Our Republic is in Trouble

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Wisconsin for making those really important points.

I think the commentary by one of the Republican candidates for President, the former Governor of South Carolina, was a mistake.

As another candidate, the Governor of Florida, pointed out, anonymous individuals were key to the founding of the United States. The authors of the Federalist Papers and many of our key founding members wrote anonymously to put out ideas into the public domain.

To have the government think that they should step in to censor free speech because they think it might be something that is expedient to achieve other aims, aims which I share, about trying to ensure that we don't have vitriol being shared in the domain in social media and making sure that we do not pollute the minds of our young, we can achieve focusing on protecting our young and protecting the world against the scourge of these electronic devices and social media without trampling the very free speech that helped found this country.

It is a mistake to do that. It is a mistake to empower governments over the mind of man, as Founder Thomas Jefferson pointed out in saying that he would swear eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

The fact of the matter is the Republic is in trouble. This country is in trouble, and the time for excuses is over. No more excuses. No more excuses from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but, most importantly of all, no more excuses from my colleagues on this side of the aisle.

We have had a tumultuous year of sorts, but in the eyes of the American people who have been watching from afar, they have been wondering when this body, the people's House, will stand up in defense of the people who sent them here.

When are we going to do what we said we would do?

When are we going to stand athwart and stop the reckless spending that is bankrupting a country that can no longer issue debt without having Moody's downgrade our rating and without having a Treasury auction that is a borderline failure just last week because the people around the world no longer believe in American debt?

That is because we are now spending so much money and have so much debt. We have more debt than we have ever had in the history of mankind. We have more debt than we had at the end of World War II after we exercised wars in two theaters to free this world of tyranny.

If we have to exercise our defense against foreign enemies today and ratchet up more spending to defend not just our country but to defend the very freedoms under which we operate, we don't have the resources to do it.

We don't have the supply chains to do it because we are sitting around here twiddling and talking about setting up offices of equity. That is what we are doing.

My colleagues on this side of the aisle utterly refuse to actually do what they say they are going to do. They are going to campaign against critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion and campaign against Mayorkas and campaign against open borders.

What do they do? They come into this Chamber and vote down amendment after amendment to cut spending and stop funding the very bureaucrats who are undermining the freedom of this country.

We have an administration that is at war with the people of the United States, nothing less. The current administration is undermining the prosperity of the American people, and they are doing it on a daily basis.

The current administration, the Biden administration, is undermining our ability to defend ourselves under the Second Amendment. They are undermining our ability to carry out our free speech rights and First Amendment rights. They are undermining our ability to live free from crime and free from dangerous cartels and dangerous gangs flooding across the southern border of the United States.

Every single day, another Texan dies from fentanyl poisoning. Every single day, another Texan dies. Last week, two Hispanic Texans died tragically in a car accident when we had an illegal immigrant moving people across our border into Texas. We had somebody who was human smuggling and who was speeding kill these two American citizens.

When is this going to stop? When are my Republican colleagues going to put up or shut up?

We have bills impeaching Alejandro Mayorkas. They go down. We have bills trying to cut spending, and we have games being played by appropriators. Right here, sitting in the Rules Committee the night before last, I had appropriators looking at me and talking about the side deals that were cut to keep spending money to set up funds in slush funds. That is the way this town operates--slush funds, backroom deals, and continuing to spend money we don't have.

I am sick and tired of it. I didn't come here for second place. I didn't come here for more excuses. I didn't come here to have the Speaker of the House assume the position and, in 17 days, pass a continuing resolution off the floor of this House through suspension of the rules with $400 billion, including an extension of the farm bill that doesn't do anything about the Chinese Communist Party's ownership of our lands. It doesn't do anything to protect small ag and protect small ranchers from Big Ag and all the big corporate ventures getting rich based on the policies from this body.

When is it going to be enough?

Is $34 trillion of debt not enough? Is $2 trillion in deficits not enough?

When is another American dying from fentanyl or from cartels or terrorists coming across our southern border not enough?

Are babies being put in ovens in Israel not enough?

We had the Senate yesterday who chose expansion of the Internal Revenue Service over standing with Israel, and what are my Republican colleagues doing? They are all too happy to have this vote go down today and get on their airplanes and go home for turkey at Thanksgiving.

Why aren't we putting another bill on the floor of the House right now and sending it over to the Senate to shove it down their throats, and say we, as Republicans, stand for cutting spending; we, as Republicans, stand with Israel; we, as Republicans, stand for securing the border of the United States?

No. Let's just go back and raise some money. We can do more fundraisers, so we can then try to get elected so we can come back here and offer more excuses for why we don't get the job done.

Do you know what the excuse will be next year? Oh, we won the House and we won the Senate, if we can even do that, but we don't have 60 in the Senate ship. We can't do what we want to do because we don't have 60 votes in the Senate.

