Redirection of Congress

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt the floor staff is overjoyed to be returning to the floor and having business get back to normal. I will be sure to try to make sure I use the entirety of the 60 minutes and regale our fine staff.

I do want to take a moment to thank the staff, as the Speaker did when he was voted into office and sworn in yesterday. We have great staff who work hard here on the floor and keep this institution functioning even when sometimes we are not functioning much as a body. I am grateful for the staff. As a former staffer, I know how hard they work, and I am deeply appreciative of it.

We have had an interesting few weeks, and a lot of people around the country were asking questions about what we were doing in having a debate about the Speaker of the House. My response has largely been: We are doing our job. We are having a debate in this body about the future of the country, and that is actually what we are supposed to do.

Choosing a Speaker of the House, following a Speaker of the House, removing a Speaker of the House, all of those are things that are part of our job to figure out what we need to do to make sure that we are doing the people's work in the people's House.

All of this will be forgotten in a matter of hours, days, and certainly in history books. The only thing that is going to matter is what we do with our power in this institution, in the House of Representatives, to represent the people. That is all that is really going to matter in the end.

All of the noise, all of the debate, all of the reporters scurrying around, all of the interviews and 24/7 news shows, none of that will matter.

None of that will be remembered. None of our kids and none of our grandkids are going to be wandering around in 10 years or 40 years or 100 years saying, well, man, what about that interview on Sean Hannity or on MSNBC or something.

They are not going to know anything about that. The only question that will matter is are they living in a free and strong country. That is the only thing that is going to matter.

Are they able to carry out their God-given rights that are protected under our Constitution and under the laws of the United States or are they not?

One of the things that I think is really important that I have observed throughout this process, as I sit here in a largely empty Chamber with two Members of Congress, a lot of my colleagues are catching their flights home after a few weeks of drama surrounding the Speaker.

One of the things that I have observed in this debate about who should be the Speaker and what House Republicans want to do with the majority is that my Democrat colleagues are nowhere to be found on any of the issues that matter to the people I represent and the vast majority of the American people. That is the simple truth.

With all due respect to my Democrat colleagues, some of whom I consider friends and I have worked to move legislation with, happy to have debates with, they are utterly missing in action when it comes to anything that matters to the people that I represent: $33.5 trillion in debt, $2 trillion a year in deficit spending, and my colleagues' objective other side of the aisle, and frankly, a decent number of my own colleagues on this side of the aisle, are completely missing in action when it comes to figuring out how to stop spending money we don't have.

When it comes to open borders, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle not only won't sit down and figure out solutions, they are actively working to thwart any possible path to doing what we need to do to secure the border of the United States.

The American people, particularly the Texans that I represent, are looking with abject horror on the utter and complete failure that is this body and the Senate and the White House's response to wide open borders and in fact, their active engagement in creating the environment where our borders can be exploited.

Again, just to be very specific, the American people that I talk to and my constituents that I represent, they want us to stop spending money we don't have and to stop racking up debt. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle refuse to do anything about it.

The constituents I represent, the American people I talk to, want us to secure the border of the United States and stop the endless streaming of fentanyl into our communities, the empowerment of cartels, the empowerment of China, the destruction, the murder, the mayhem, the deaths of migrants, the deaths of our own citizens all from wide open borders that are directly contrary to law. The American people want us to stop it.

My Democratic colleagues refuse, and in fact, are all too happy to participate in the human smuggling chain that is decimating Americans and migrants. That is the truth. It is generally, observably speaking, an undeniable truth.

My Democratic colleagues will not respond to the constituents that I represent or the American people I talk to who are asking for our military to focus on its core mission rather than be turned into a social engineering experiment in a uniform.

The American people don't want that. They don't want to destroy the culture of the military. They don't want to undermine the ability of the military to perform. They don't want recruiting to be in the basement.

They want their military to be very good at killing people and destroying things when called into action to do so. They want it to be used sparingly.

They don't want to be involved in endless wars. They don't want us to be engaged in foreign entanglements, to use the wording of President Washington, endlessly. They want us to stop that.

My Democratic colleagues have no interest in ensuring that our national defense, that our military is focused on its mission rather than on funding transgender surgeries, funding offices of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion and chief diversity officers and all the things that divide us up by race, that divide us up instead of making us unified.

All of the things that the people that I represent, all of those things: the weaponization of government against the people, concerns about an FBI targeting parents, concerns about an FBI that is politicized, an ATF that wants to undermine your ability to defend yourself in your communities even while my Democratic colleagues refuse to stand by law enforcement and ensure that our communities are safe.

