Capitol Hill Christmas Pageant

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Mississippi for his great remarks about these wonderful heroes, men and women in uniform who served our country valiantly overseas and here in law enforcement.

I had the honor of attending the funeral of a constituent who passed away when the helicopter went down in Sinai a few weeks back because he was one of my constituents in San Antonio, and it was a great celebration of his life.

I want to thank the gentleman from Mississippi for honoring these great folks, your constituents in Mississippi. I appreciate it.

Mr. Speaker, here we are, as predictable as Christmas. We are at it again, a 7-day continuing resolution, which the American people look at in wonder and amazement during the Christmas season, that every year their illustrious leaders in the House of Representatives can find their way to be even more incompetent, year to year, in how we conduct the affairs of this great Nation.

We might as well call these funding debacles the Capitol Hill Christmas Pageant. We show up. We put on a show. We sell out the American people. We close up and head home. And we do it like clockwork.

I don't know if anybody has noticed, but we are almost at $28 trillion in debt. We are blowing past our gross domestic product, a general sign in history of a nation in decline, which none of us, of course, would want to acknowledge that the United States of America would be facing.

I am in amazement as I watch my colleagues running around talking about budget caps. I am a fan of budget caps, but there are no budget caps here. Anyone who is talking about budget caps, going over them or going under them, we don't adhere to budget caps. We set budget caps in 2011, and had we adhered to them we would have saved almost $800 billion since then.

But what do we do? We have these deals. We come together. We jack up the budget caps. We blow out spending in defense. We blow out nondefense discretionary spending. And then we all kind of wave at each other and complain about spending and go home. That is we do.

What are we going to do next week? We are going to spend another $1.4 trillion, which, again, will bust existing caps by at least a little, and then some will jockey around about that, about whether we should save the $12 billion and try to adhere to those caps, forgetting the fact that we are $300 billion over the 2011 caps. In other words, there are no caps.

We have already spent $2.6 trillion on COVID relief spending.

So what does that mean next year, Mr. Speaker? We are blowing past $30 trillion in debt.

Think about it. Yes, tonight constituents back home, or anybody watching, the 14 people watching C-SPAN right now, there is nobody else in the Chamber. This is our version of debate, Mr. Speaker. This is what our constituents' House of Representatives, their people's House, this is what we do. This is what debate looks like.

So we are continuing to spend money that we don't have, and we are going to now debate another COVID relief bill, another trillion-dollar bill.

But we refuse to help the people government is actually running over. We are not helping the small businesses that governments across this country are using their power to shut down. Small businesses are getting destroyed by government tyranny.

Now, you can say, Mr. Speaker, and pat yourself on the back that it is in the name of public health, and everybody can go back home and say: Oh, aren't we nice. But you are shutting people's livelihoods down and walking away, and yet this body is refusing to do anything about it.

I was proud to work with my Democratic colleague Dean Phillips this last summer to pass the PPP Flexibility Act to try to keep a lot of these businesses alive. I was thanked by hundreds, if not thousands, of people in my district for doing so. But what good is that if we are failing them now?

Mr. Speaker, 100,000 restaurants are already closed, and 10,000 more restaurants have closed since our last survey in July. Forty percent of remaining restaurants were closed without more support. Jobs at bars and restaurants are down 2 million this year.

Seventy-one percent of hotels report they will only be able to last 6 more months, and 63 hotels have less than half of pre-crisis staff.

Forty percent of small business owners report they will close in the next 12 months if things do not improve.

What did the Speaker of the House do? The Speaker of the House admitted that she withheld relief from small businesses and struggling workers for political gamesmanship. She acknowledged it. She said it.

Why aren't we debating that? Why aren't we having conversations about that? Why aren't we debating a clean PPP bill right now?

This Chamber is empty. We just adjourned, passing a 7-week CR that blows our spending out of proportion, setting up the table for next week doing the same thing for a year, and this Chamber is empty. Everyone is flying home. It is absurd.

The American people look at this every day, and they wonder what in the world, and now we are going to pass a $1 trillion bill that bails out, in many cases, the very State and local governments that are shutting down these local businesses with their tyrannical activity.

More than that, when we actually spend the money, we are going to fund the very institutions that are crushing the American way of life. We fund, as I said, the tyrant mayors and city councils, like Mayor Adler in Austin, Texas, who are killing small businesses. The good mayor had the unbelievable hutzpah to record a video in Cabo San Lucas telling Austin residents to stay home.

We fund the very schools that are failing our kids, the very schools that are locking down our kids from an education. Suicide rates are up, failing grades are up, fear levels are up among our children, and the very schools that are indoctrinating our kids to hate this country and what it stands for, to apologize for this country, to declare this country is evil, to tear down the statues in this country, the very education system doing that, we are going to fund, while we blow past caps, passing to those very children a massive amount of debt.