I have heard nothing but excuses for the 20 years that I have either been a staffer in this town, back in Texas watching it closely, or now back as a Member. I have heard nothing but excuses. I have heard nothing but empty promises.

The time for those excuses is over. Today, we took down a rule, yes, because it was a closed rule. We had a closed rule which means you can't amend it. The Rules Committee put forward a bill for Iran to go ``freeze'' the $6 billion sitting in Qatar through a closed rule. We were not allowed to amend it. Such is the way things operate in the people's House if we don't police it every single day.

We changed things in January. We have been opening the place up, but that was a reversion right back to the mean. You can't amend it, little boy. You are just a backbencher.

You know what? Yes, we will. We will force amendments because we had a better approach than a simple freezing of the $6 billion.

Do you know what we wanted to do? We wanted to tell Iran no more. We are going to force the administration to stop issuing waivers to sanctions against Iran so we can stop the enrichment of Iran at the expense of Israel and at the expense of our own national security.

Just yesterday another $10 billion of waivers for Iran to sell electricity to Iraq. We are enriching Iran to be at war with us. We are enriching Iran to fund the killing of Jews in Israel. Yet, Republicans just whistle by, saying, let's just introduce a little bill. Let's just do $6 billion of freezing these assets in Qatar.

Why don't you stop the actual blood money? Why don't you actually stand up and stop Iran from making billions of dollars giving oil to China?

We talk a big game about Ukraine. We wear little blue and yellow pins and say look at us. Look at how compassionate we are to help people. What the hell are we actually doing?

Blank checks go to Ukraine to go into the pockets of oligarchs, massive corruption, all getting documented by the day.

We send a bill over to the Senate; Democrats kill it because they would rather side with the IRS than Israel. We can't even move a bill to hip check the Iranians who want to kill us and exterminate the Jews in Israel.

They don't hide behind it. They don't shy away from it. They openly say it, and here we are.

I am in an empty Chamber because everybody wants to go home and have their turkey and we haven't done anything.

Literally, the House Republican majority, what we have accomplished this year is the following: We have increased the debt of the United States $4 to $6 trillion. We don't actually know the amount because we set a date to January of 2025 with skyrocketing interest rates, so it is going to be a $4 to $6 trillion increase in your debt. Check.

What else have we done?

We passed two continuing resolutions of the Nancy Pelosi spending bills and priorities, something to the tune of probably about $6 or $700 billion worth of spending when you add the farm bill into it.

That is what we have done. That is what the Republican majority has done.

When are we going to act like a Republican majority and start fighting?

When are we going to do anything to truly cut spending instead of playing games?

Yes, we passed seven appropriations bills. Yes, we have adopted some cuts, and I am proud of those cuts. Yes, we have adopted some strong policies in the NDAA and passing H.R. 2, the border security bill, but all of that is a tree falling in the forest if we are unwilling to lock arms and fight.

It does you no good to get all your ammunition ready and get all prettied up and get in the boats and when you get to the beaches at Normandy, say, sorry. I don't think we can climb the cliffs because now is not the right time.

When is the right time?

Nobody is just going to stand up one day and say, guess what, boys? It is June 6. It is time to get up and fight.

Right now all I am hearing is excuses. All I am hearing are reasons why we can't do what we campaigned on doing.

I have heard that we can't have a shutdown. Okay. Then just take your voting card, walk over to the other side of the aisle, and say, thank you, sir, may I have another? That is what we are doing.

There is going to be a moment where we are going to say, we are sorry. You don't get to use taxpayer dollars and, more importantly, borrowed money to continue to stick it to the American people every day with open borders, dangerous communities, skyrocketing interest rates, skyrocketing inflation, an inability to educate your children without them being indoctrinated, an inability to have a job without being told you have to get a vaccine, an inability to have your business open during a pandemic because a bunch of tyrants shut your livelihood down and now we do nothing about it, an inability to have a national defense that isn't woke and focused on, you know, diversity, equity, inclusion, and transgender surgeries and abortion tourism rather than actually killing people and blowing things up, which is what the military is supposed to be trained to do.

What in the hell are we doing in this Chamber?

We talk about these leaders of the law that are put up on the walls around the Chamber, including Moses, and we are walking away from Moses and the people of Israel by not standing up and defending Israel by ensuring that we force the Senate to do their job.

I would have shoved down the throats of the United States Senate a funding bill that included Israel and dared Chuck Schumer to shut the government down and go home and eat turkey. Instead, we walk away with another continuing resolution, Mr. Speaker. We will fight in January.