Even as I saw San Antonio police officers again last week shot on our streets with a Democrat district attorney, a Soros-funded district attorney, utterly incapable and refusing to do his job to ensure those criminals are locked up behind bars. Instead, they are out on the streets shooting our police officers.

Everybody in this country knows the state of affairs. The communities are not safe because we allow criminals to roam them.

They know that our border and our country is not safe because people affiliated with terrorist organizations and gangs and cartels are coming across our border.

They know that fentanyl is streaming into our communities. They know that the Chinese are exploiting our border, working with cartels to do it.

They know that we are catching people from Iran, from Lebanon, from Indonesia, from places all over the world at our border, people affiliated with dangerous organizations in Colombia and South America. They also know that there are hundreds of thousands, millions who are got-aways that get into our country.

Again, I want to say this because it is really important--that our Democratic colleagues refuse to work with us on any of those issues, period. Full stop.

I am happy to engage in any debate with any of my Democratic colleagues any time on any of these issues and have them bring forward any meaningful policies that will make a difference on any of those things.

Now, why is that important? Why is it important to make very clear to the American people that my Democratic colleagues have no interest in working with us on any of the issues that deal with debt, deficit spending, open borders, a military that is not focused on its mission, crime on our streets, cutting spending to stop inflation so the American people are no longer suffering, why is it important to make that crystal clear?

The American people are wondering why Washington is broken, and I will tell you. It has been decades of rot, decades of institutional powers that are making decisions in this town, and they don't like it if you change it. They don't like it if you are fighting back.

That matters in the context of the debate over the Speaker of the House. The 221 Republicans in the House of Representatives, a thin majority, are having a full and open debate in front of the American people about the future of this country.

I have strong disagreements with a number of my colleagues in the Republican Party, but the debate that is going on in the Republican Party is the debate that is going on across this country, but it is a debate being fully ignored by my Democratic colleagues. They are not a part of it.

I listened to the minority leader speak from the rostrum before the newly elected Speaker of the House spoke yesterday.

I heard Minority Leader Jeffries talking about all of the things the Democrats have done to save this country this year: how it was Democrats who stepped in, in his words, at the brink of a so-called default in June. It was Democrats who stepped in at the brink of a so- called shutdown in November. It was Democrats who stepped in in the Speaker's race, by the way.

Keep in mind that my Democratic colleagues when they say they are saving things, they are driving the train for $4 trillion of increased national debt in a continuing resolution to keep this government going at a $2 trillion deficit.

That is what my Democratic colleagues are championing as saving this country. Somebody explain that to me. Somebody explain to me how that is what the American people sent us here to do.

For my Republican colleagues, what are we going to do to change it? Eight of my colleagues vacated the Chair.

What that means is they called the question on the Speaker of the House. Lots of my colleagues on this side of the aisle, and many Republicans across the country, stood in violent disagreement with those eight.

I didn't vote alongside those eight at that moment. I thought we should try to finish it out for another month or 2 under the structures we had put in place in January to change this institution, to put more conservatives on the Appropriations Committee, to put more conservatives on the Rules Committee, to have more engagement, all of which led to very good legislation.

The strongest border security bill we have ever passed in H.R. 2, the strongest national defense authorization bill that we have ever passed that would repurpose and refocus the military on its mission rather than being woke and engaged in social engineering, a strong Limit, Save, Grow bill that would have modestly increased the debt while transforming spending in this town, we did that.

We passed four appropriations bills. In a town that never passes appropriations bills any longer, we did that.

Those eight stood up for a reason, and they should be proud that they stood up for that reason because those eight stood up for change.

You see, the status quo in this town is going to destroy this country. The status quo continuing to do the same thing we have done over and over and over again is going to change this country and destroy it.

I have a 14-year-old son. I have a 12-year-old daughter. I know my friend from Tennessee behind me and my friend from Arizona in the Chair, proud fathers, family men, a veteran, we want to save this country for our kids and our grandkids.

My question for my colleagues on this side of the aisle as we elect a new Speaker--and we have 220 united behind that Speaker--is: Are you going to unite behind that Speaker to change this town and change this country; yes or no?

Now is the time. I am tired of all the empty rhetoric about unity. I am tired of all the empty rhetoric about what we need to do and that whatever the majority of this conference says, goes.

No. I didn't swear an allegiance to the Republican Party. I didn't swear an allegiance to a majority of my Republican colleagues.

I took an oath to the Constitution of the United States under God in representing the people who sent me here to represent them. Nothing more.

I have for my entire life--I am 51 years old--been watching a majority of this body and often a majority of this Republican Conference destroy this country day in, day out.