We fund the very local governments that are defunding police but expect them to enforce lockdowns.

We fund corporate cronyism by giving a bailout that undeniably favored massive retail corporations that can absorb the costs that small businesses can't. Mom-and-pop shops are getting killed, and great big companies are getting rich.

Where is this body? It is nowhere to be found, an empty Chamber.

We just passed a defense bill yesterday that will burden those small businesses even further with potentially more regulations.

Mr. Speaker, you can't even make this up.

A defense bill has language in there that will hurt small businesses even when they are at their low point getting beat up by a virus and tyrants are shutting them down.

We fund an immigration system that fails immigrants, fails Americans, empowers cartels, and is a national embarrassment while we have people who are held hostage in homes in this country by cartel-driven illegal enterprises. It is happening right now at our border, and this body is empty. Mr. Speaker, 67,000 people were apprehended at our border in October.

Where is this Chamber talking about anything about border security? It would be better for immigrants and better for our country, but we won't do it.

We fund a massive healthcare system that reduces doctor availability but empowers insurance companies, and we are doing it by the second. You have to ask an insurance company about how to get healthcare.

Why? Because this body is failing.

We fund ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and on and on and on in myriad countries around the world--I can't even count them-- despite not having passed an authorization of force in almost 20 years.

World War II, Mr. Speaker, went from December 7, 1941, to August of 1945. We have kids today enlisting in the military who were not alive when we passed the authorization of force in 2001 under which they are operating.

What kind of a people's body is it that won't even debate an authorization of force? We are nowhere to be found.

Steak dinners or on airplanes flying home right now, that is where the 400 colleagues are--if they were even here in the first place, because they have been voting by proxy from home sitting on boats.

We fund election systems that fail us. What is this House doing to ensure election integrity?

There is a lot of politics flying around the air right now about elections, but do you believe in our elections, I ask the ladies and gentlemen who are watching this. Do they believe every vote is counted? Do they believe that every vote was legal?

In 2012, The New York Times admitted that mail-in ballots are a problem. Votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised, and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show. Election officials reject almost 2 percent of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in-person voting.

The Carter-Baker Commission--that is former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State Jim Baker--was formed in 2005: ``Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud''-- bipartisan, 2005.

Citizens who vote at home, at nursing homes, at the workplace, or in church are more susceptible to pressure, overt and subtle, or intimidation. Vote buying schemes are far more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail--bipartisan, Jimmy Carter, Jim Baker.

Why won't we even talk about it here? Why are we making this all about the President, not the President, the votes?

We had a massive increase in mail-in ballots this year, and we are wondering whether our election system is even working.

Examples of known fraud: In 2016, 83 registered voters in San Pedro, California, received absentee ballots at the same small, two-bedroom apartment. Prosecutors rarely pursue this type of case.

In 2018, a North Carolina congressional case, a Republican operative, McCrae Dowless, Jr., had allegedly requested more than 1,200 absentee ballots on voters' behalf and then collected the ballots in voters' homes.

In 2017, an investigation of a Dallas city council election found some 700 fraudulent mail-in ballots signed by the same witness using a fake name.

I could go on and on. There are problems with mail-in ballots.

What did we just see this year, Mr. Speaker? In Georgia, 2016 general election, 208,000 mail-in ballots; this year, 1.3 million mail-in ballots. In Arizona, 2016, they had 2.4 million mail-in ballots; this year, 3.6 million mail-in ballots. Pennsylvania, 2016, 314,000 mail-in ballots; this year, 3.1 million mail-in ballots.

I am not suggesting that I know what the numbers should or shouldn't be in Georgia, Pennsylvania, or Arizona in this case. What I am suggesting is that even minor changes in rejection rates on these ballots--of which there are very large questions right now about the rejection rates--would impact the election.

Regardless of what you want to see happen with the election, Mr. Speaker, do you not want to know that you can believe in your election?

Why are we not holding hearings? Have we had a hearing this week on this, bipartisan, calling it in, making sure that we believe in our elections? Is the Senate holding hearings?

The American people are raising legitimate questions about our elections, and this body is missing in action and doing nothing.

But I will tell you where Congress is, Mr. Speaker. It is passing bills like yesterday which amount to political garbage masquerading as defense authorization.

We passed the defense authorization bill which does, in fact, contain critically important components to support America's troops but, in fact, actually fails our troops in many respects.

