Providing for Consideration of H.R. Va Employee Fairness Act of Providing for Consideration of S. Preventing Organizational Conflicts of Interest in Federal Acquisition Act; Providing for Consideration of S. Law Enforcement De-Escalation Training Act of Providing for Consideration of Senate Amendment to H.R. Providing Research and Estimates of Changes in Precipitation Act; Relating to Consideration of Senate Amendments to H.R. Performance Enhancement Reform Act; and for Other Purposes
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Pennsylvania, I appreciate the Speaker, and the gentleman from California.
Mr. Speaker, my friend from Pennsylvania and I share a love of outlaw country music, whether it is Texas-based--my preference--or generally. There is a famous picture of Johnny Cash standing up giving his middle finger, and it is on the cover of an album. If all 435 of us stood on the steps of the Capitol with our middle finger to the American people, it would be a more honest action than what we are engaging in here on the floor of the people's House right now.
Let me tell you what is happening right now. In true swamp fashion, what we are about to do is deem as passed a House bill on Federal agency reporting goals with a House amendment to a previously passed Senate amendment to enable us to have a revenue measure--to enable us to give the Senate a revenue measure to satisfy the constitutional requirement that revenue bills originate in the House. The House amendment to a Senate amendment fast-tracks the omnibus by allowing the Senate to bypass a motion to proceed vote.
Now, that is a bunch of complicated, parliamentary procedure gobbledygook for the American people, but what it is is a fraud. It is a fraud.
It is actually trying to end-run the rules in order to jam through what? A massive $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill without any actual debate. That is what is happening right now on the floor of the House of Representatives, nothing else.
In that $1.7 trillion bill--and pause for a second--what are we actually packaging here? A week-long continuing resolution to keep the government open through this weekend into next week so negotiations can continue to wrap up this $1.7 trillion monstrosity.
So the vote today is a vote to perpetuate and extend funding for a week to allow a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill in a lameduck Congress. That has not been done, by the way, in the last 70 years when we have had a flip of the House, a flip in majority control of the House. We have not done that over the last 70 years. In the five times there has been a flip, we do not pass big spending bills in a lameduck Congress, which is what this is. My Democratic colleagues know it; my Democratic colleagues in the Senate know it; and the Senate Republicans who seem to be trying to grease the skids of this, they know it, as well. Here we sit.
So to the American people, you need to understand what the people's House is doing to you today--standing on the steps of the Capitol sticking their middle finger up at you would be more honest because this is defense spending, $858 billion, a 10 percent increase.
We can debate the need for a defense spending increase. Many of us probably would agree we need to have more defense spending, but we also need to fix the Department of Defense. We need to stop having it turn into a woke agency that is essentially social engineering wrapped in a uniform. Let's fix the Department of Defense. No, we are not debating that. We are just going to give another blank check of 10 percent additional spending.
But it is worse than that. We are now going to have nondefense spending reports--we haven't seen the text because, oh, no, the little people here in the House can't see the text before we actually vote on this crap. No, no, no, they are going to jam it through without seeing the text. Nondefense spending--reports indicate somewhere between an 8 to 11 percent increase.
Now, to put that in context, we are talking about something in the order of $50 to $60 billion. Here is the thing, we just spent something like $2 trillion in nondefense discretionary plus-up during COVID, and we are now going to jump into this, and we are going to say, oh, yeah, I have got a good idea. Let's jump up nondefense discretionary spending. That is all of the alphabet soup of all of the agencies that are attacking the American people every single day, empowering the FBI to designate parents as domestic terrorists, empowering the DHS to not actually secure the homeland while Americans are dying from fentanyl poisoning and immigrants are burning up 53 of them in a tractor trailer in San Antonio.
That is what we are dealing with. This CR is the gateway drug to an omnibus spending bill next week. That is why we should oppose it. We should oppose the CR, we should oppose this rule, and we should oppose the omnibus.
The American people deserve a House of Representatives that is actually doing the work of appropriating rather than jamming through an omnibus bill right before Christmas in a lameduck session after the American people spoke and sent a new majority to the people's House.
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I understand the collegiality of the body and wanting to engage. I am happy to engage. We just never get a chance to engage.
We are down here, basically, in a fake debate. That is what we all know. I mean, the truth is it is not like we have a body, a Chamber filled here with human beings debating this $1.7 trillion while we are $32 trillion in debt. I would be happy to.
Why don't we actually roll up our sleeves around these tables and do the work? But we don't do that.
