How Your Tax Dollars Are Being Spent
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, yesterday we were given the President's budget, which outlines the President's so-called priorities.
Well, his priorities were pretty clear: Continue to expand government at the expense of the American people. Expand government, a government that is at odds with the freedom, well-being, and prosperity of the American people every single day.
The simple truth is, as my friends in the House Freedom Caucus and a large number of my other colleagues in the Republican Conference have been articulating, we need to shrink Washington so that we can grow America.
We cannot sustain and grow out of the $32 trillion of debt and the $20 trillion of debt that the Congressional Budget Office just outlined that we are going to add over the next decade. We will not, as a country, survive through that if we do not get economic growth to the 3, 3\1/2\, and 4 percent levels that we saw under President Reagan, President Clinton, and in previous years. You are not going to get economic growth if you don't get the Federal Government off the backs of the American people and stop empowering them to target Americans, to undermine American freedoms.
Biden's budget would increase taxes and implement price controls to the tune of $3 trillion. That is the President's plan.
What does the media do?
They run around and go: Oh, he is reducing the deficit. He is reducing the debt.
Yet, by his own measures, he would be increasing the debt another $17 trillion over the next decade.
The American people look to this body and this town with utter amazement at how stupid we could possibly be. If you set out and tried to be more incompetent and more stupid than the people that have been running this town for as long as I can remember, I am not sure how you can do it.
Seriously. That would be a great exercise. Could anybody, if you put together 435 people here, 100 people on the other side, Presidents and bureaucrats, swapped out over the last, say, three decades, could it be any worse?
William F. Buckley said he would rather be governed by the first 435 people out of the phone book than the 435 people we send here. Is he wrong?
Seriously, it would be a great inquiry for us to consider.
We are $32 trillion in debt. Our borders are wide open. We have got American citizens unable to carry out their livelihoods, men and women in uniform who are being denied promotions and the ability to do their job in the Defense Department. We have got kids shut out from their schools, forced into the corners wearing masks, mental health issues, and they are set back generations in terms of their academic capability.
That is the best we have got? That is the best we can do?
We reject that. We believe in America. We believe in Americans. We do not believe that investing in Washington, investing in the Federal bureaucracy is good for the American people. We believe the opposite.
The President wants to tax and regulate $3 trillion to save increasing the debt $3 trillion over the next decade, down to $17 trillion. Whoo, boy, that will do it.
We propose an immediate savings of $3 trillion right now by cutting back the woke weaponized Federal bureaucracy that is undermining the freedom of the American people so that we can make them more free and prosperous so that they can grow this economy so we can shrink the deficit, reduce debt, and reclaim the inheritance of being an American for our kids and grandkids.
Think about what Biden's budget would do. It would spend a total of $6.8 trillion next year, $500 billion more than this year, $2 billion for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to increase regulation of the firearms industry. I have got thousands of Texans that I represent who are facing being made a felon because a bureaucrat at ATF decided what precisely a pistol brace might mean for how their gun is regulated.
Think about that. Just some guy some, some gal sitting in central Texas bought a weapon under the law, and now a bureaucrat says you have got to do this, register this, or you are a felon.
Now, I think the Court will strike that down as unconstitutional, but why would this body, why would any Republican fund the bureaucracy that is going to make a felon out of the law-abiding citizen back home?
To my Republican colleagues: Don't do that.
How about $3.9 billion for the Department of Homeland Security's climate resilience programs? Think about that. $3.9 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, which, by the way, refuses to secure the homeland, allows 72,000 Americans to die from fentanyl poisoning, allows cartels to get empowered and slaughter Americans in the streets of Matamoros in northern Mexico without a peep from this administration. Nothing. Let's give that department $3.9 billion for climate resilience programs. Does anybody wonder why the American people look at us and say what in the hell are you doing?
$2 billion increase for the EPA to target American energy. Now, I want to remind people, I want to remind all the kids out there watching this thinking, oh, my God, but the world is going to end, we are going die, climate change, we are going to get extinguished. Oh, really? Oh, really?