Mr. Speaker, we were all told to vote for it, you see. We were told to vote for it because you can't vote against a defense authorization bill because you are voting against pay increases and you are voting against badly needed resources for your men and women in uniform. Yet the people telling us to vote for it have no qualms about holding our Armed Forces' pay hostage with no ability to amend the bill on the floor and no ability to debate the bill.

Has anybody seen an amendment brought down here to the floor, an open amendment, saying: ``Hey, I am Congressman Roy. I have got an amendment, and I would like to offer it?'' Has that ever happened in this body? Has anybody ever seen that happen down here?

It doesn't happen.

We fund 20-year wars with no clear mission and no clear end date. We fund a war that is now older than millions of young Americans signing up to fight in it, as I said before.

This defense authorization bill has a cheap diversity officer and other race-based programs in it, which I personally find deeply un- American, while defense is increasingly challenged by China and Iran.

When you pass something like that, Mr. Speaker, you are saying that the body values waging a war with no clear mission and appeasing leftwing diversity political mob rule more than protecting the American citizens whose lives are threatened every single day by cartel violence, by people coming across the border, and by what is going on in Iran and by China.

The bottom line is the American people hire all of us to do a job, and we are failing them, which brings me to my point, in my view, about 2021.

The Framers created this branch, Congress, to debate and deliberate, to represent the people. But we pass pre-made bills cooked up behind closed doors by committee, in rules committees, and by a handful of committee cardinals, and we never debate them or amend them here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and we are increasingly passing by proxy vote.

For the American people back home, proxy vote means a Member of this body whom you hired to do a job under the Constitution--you gave them your vote under the Constitution--and that Member comes to a Member of this body and says: ``I want you to vote for me.''

So your vote, citizen, that you entrusted into your elected Member of Congress is being given to another Member here in the body.

We have been in session for fewer than 40 days since March, I am told. Mr. Speaker, you can fact-check that, and you can go double-check it, but I can tell you we have been here precious few days.

Think about that: While in the middle of a pandemic, while running $28 trillion in debt, while mounting up trillion-dollar deficits, multitrillion-dollar deficits, while China is right at our heels, while we are dealing with men and women in uniform in Afghanistan and the Middle East, while we have healthcare costs going up and crippling people, and while small businesses are struggling, the Speaker is playing games not bringing small businesses relief to the floor.

Mr. Speaker, we have been here for fewer than 40 days. The Speaker broke with over 230 years of precedent to authorize the unconstitutional proxy voting scheme.

Last week, ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in the history of the United States, the House of Representatives used proxy votes--those are votes for Representatives who are not present in the Chamber to achieve a quorum, as the Constitution requires. Because the Constitution contemplates our being here, doing our job, I say ironically, with my voice echoing in the Chamber.

Mr. Speaker, not a single floor amendment, not a single open rule-- the most closed rules since 1993. Now, that is boring for the people back home.

What does a closed rule mean? It is what I am saying. It means that Congressman Roy cannot offer an amendment on the floor of the House of Representatives. That is what a closed rule is, and that is what we operate under. We never have debate and deliberation. We are ruled by a handful.

As I said before, I am under the understanding that we have not had a single debate of an amendment open on the floor of the House of Representatives since May of 2016 where a Member could just come down, a bill is put on the floor, a Member says, ``I would like to amend it.'' No body functions that way--not the people's House.

Do we think things would be better or worse if we were actually down here offering amendments, offering debate, debating and discussing?

When the NDAA was on the floor yesterday--and there was a provision in the NDAA to place massive burdens on small businesses, but it was jammed in there to get it across the line--if we could have had an amendment on the floor, I could offer an amendment to strike it, and we would know where everybody in this body stands on adding those regulations to small businesses. But I was denied the ability to do that because we operate under a closed rule.

Mr. Speaker, what kind of a people's House is that?

You want to know why we are pushing $28 trillion in debt, and we are about to blow past $30 trillion? You want to know why we never get really good legislation?

Because I am never able to work with the Speaker or with any of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle because we can't come down here and offer amendments and have rigorous debate to force the conversations.

We are ruled by a handful on both sides of the aisle who tell us what we are voting on. They come in and they say, Here is your 2,000-page bill. Figure out how you are going to vote on it. Figure out how you are going to message it back home.

Mr. Speaker, for the first time in history, we opened an impeachment inquiry without a vote in the House. Now, I am not trying to open up impeachment. That has long since kind of come and gone from the minds of Americans, it seems like, but that is a big deal.

In 2021, for the House to work, the following, in my opinion, should be nonnegotiable:

Members should have 72 hours to review the legislation in the form to be voted on before they are required to vote. That is not a very big ask, ladies and gentlemen. We should have time to look at 2,000-page bills in the form that we are voting on it to see what is in it.