We are literally down here, and we are going to do--what?--30 minutes a side, if we even do that, and then we are going to vote. We are going to vote on a rule that packages together, as I said, deeming as passed a House bill on Federal agency reporting goals with a House amendment to a previously passed Senate amendment to pass a $1.7 trillion omnibus, combined with a CR for an extension for a week, in a lame-duck Congress. That is the truth.
The American people pull their hair out. They go, gosh, what on Earth is happening in Washington?
Well, I will tell them what is happening in Washington. This, this is what is happening in Washington.
We know what this is about. This is jamming through a bill at the eleventh hour to get the political priorities of the current Democratic majority, and a handful of Senate Republicans are happy to do it so they can get pork.
The House and the Senate have requested a total of $16 billion for 7,500 earmarks. The top requester: Senator Richard Shelby, ranking member of Senate Appropriations, with $656 million. This is a nice little send-off for the appropriators in the Senate.
But the fact of the matter is the American people are the ones who get screwed in this deal. They are the ones who end up losing their country with $32 trillion in debt.
There is no justification for ramping up spending an additional 10 percent for nondefense discretionary after all the money that has been spent under COVID and using the Defense Department as the backs upon which you are going to place the debt of our children and grandchildren and say that, ``Oh, yes, we are doing this for defense.'' That is just wrong.
At what point are we actually going to do the work of the American people in the people's House? At what point are we going to actually debate? At what point are we actually going to amend? At what point are we actually going to live within our means and stop writing checks we can't cash?
The American people are staring at us. They throw their hands up in the air and wonder what has become of the country that their brothers and sisters and dads and moms and daughters and sons have fought for.
Why do we stand in front of that flag? Why do we open in prayer? Why do we say the Pledge of Allegiance if we are going to rip apart the flag right here in this body, in this Chamber? Because that is what we are doing, using backroom deals, dropping these bills on the floor, and not allowing us to actually engage in debate over these important matters.
The American people are tired of spending money we don't have, and they are tired of open borders. They are tired of empowering bureaucrats like the FBI. They are tired of forced vaccine mandates at the Department of Defense. They are tired of an IRS harassing the American people, allegedly, for more revenue. They are tired of an NIH and a CDC making it up as they go along and shutting down economies and jamming it down the throats of the American people. They are tired of an EPA and a Department of the Interior restricting Americans' ability to have reliable energy. The American people are tired of it.
I hope help is on the way. I am glad the Republicans seem united against this in the House, and I am looking at Mitch McConnell when I say this: Do your job, Leader McConnell. Do your job, and follow the wishes of the American people, who gave a majority to Republicans in the House of Representatives. Let's stop this bill.
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from California talked about the extent to which the process is bad and that we can do better. Well, I am glad that he agrees with that.
The question is, well, let's agree right now to amend the CR to March. Why don't we do that? Why don't we agree right now to amend the continuing resolution until March?
Well, we know why my Democratic colleagues don't want to do that, right? They don't want to have a full-throated debate on this. They don't want to have an actual discussion.
Why don't we have an open process? Why don't we actually have amendments here on the floor of the House? We haven't been able to offer an amendment on the floor of the House of Representatives since May 2016.
But the gentleman from California knows this. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle know this. This isn't about actually saying let's have a process that works. It is the opposite. It is using Christmas and the end of the year to jam this through, not to buy time with a 1-week CR so we can negotiate.
Who is negotiating? Three people in a room? We are not. We are not debating this on the floor. We are not going to do it in the light of day. No. What is going to happen is one big bill will be dropped on the floor after this rule is jammed through, on the 23rd of December, 2 days before Christmas, intentionally, right before Christmas, in order to force everybody to come in, with no amendments, to vote up or down on $1.7 trillion.
How on Earth did we end up $32 trillion in debt? That is how, and there is no actual resolve to do anything about that.
Again, control of the House of Representatives has shifted from one party to the other five times since 1954. In none of those years have we had the outgoing Congress pass a comprehensive spending bill in the lame duck that is after the election. We shouldn't do it now. We shouldn't do it in the future.
One last point: If there is a debate in the Senate right now and some of our Senate colleagues decide to object to the continuing resolution, which I would support, which would then call into question the funding on Saturday, when we wake up, let's be very clear that it is Democrats who would be risking shutting down the government because they are so married to funding the alphabet soup of the bureaucracy throughout this town that is strangling the American people, strangling prosperity, spending money we don't have, refusing to secure the border, empowering FBI agents to go after the American people. Those are the priorities of my Democratic colleagues.
If there is any debate on Saturday as to whether the lights are going to be turned on in the government, it is on the hands of Democrats married to a bureaucracy rather than standing up in defense of the American people who send us here.
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