A genuine question I ask of my colleagues to which I don't get much of a response, do you believe that the majority of the Republican House of Representatives, the Republican Conference, has done a good job over the last half century, in my 51 years?

The majority of Republicans, have we stood up to cut spending, or have we instead increased spending and increased debt?

Everyone knows the answer to that question. Have we increased the size and scope of the Federal Government, or have we decreased it? Everybody knows the answer to that question.

Have we as Republicans, the majority, making decisions and selecting the Speaker and doing the same thing over and over and over again, have we led to open borders and an unsecure border, or have we created a secure and sovereign border?

Have we sided with the Chamber of Commerce and cheap labor and all the lobbyists in town, or have we stood with the people to say that the border should be secure so that we are safe and, importantly, that the rule of law is being enforced?

Everybody knows the answer to that question.

Have we engaged constantly in putting ourselves in foreign entanglements endlessly without clear mission and without clear ends, or have we had a very specific and concrete mission that we use our military discretely, powerfully, limitedly, and come home?

I think everybody who has eyes can see the answer to that question. The number of our own Members who are missing an eye, wearing a patch, a man without legs, a man without an arm--battle scars from generations of endless conflict as long as I have been alive.

Are we a country that believes that we are supposed to declare war and have a Congress that stands behind that and gets in and out, or do we believe we should have endless conflict?

Again I ask--a majority of Republicans have put those policies forward: more debt, open borders, a military that has lost its way, its focus, and engaged in endless conflict, expanded the Federal Government at exponential levels. Just today, trying to be a team player--many of us who strongly oppose continued funding of programs and agencies that we don't support because they are vastly out of their constitutional role, the Department of Energy and all sorts of programs--we voted for a bill to try to move the ball forward as a team, trying to cut spending and get appropriations bills so we can change this town. We were met with abject resistance from this side of the Conference saying, no, we are not going to keep cutting spending. We are going to oppose your amendments cutting programs and spending. We are not going to do the work that we said we would do to balance the budget, limit the size and scope of government. We meet resistance every day within our own party.

So how, pray tell, can we save this country if half of the body has no interest in being sovereign, no interest in having a secure border, no interest in cutting spending, no interest in having a defense that is mission-focused instead of being woke and socially engineered?

Half of the body is only slightly less. How can we do that?

I will tell you the answer. The answer is that some of us are going to continue to force change in this town. When this Congress began there was a debate about the Speaker. We forced change through rules. We demanded that we get to read the bills. We demanded that we would have more representation on the committees. We demanded that there would be single-subject legislation. We demanded that we would get appropriations bills done.

Only four times in my lifetime, in 50 years, have we passed all 12 appropriations bills, rather than letting deals get cut in smoke-filled rooms. It worked for a while and we made this place better. But, as usual, the powers that be circled, and so more change is needed.

Now we have a new Speaker, and the question before us is what we will do with that. I believe we have to be very clear. I believe we need to tell the administration, Senate Democrats, House Democrats, Senate Republicans, and indeed some in our own Conference, we need to tell them very clearly that it is a new day and that it is time for the American people to be represented. It is time for this town to no longer roll over the American people for their own special interests or just sheer laziness.

Specifically, House Republicans must stand to thwart the Biden administration and Senate Democrats with the help of Senate Republicans' objective to force through a massive supplemental bill for funding for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, and allegedly the border, of some hundred billion dollars or any other number.

Instead, House Republicans should send over a standalone Israel bill fully paid for. There is a novel concept--fully paying for something. Under no circumstances should the House Republican Conference allow legislation to get to the floor of this House that is not paid for and that is not focused entirely on Israel with respect to this package.

We should stand by Israel; it is in our interest. But it is not in our interest or, frankly, Israel's, for us to continue to borrow money we don't have to fund it. We should pay for it.

The second thing we should do is continue to move appropriations bills, but not for the sake of it. With all due respect to some of my colleagues who think it is an end unto itself to move appropriations bills, it is not. We must move appropriations bills that are responsible, that pull back on the abuses of this administration and, importantly, reduce spending. We are not there yet. We have more to do.

Thirdly, when it comes to November 17, this House Republican Conference must not blink. The fact that funding expires in 3 weeks means we should get our job done to get appropriations bills passed and any stopgap spending measure should be short and focused on forcing the Senate and the White House to come to the table and cut spending.

It cannot be that we are going to continue to do what we have always done, which is to kick the can down the road, spend money we don't have, rack up debt, and do the same old thing we have always done.

Fourth, this is probably the most important thing that needs to be said. I don't care who is in charge. I don't care who the Speaker is. I don't care what this Republican Conference puts out or doesn't put out. We have an obligation as Republicans, who campaign on securing the border, who go on TV and do interviews, and go to our constituents and do mailers and do fundraisers talking about securing the border, to fully and completely secure the border.