Why is it that my Democratic colleagues who believe that the production of CO
A $2 billion funding increase for the Internal Revenue Service is in the President's budget. Now, I want every American to understand that. They just passed a bill last summer supposedly called the Inflation Reduction Act that gives the IRS another $80 billion to expand. So that is what the American people want: More IRS agents to go target more Americans to raise at most by the CBO's own estimate 100 or $200 billion over 10 years? So you're going to spend $80 billion to go target American citizens to bring in more money. By the way, the IRS targets poor people and minorities three to five times more than other Americans. So you're going to go hire more bureaucrats, you got $80 billion, and what does Biden do? Oh, that is not enough. $2 billion more for the IRS. Genius.
$100 million to the Department of Education in grant funding for communities to promote racial and socioeconomic diversity in their schools.
$62 million for the DOJ to exploit the FACE Act to target pro-life Americans. I could go on and on about the amount of money given to agency after agency, bureaucrat after bureaucrat to target the American people. The FBI targeted my now-friend Scott Smith in Loudoun County, whose daughter was assaulted in a school. He dared to go to the school board. He got challenged by law enforcement, and the DOJ was going to be putting him on a list as a domestic terrorist because the National School Boards Association was colluding with the White House to do so. Is that what we want to fund: a Department of Justice that would put a dad on a list as a domestic terrorist because he went to his school board to try to defend his daughter who was assaulted in a bathroom?
That is what this administration wants to prioritize: Funding a woke, weaponized bureaucracy that is undermining freedom. They want to fund the FBI that went after Mark Houck in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for daring to defend his son when they were outside of an abortion clinic and somebody was challenging his son when they were exercising their First Amendment rights, and he defended him without anything significant happening. They were not prosecuted by State law. The feds went in, had a SWAT team at 7 in the morning on a Sunday--the whole family--went into their house threatening Mark Houck.
Is that what we want to fund?
Is that what we want to use the power of government for?
How about the $16,000--I know it is just $16,000; I realize that is chicken feed in this establishment--in State Department funding for a pro-prostitution LGBTQ group in Colombia. Is that how we want our tax dollars spent? That is just $16,000. It doesn't mean anything, does it? It does.
$1.9 million in Department of Education funding for an Illinois nonprofit that trains teachers to center equity in the classroom. We need our kids to know math, how to read, science, how to lead the world, how to beat China, and we got $1.9 million to center equity, whatever that hell that means.
$2 million for the State Department's Race, Ethnicity, and Social Inclusion Unit. As if the State Department is out doing wonderful things in the first place these days.
How about $158 million in economic law enforcement and military support for Mexico? Pause. Yes, you just heard that correctly. We, the taxpayers, are giving $158 million to Mexico for economic law enforcement and military support while we are getting flooded at our border, cartels are absolutely running amuck and owning the state of Mexico as a narco-terror state, running fentanyl into America, and killing Americans in Mexico. Congratulations, American people, you bought with $158 million a narco-terrorist state that is undermining our freedom and liberty killing Americans, endangering migrants, and endangering Texas. Congratulations, Americans.
$34 million for the Office of the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas. $34 million for Alejandro Mayorkas to screw up America. Congratulations to the American people on how your tax dollars are being spent.
$1.7 billion, for the ATF that I described earlier that will make owners of the 10 to 40 million pistol braces in the United States felons. $6.3 billion for Anthony Fauci's NIAID, which was weaponized to completely lock down the United States and force vaccines on millions of Americans, massively increasing the profit of pharmaceutical companies--Pfizer and Moderna--making like $100 billion under government mandates for vaccines--government mandates for vaccines with liability protection for the companies for a vaccine that even the morons in the departments over at CDC, NIH, FDA are now at least acknowledging don't really do much for transmission; but, oh, yes, let's give them $6.3 billion.
$128 million for the office of the CDC Director who actively mislead Americans about COVID vaccine efficacy while CDC and Big Tech colluded to suppress vaccine information, which we know to be true. We saw testimony yesterday.
