this. I love this country. I will never apologize for loving this country, and we are going to work together to get this country back in the saddle.

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