Under no circumstances should we allow a single dollar to even be considered for Ukraine, if at all, and certainly not without having done our job to secure the border, which means--let me be very clear for everyone in the Senate and all of my House colleagues, Democrat or Republican--a secure border starts with H.R. 2 and every component in it. I don't want to hear all of your excuses about what the Senate will take or not take. Otherwise, take your Ukraine funding and shove it.

I am sick and tired of this place doing the same old thing. Again, it does not matter who is in the chair. It does not matter who is in the Senate. It does not matter who is in the White House. We have an obligation as Members of this body to do our job.

As I said before, we are a massively divided country and a massively divided House of Representatives representing that divided country. There are people in this country who are suffering as a result. There are people in Texas who are taking it on the chin with tens of thousands of people pouring into our communities, hospital getting overrun, schools getting overrun, police losing their lives and getting overrun, cartels empowered, and fentanyl pouring into our communities. I am sick and tired of it.

I am glad that some of my colleagues have finally awakened in New York and elsewhere because, oh, you got 100,000 people suddenly. Guess what, we have had millions pouring through Texas. My friend from Arizona in the chair has had millions pouring through Arizona.

All we do is give lip service to it. We talk about securing the border. All of my colleagues are running around saying: Chip, come to me, tell me, what do you think the Democrats will actually take? That is what is wrong with this place. It is not about what they will take, it is about doing the right thing.

I know the people that I represent, I know the people that my friend from Tennessee represents, I know that the people that my friend from Arizona represents are sick and tired of words. Yet, all we really have, as Members of Congress, are words and our vote.

We use our vote the best way we know how to shape the direction of this country. Sometimes that is not easy. Sometimes you do have to compromise to figure out how to make it work in a legislative body. That is fine.

But the words we use matter. When the Speaker of the House, my friend

Mike Johnson, took the oath yesterday and then spoke to the American people from the rostrum, he spoke very eloquently about our motto ``In God We Trust.'' He spoke very eloquently about our constitutional principles and about what it means to be an American, about our founding.

We have an obligation as Members of this body to fight for the American people who send us here. There are 330 million Americans who rely upon the 435 of us to fight for them, to fight to defend and uphold all of the values that are represented by the flag hanging behind my friend from Arizona.

Whenever we come to the floor and whenever we give speeches--by the way, I am happy to yield to my friend from Tennessee if he would like any time--whenever we come to the floor and give speeches to an empty Chamber, you ask: What is the point?

The point is actually to try to highlight that we are supposed to use this Chamber to debate and be deliberative. We set out to change this place almost a year ago and we have made some pretty good strides, but we are far from it.

I would ask my friend from Tennessee and I would ask my friend who is in the chair: What are the great debates we have seen on the floor of the House? Where are the great engagements we have seen? Or is it rather that all we see are the rote procedures of coming down and standing at the mike and offering an amendment for 3 minutes and then 3 minutes and then back and then back and it is all set up, and the votes are all set up, and then we are done--or are we actually debating the future of the country?

That is what is at stake. We can talk about debt commissions, we can talk about whatever things that we might do in the future one day, but the country is hurting while we are sitting here in this Chamber not getting it done.

My main hope with having a new Speaker, my friend Mike Johnson, who is a man of faith, a family man, a father of five who gave a moving accounting of the loss of his father right before he became an elected representative--my hope is that the hand of God is at play with the current makeup of the leaders of this country in this body to have the courage to stand up and follow where the Lord is opening the door for us to go, if we will have the will to do it.

I don't pretend to have all the right answers or know every right play or move on a spending bill or a piece of legislation. What I do know is that we cannot continue to do what we have been doing. What I do know is that if we have any single responsibility as Members of Congress, it is to follow the Constitution of the United States, defend the rule of law, and secure the blessings of liberty as we are called upon to do in the Constitution of the United States.

We cannot do that if we continue the lie that we can print money and spend money we don't have to create programs that cannot be funded to drive up the cost of healthcare, to drive up the cost of housing, to drive up the cost of energy, to utterly fail to do our actual responsibilities to secure the Nation and to secure our communities. Those are the things that failed states do, and we are dangerously close to the cliff.

The question becomes whether Republicans are going to do what they said they will do. I, for one, am ready to be here all day, every day, until we get this right. I think I have seen my wife, son, and daughter maybe 5 or 6 days over the last 45 days. We have an obligation to do our job.