Our own colleague, Thomas Massie, had his own social media posts being edited and targeted in a disinformation campaign because anyone who dared question the wisdom of Anthony Fauci, anyone who dared question the government mandate that you stick a needle in your arm because they say so because they politicized a virus and a vaccine, you are going to be set aside. There was going to be disinformation on social media, Twitter, in collusion with all of those guys. They were shutting down free speech.
We should be horrified that the United States of America with a First Amendment to the Constitution, which is supposed to protect free speech, but not for Thomas Massie as a Member of Congress--yes, for him, too--but for every American, every American regardless of the ``truth'' of what you are saying, the government doesn't decide what the truth is. That is the whole point of free speech.
Yet, we are funding the very tyrants in the executive branch shutting down free speech, mandating vaccines, using the power of government to go after people and shut down their livelihoods, undermine freedom, undermine economic activity, and put us $32 trillion in debt so our kids and grandkids are going to inherit a bankrupt, tyrannical America.
We should change that. We should reject that. The great news is Americans across this country are rejecting it. They are saying no. They do want to live free. They don't want a government that is shutting down their ability to live free or their kids and their grandkids. They do want to send their kids to schools that teach them that America is great and good and teach them the tools they need to succeed in life, rather than teach them that they should be ashamed of their country or be a victim.
The American people under COVID woke up. More parents are homeschooling their kids. More parents are looking for private school. More States are adopting school choice. More businesses are rejecting the vaccine mandates. More individuals are saying no to those mandates.
God bless the young man who is in the United States Navy who rejected the vaccine mandate, and because of our bill that we finally jammed through in December as Republicans isn't being kicked out of the military, but he is still being harassed, he is still being denied the commanding officer job he always wanted. He is still being denied the ability to advance. They are going after him to pay the $75,000 of previous student loans. That must end.
$122 million for the World Health Organization, which pushed lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and colluded with the Chinese Communist Party to cover up its role in COVID's origin, and now with this administration wants to control our healthcare and control how we are going to deal with vaccines in the future. Why would any Republican vote to fund the World Health Organization today? Why? We should not. We should reject that. We are Americans. We decide how we are going to live.
$234 million for the EPA's clean water program so-called under waters of the United States, WOTUS, that put a 78-year-old veteran in jail for violating the waters of the United States by digging ditches on his land.
That is your government at work, ladies and gentlemen, $456 million for EPA ``clean air programs.''
Everybody wants clean air. I don't know anybody who doesn't want clean air. I don't know any State regulators who don't want clean air.
What we don't want is that to be used as an excuse to carry out the new methane tax, drive up gas prices via the ethanol mandate, and destroy reliable coal and natural gas power plants via regulation, which is precisely what it is going to do.
Yet, we are all going to just sit by as Republicans and go, well, shrug. I guess that is just what we do. We have to increase government.
All these kids are running around going, ``Well, we have climate change. What are we going to do?'' How about we embrace clean-burning American natural gas, develop more nuclear power, and recognize that China and India are the ones that are vastly growing and producing CO
Mr. Speaker, $108 million in woke EPA environmental justice funding that will funnel through EPA's new Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, $108 million of your taxpayer money for environmental justice when we are $32 trillion in debt, you literally can't make up how stupid we are. Literally, you just can't. It is, like, no, no, no.
I mean, imagine the Founding Fathers going: Wait a minute. Hold on. In 2023, we are going to be $32 trillion in debt. We are not going to actually secure our borders as a sovereign Nation, allowing them to be wide open. We are going to submit to the authority of international organizations to tell us what to do and fund those international organizations to tell us what to do. We are going to fund massive bureaucracies to create things like the so-called environmental justice department with $108 million when we are spending a trillion and a half dollars more every year than we take in.
I mean, that is just, like, the tip of the iceberg. How stupid can a people be? The American people aren't stupid. That is why they look at Congress with utter disdain.
We are stupid unless we change, and that is my request of my colleagues on this side of the aisle, that we demand change.