We should have an open amendment process, giving all Members an opportunity to amend bills on the floor. Bills should cover single subjects and not be subject to division of the test under rule XVI we are applying. We should have single-subject bills, like the bill--by the way--that Dean Phillips, my Democrat colleague from Minnesota, and I offered on the floor.

There was a PPP Flexibility Act, and it was 7 pages long. We should have that bill, put it on the floor, debate it, amend it, vote.

And proxy voting should be prohibited on the floor of the House of Representatives. It is unconstitutional. I look forward to the U.S. Supreme Court taking that up, and I believe and hope that they will find it to be unconstitutional as it is.

Mr. Speaker, finally, a note about the coronavirus. Many Americans have been impacted by the virus. I have friends and family that have been impacted by it. I have had staff who have been impacted by it. I missed Thanksgiving with my 78-year-old father and 72-year-old mother because I had been around someone who had been positive. I wanted to protect them. We are all doing these things. We are all making sacrifices, figuring out how to adjust to make sure we protect the vulnerable.

Mr. Speaker, our Nation should be open. Our businesses should be open. Our schools should be open. Our restaurants should be open. Our baseball and football and basketball stadiums should be open. Our churches should never, ever close again. And we should use our own judgment to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas without local, petty tyrants attempting to tell us what to do. But here we are, as I hear Joe Biden and others talk about national mask mandates in 2021, and I continue to hear about restrictions and social distancing, even if we get a vaccine.

Have any of you been to the restaurants that are shutting down? In Arlington, Virginia, they run over and grab your beer or Diet Coke at 10 p.m. right on the dot. They can't make money. They can't survive.

Are any of the local, petty tyrants shutting them down going to pay their bills or are they going to come here to this Chamber and expect us to pass another trillion-dollar bill to fund them because the local governments are shutting them down?

Because that is what is happening. The big businesses are doing fine. But the small restaurants, the local dry cleaners, the small hotels, the local music venues, the artists--the backbone of this country is getting decimated because we are shutting down. America doesn't shut down.

Leftists run around bleeding about how we should be locked down, but expecting workers to bring them their lattes or take-home Chinese or tacos, expecting workers to clean the streets and pick up the garbage and serve them while they pat themselves on the back for being enlightened.

Mayors like Mayor Adler in Austin, who I already said went to Cabo and recorded a video telling us we should stay home.

Mayors like the mayors in L.A. turning off utilities while policing people's home.

Oh, my gosh, how many cars do you have in front of your house?

The mayor in Denver saying everybody has got to stay home, but what does he do?

He flies home. Rules for thee, but not for me.

My fellow Americans, these local tyrants, tell them a simple word; tell them ``no.'' You local businessowners that are opening up, God be with you. I am with you. Open up. We are Americans. We don't close down.

Mr. Speaker, our Nation is a large and vibrant economy and large and vibrant country that thrives on free enterprise, freedom of religion, freedom to interact and engage as a society. It is who we are as Americans. We will remain the economic engine of the world.

And I, frankly, don't really care to listen to countries around the world lecture us about their alleged lockdown successes and results-- much of which are easily disputable--when the world lives off the very sacrifices we make.

We fund the world's defense, ladies and gentlemen. We fund, through our economic engine, a good deal of this world. We feed a large chunk of this world. We provide energy for an enormous part of this world. So forgive me if I don't want to be lectured to by Australia or anybody else about how their success in their lockdown worked out for them. Because these things are all interacting.

When we make decisions, it impacts real lives. You read reports about 140 million people that may be starving because we are not distributing the same number of products because of the virus. And then you come talk to me about a few thousand that are impacted by the virus. We have got decisions to make that impact people's lives, and we do it by staying open.

Our own lockdowns that we have chosen to do, predominantly by local governments have been devastating. We have seen devastation in our schools, devastation in small businesses. We have seen people forced to die alone. We have seen increased suicides, people that have died from diseases, cancer, heart disease, and more, all because of virus policies. And to all of that, I say, simply, ``enough.''

Mr. Speaker, this body, this House of Representatives should no longer be operating in fear. We are leaders. We should be here. We should be debating. We should be present. We should be in this Chamber, and we should not be wearing masks. We should be looking each other in the face and in the eye, and we should be doing our job. Take tests, take our temperature, whatever it takes, but lead.

We are running around in fear, and it is embarrassing. We have these fake cleaning exercises between votes as a threat because of precious time if we dare congregate for 5-minutes and debate some issue that is on the floor of the House of Representatives.

This is no way for the House of Representatives to function while we are leading a Nation. We should reject fear and favor of our faith, reject fear and favor of our family, our friends, and the thriving society Americans deserve.

And simply put, America must never again shut down. America must always be open for business. And more importantly, America must always be open for life.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source