I have to say something to my colleagues, a couple of whom left today. They had some medical reasons, and that is all fine. But if I hear another one of my colleagues talk about needing to be home for Halloween, if I hear another one of my colleagues talking about, ``I need to fly out so I can get home to a fundraiser,'' or another one of my colleagues talking about needing to make it home, ``Oh, I have to see my newborn,'' all right, what do you think our men and women in uniform want to do when they are deployed for a year?

If you run for Congress, mean it. If you run for Congress, come up here and be willing to work. I am sick and tired of my friends and colleagues who run around campaigning on doing the hard work of shrinking the government, cutting spending, securing the border, making our defense strong, and then abandoning duty, walking out.

Fly in on Monday, fly out on Thursday at noon. What in the hell is that?

We should come in next week, after Speaker Johnson has been able to get his office set up, and when we are in here next Wednesday, we should not leave. We should stay here. We should pass the appropriations bills. We should pass responsible legislation to support our friend Israel, but pay for it. We should pass legislation, if necessary, as a cut stopgap measure to deal with the appropriations process, but we shouldn't leave town.

I cannot go home to the constituents I represent and look them in the eye and say we did our job when I have to meet another mother who lost her son or daughter to fentanyl, another spouse of a Border Patrol agent who lost their husband or wife in the line of duty, or the spouse of a police officer lost in the line of duty because we failed to do our job.

The American people expect us to do ours. All of this drama about the Speaker is utter nonsense, a footnote in history. All that matters is what we do as a body. For the 220 Republicans who united around Speaker Johnson and voted for him yesterday, that is only as good as uniting to actually carry out conservative policies that the American people sent you here to carry out. That is it. Otherwise, it is all a show.

Today, we did the opposite. We funded programs we campaign against. We spent more money that we don't have.

My question for my Republican colleagues is, are we going to do what we said we were going to do? It is a pretty simple question, and I hope my colleagues will go back and look at what they campaign on and then actually do it.

One final point I think merits observation. We have conflicts in Israel. Around this country, we have protests by a generation of Americans who don't have the first clue of what actual sacrifice looks like, don't have the first clue of what they are talking about with respect to what was wrought on the Israeli people by the barbaric acts of Hamas.

In this country, we are enormously blessed, but we have foolishly funded an education system that allows for individuals to spend their time advancing radical, hateful, anti-Semitic, uninformed, ignorant nonsense in the name of free speech.

Our friends in Israel were attacked violently and barbarically. The vast majority of Americans recognize that and proudly stand alongside Israel, but we have a problem in this country when there are people taking to the streets in support of a violent, terroristic organization, Hamas, in the false name of apartheid, in the false name of the supposed need for a two-state solution.

The fact of the matter is, our friends in Israel, Israelis, our Jewish friends, have been on that land for millennia. I will not blink in standing alongside Israel. It is in our national security interest to do so. It is also the right thing to do.

However, if my colleagues think that we are going to save this country through sheer force without recognizing the cultural rot eating away at our own children, whether it is through electronic devices or our own education system, then they are mistaken. We cannot continue to fund the destruction of our own country, yet that is what we do every single time we vote to perpetuate a broken education system and to fund the very programs that are funding the very rot that is destroying us from within.

Some of our greatest leaders have observed that we will not be defeated by a foreign enemy, but we will be defeated from within. Our great calling, in my opinion, as Members of Congress today, this generation of leaders, is to stand up in defense of our core values, proudly in defense of our Western civilization values, of our belief in God, our Constitution, our belief in limited government, our belief in the rule of law, and not shudder, not walk away in fear, but to proudly stand up in defense of that and to stop perpetuating the very cultural rot that undermines it. It is the only way that we will save this last great hope for mankind.

I am endlessly optimistic for the future of the country because of the people who love to live free, the Riley Gaineses of the world who dare to say no, the Scott Smiths of the world who dare to say no, the Chloe Coles of the world who dare to say no, the Mark Houcks of the world who dare to say no.

The strength of this country is with the American people. It always has been and always will be. Our calling is to make sure that this government, that this government that represents them, empowers them and protects their liberties and nothing more. That is our calling.

That is what I believe that our Speaker, Speaker Mike Johnson, will enable us to do because I know he believes in those principles, but the only way that Mike Johnson can be successful as Speaker is if 221 Republicans rally around him in defense of the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law and actually do what they campaigned on doing rather than coming here and doing the same old thing, advancing the status quo and everything in this town that has been destroying our country from within for as long as I have been alive.

It is time for Republicans to stand up. It is time for Republicans to actually defend the Constitution of the United States. It is time for Republicans to cut spending. It is time for Republicans to secure the border. It is time for Republicans to stand up in defense of our military. It is time for Republicans to do their damn job.

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