When there is a debt ceiling fight this summer, when the President wants to play chicken and Russian roulette with the debt ceiling increase to borrow more money to raise our credit card limit, we should demand change. We should demand actual change. We should demand immediate change.
When we say return spending for the bureaucratic state to pre-COVID 2019 levels, and when my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and the President say you can't do that, you remind them about the $122 million for the World Health Organization or the $108 million for the ``environmental justice programs,'' or the $15 million for the United Nations bodies that develop the Paris Agreement--just that alone.
How about $7 million of Department of the Interior funding for the monarch butterfly, $20 million in earmarks dedicated to sidewalks--$20 million dedicated in Federal funding for sidewalks.
Boy, there is a real Federal nexus there, huh? Article I, section 8, thou shalt fund sidewalks. It is asinine.
Yet, that is what we do. It is like breathing for Members of Congress. Just keep funding crap because, well, I don't know. I have a dinner to go to, and I can't bother to peel back the appropriations bills or the big omnibus bill that is sent over by a bunch of Senators who are running to their steak dinners and can't even bother to do the appropriations bills in the first place.
This includes 18 Republicans, by the way, who voted for a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill, which I will constantly remind all 18 of them and all Americans of those 18 who voted for a massive $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill that denied us the ability to secure the border and expanded the size and scope of the Federal Government.
It is not just a singular, one-party problem, ladies and gentlemen. This body needs a little religion, actual religion, and a little bit of fiscal sanity religion.
We can change that. We can shrink Washington massively. Right now, in year one, we can shrink Washington so that we can get it out of the way and grow our country back to prosperity.
That is step one in reclaiming our American birthright: shrink Washington, grow America.
We can save more than $3 trillion over the next decade if we cut the funding of the bureaucracy back to pre-COVID levels and cap future growth; rescind $91 billion of unobligated COVID money just sitting over there right now waiting for a bureaucrat to find something to spend it on; and end the unfair, unlawful $400 billion student loan bailout that the President promised that is going to be deficit spending this year.
Just boom, $400 billion of 2023 deficit spending. For what? Paying off the loan of some kid who went to college, got a sociology degree, and is hanging out in his parents' basement, tweeting and sitting on Instagram, and trying to find a job. Oh, no. We have to pay off that kid's loan, but the plumber who didn't take out that loan to go to some liberal arts college filled with a bunch of White elite liberals patting themselves on the back for how compassionate they are for Brown people--that is what they do. Let's pay off their loans, but let's make the plumber eat it. That is crazy, absolutely crazy.
We reward irresponsibility instead of actually telling the hardworking American who does it all the right way that they are the one who gets rewarded.
Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to increase the debt to borrow to fund a $400 billion student loan bailout for rich, liberal, White elitists, for the most part, as a statistical matter, while we are leaving out hardworking Americans who didn't take out those loans like my wife, the daughter of a single mom who took two jobs, worked hard, and sent her to a State university, who worked to pay off her loans.
She is still paying them. Mr. Speaker, 20 years since we graduated from law school, my wife is still paying off the remaining vestiges of her law school student loans after paying her way and getting loans to go to Texas A&M and the University of Texas School of Law, doing the right thing, driving a 2000 Corolla with no options for, like, a decade.
That is what you do if you are responsible. That is how you are supposed to live. We can save that money right now and do more good for the American people than funding and paying off these student loans.
We can reclaim the $80 billion of Internal Revenue Service money that is sitting in a pot over there right now. We can reform welfare programs to get people back to work, protecting Social Security retirement and Medicare benefits in the process.
We can grow America by expanding liberty and promoting economic growth, forcing policy changes to make the government do its job, curb regulatory power by enacting the REIN IN Act to make Congress decide if the regulations by bureaucrats should be enacted if they have a major economic impact.
These are all things we can do right now and save up to $3 trillion over 10 years as a first step to shrinking Washington and growing America. That is our plan. The President's plan is to expand Washington and undermine America.
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia for his leadership. We joined together with our colleagues at the House Freedom Caucus this morning to announce what we believe is, I would say, the bare minimum, if you will, sort of the baseline for resetting the table on how we deal with spending and, importantly, empowering the American people by shrinking Washington and growing America because we trust the people to do it, not government.
This is an age-old debate, but this is something where leviathan, this great beast, this thing we call the Federal Government, is growing and expanding in power in ways that concern every American.
Just yesterday, in the House Judiciary Committee, there were conversations about the power of the Federal Government being used to chill speech, to target American citizens, to shut down their First Amendment rights.
Now think about it. Is there anything more concerning than the power of the government being used to chill the fundamental rights given to us by our Creator, as reflected in the Bill of Rights, than what we are seeing right now?
The FTC is going after, right now, targeting, they want to know-- wait--who is involved with all of this. They are actually targeting journalists, targeting private citizens.
Is that what the power of the government is supposed to be used for, I would ask the gentleman from Virginia.
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Mr. ROY. I asked earlier, if you set out over the last 2 or 3 decades, to do a worse job than the leadership of this country, in this Chamber, the Senate, the bureaucracy, and the White House, could you imagine doing a worse job than over the last 3 decades?
I mean, in truth, the amount of debt that has been accumulated, right--in 2003, when I was a baby staffer for a Senator on the other side of this building, the national debt was about $6 trillion.
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Mr. ROY. Right. It is now $26 trillion more than that, and the President is patting himself on the back for saying, well, we are not going to increase the debt by $20 trillion; we are only going to increase it by $17 trillion over the next decade by taxing and regulating the American people into oblivion.
I would just ask the gentleman a last question here, and then we are going to--in a couple of minutes I want to yield to my friend from West Virginia.
Would it surprise the gentleman that we are spending $158 million in economic, law enforcement, and military support for Mexico--so, again, the American people, you and I, we are funding to the tune of $158 million, Mexico's law enforcement and military, while it is becoming a narco-terrorist state; cartels are literally killing American citizens in Mexico; infiltrating our country, causing 72,000 dead Americans from fentanyl poisoning? This is the thing the American people don't understand. Does the gentleman agree?
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Mr. ROY. That is correct. If the gentleman doesn't mind, I am going to end here with a few minutes on the border and then yield to the gentleman from West Virginia. I thank my friend from Virginia for coming down.
On that point, what we are funding, 4\1/2\ million encounters of illegal aliens at the southern border since the beginning of the Biden administration, with 7,000, 8,000 migrants crossing a day, there are 1.3 million got-aways, and nearly 1.7 million illegal aliens released into the United States. That means we have released more into our communities than the population of at least 11 individual States.
Under this administration, there have been surges of known or suspected terrorists at the southwest border. There were zero in fiscal year 2019, 3 in fiscal year 2020, 15 in fiscal year 2021, 98 in fiscal year 2022, and 53 so far after 1 quarter in fiscal year 2023, these are individuals that are affiliated with known or suspected terrorists at the southwest border.
Last summer, 53 migrants died in a tractor trailer in San Antonio, which I represent, cooked in the Texas heat; and that is somehow compassion?
Mr. Speaker, 880 migrants have died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2022, and that does not count the thousands that have died across south Texas and other places and ranches; doesn't count the little girls sitting in stash houses, as we speak, getting sold into the sex trafficking trade, as Mayorkas and Biden fiddle, while our Nation's borders are burning.
Just last week, four Americans traveling to Mexico, one of them a mother of six, they were attacked by cartels in broad daylight. Two are dead. Two are getting care; and we give $158 million to Mexico for law enforcement and military.
This is why, today, I am re-introducing my legislation to designate these drug cartels as the terrorist organization that they are, so that any individual associated with them, that provides material support to a designated FTO would be sanctioned and could be pursued, lawfully.
Materials include, but are not limited to providing weapons, safe houses, lethal substances. Representatives and members of a designated FTO would be subject to removal. Financial institutions could be targeted. But the main point is to make clear that these dangerous cartels are the equivalent of ISIS and al-Qaida, right off our border, killing Americans, killing Mexicans, turning Mexico into narco- terrorist states; giving China an avenue to get to the United States to pump fentanyl into our communities, and this administration is doing nothing.
This Congress must not continue to fund a government that is at war with the American people, funding a woke weaponized Federal Government that is undermining our freedom, undermining our prosperity, undermining our liberty.
It is our duty, as Republicans and all Members of Congress, to use the power of the purse to defund the executive branch that is tyrannically at odds with the well-being of the American people.
I appreciate his great service to our country, and I look forward to hearing from him. Returning to the Gold Standard
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from West Virginia and appreciate his strong passion in representing the great people of West Virginia. He is a good friend, and I am glad that he could join us here today.
Earlier, I was talking about the need for this country to reclaim economic growth in order to dig ourselves out of the hole that this absurd institution and lack of leadership from Washington, D.C., has created for the American people in the form of $32 trillion of debt and ridiculously stagnant economic growth.
After decades of being able to achieve growth in the 3 and 4 percent range, we are now sitting in the doldrums of 1-percent-type economic growth. That might even be rather robust in the era of Joe Biden.
I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Bishop) to expand upon this important point.
Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, Mr. Roy, for yielding.
The President's budget recommendation came over a month late yesterday, and there was one detail I read in The New York Times, so it must be true, although that is the only place I have had a chance to see it yet, and what immediately popped into my mind when I read this detail, is that Karine Jean-Pierre said last week--I can remember her saying it--that the President's economic plan is working for the American people. That popped back into my head, because the detail disclosed by The New York Times is that the administration predicts economic growth in this fiscal year not 3\1/2\ percent, not 4 percent certainly, not 2\1/2\ percent, not 1\1/2\ percent, but six-tenths of a percent.
You have to start talking about economic growth and what the economists call basis points, because it is so small. So if the economic plan of the Biden administration is working for the American people, that means 60 basis points of economic growth anticipated in the year.
And guess what the Biden administration says about that? We should do nothing different. We should keep doing the same thing that is producing six-tenths of a percent of economic growth, except one other thing: We should pile the burden of a lot more taxes on the economy, because apparently that is going to--because what do we need? Thirty basis points of economic growth? Republicans believe we need to change.
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from North Carolina.
Mr. Speaker, I would inquire as to how much time we have remaining.
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I don't know if I will use every bit of that. I appreciate the point that the gentleman from North Carolina just made, because it is critically important and it merits at least one final repetition, that this great country racked up the level of debt that we currently have today relative to the size of its economy in 1946. But why was that? To rid the world of fascism, to confront our enemies, to defeat those enemies, and to protect this great country.
Then we embarked for 50 years and grew ourselves to the point to be able to balance the budget by 2000, with strong economic growth. It took that much time.
Here we sit today in 2023 with $32 trillion of debt, sitting, at the President's own admission, at 60 basis points of economic growth this year. He wants his grand solution to be, oh, we will just rack up $17 trillion more debt in the next decade, because I am going to save $3 trillion by taxing the American people and regulating the American people.
It doesn't work. This is President Biden's actual form of voodoo economics. He is going to level this country, layer mountains more debt on our kids and grandkids, all while funding the very things that are undermining our ability to have economic growth, prosperity, and freedom.
As I noted before, the millions of dollars going to the EPA to turn an American citizen into a felon and put him into jail because he had a pond on his ranch, the millions of dollars in the name of clean air that are going to methane regulations to drive the price of gas and the price of energy up for the average American.
Every single American should demand of his or her Representative in this body that we stand up to a tyrannical executive branch overstepping its bounds, undermining our freedom, and undermining economic growth.
Every Member of this body should look to cut spending this year of the Federal bureaucracy, return it to pre-COVID levels as a baseline, save $3 trillion by getting government out of the way, restore economic growth and hope and opportunity for our kids and grandkids, stop funding the very things that are undermining our well-being, secure our country, secure our border, have a sparingly used but lethal, nonwoke military that will kill people and destroy things when they need to, and restore the greatness of this country by shrinking Washington and growing America.
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