It is enough. Enough of continuing to do the same old, which is all we are doing. We give tours over at Arlington National Cemetery. When you fly into Washington, D.C.--as one of my friends, the Governor of Florida, Governor DeSantis, likes to point out as a man who wore the uniform, as a man who served his country, when he flies into Washington Reagan, DCA, and you fly along the Potomac and you look to your left, he says in stories: You see the monuments. You see the Washington Monument. You see the Lincoln Memorial. You see the Jefferson Memorial. You see this Capitol Building sitting up on the hill as a symbol for freedom, and what a Republic looks like for the world to understand and see.

Then on your right, when you are flying down that river, you see a whole bunch of other monuments. They are a lot smaller, and they are little stones of marble that are cut out to represent all of those who died so that we could be here, who died so that we could live free, who died so we could stand under that flag, and we are pissing it away. We are giving it away.

All that they fought for, all of those freedoms, we are giving it away. Why?

Because we are too cowardly to stand up and do our job. Are you freaking kidding me?

Oh, we can't have a shutdown heading into Thanksgiving. What will they say or do?

How about we stand up and fight and go to the American people and tell them that we believe we should be doing what they sent us here to do--limiting spending, securing the border of the United States, standing with Israel, but paying for this stuff as we go so our kids and our grandkids don't inherit a bankrupted country and have to wonder what freedom used to look like while they are speaking Mandarin, but that is what we are going to get.

We went through an entire month of drama about a Speaker, and we just did the same damn thing we have been doing. The people I represent are sick and tired of it. People ask why I get so animated on the floor. It is because somebody has to stand up for the people whose voices want to be heard in this town.

If I see another bill, another measure, another amendment, another office focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, focused on all of these nonsensical programs that we can't even afford, much less if they are good for the United States of America, rather than figuring out how to have bullets and planes and boats to stand up and defend this country and defend freedom, rather than standing up and securing our border and giving the Border Patrol what they need, rather than making them show up to the border every day outmanned, outgunned, and with a mission to usher people into the United States falsely under the name of compassion, using false interpretations of the law, expansive uses of asylum and parole, to allow terrorists and criminals to come into the United States and endanger the American people-- The police officer in Austin, Texas, that I went to the vigil for on Sunday night, he was killed by somebody on the terrorist watch list.

What in the hell is wrong with this country?

Are we not sovereign? Do we not believe that we should secure this country for the people of the United States?

If this body were serious, we wouldn't leave town without ensuring that we are secure. We would not leave town without forcing Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden to the table because Republicans control this Chamber or, at least, they say they are Republicans.

For the life of me, I do not understand how you can go to the trouble of campaigning, raising money, going to events, talking to people, coming to this town, as a Member of a party who allegedly stands for something, allegedly stands for reducing spending, allegedly stands for eliminating debt, securing the border, strong military, ending the wokeness that is killing and corrupting our schools and our kids, and then do nothing about it.

Mr. Speaker, I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing, one thing, that I can go campaign on and say we did.

Anybody sitting in the complex, if you want to come down to the floor and come explain to me one material, meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done besides saying, oh, it is not as bad as the Democrats.

That reminds me of the line from ``Patton,'' when he said: You won't have to say, well, I was shoveling crap in Louisiana. That is what we are doing. No offense to my friends from Louisiana. My mom grew up in Louisiana.

I don't understand how we can watch a world building up to take us out--China, Iran, places all around the world--who want to undermine the United States of America and we are doing nothing about it.

We are not moving manufacturing capacity to the Western Hemisphere and to our own country.

We are not eliminating the debt problem that is crippling our ability to finance our own existence, finance freedom, and ensure that the dollar remains the currency of the world.

We are doing nothing to secure our own border and establish our own sovereignty and defend ourselves from dangerous fentanyl pouring into our communities.

We are doing nothing to ensure that our kids are educated to believe in this country, believe in freedom, believe in Western civilization, believe in God.

We have walked away from every single principle that made this country great, all in the name of being politically correct and woke. It is a damn shame for all of the people who have stood up and fought to make this country great--to defend its principles, defend our freedom, to defend limited government, to defend the principles in the Constitution, to defend the bill of rights.

What good are they if we are going to throw them all away? We are doing it on a daily basis.

Just today, we were going to be told it was sufficient to freeze $6 billion for Iran, give a press statement, and say, look at us, when that would do nothing to stop what Iran is actually doing every single day to fund Hamas, to fund Hezbollah, to undermine Israel's security and, therefore, undermine our security, all with open public pledges to want to take us out.

You think that these protests around this country on college campuses or on the streets of New York are an accident?

Are you not looking around? Are your eyes not open?

We are going to crumble under our own weight in the very name of the liberties that we say we want to protect. We are not protecting them. We are going to crumble under them because we are going to be blind to the enemies coming across our border.

It is happening in real time, and we know it. We are having to force every bit of information we can get out of the administration, but there are known terrorists, known terrorist sympathizers who are coming across our border. They are looking at us and laughing. They are seeing our border, and they know they can exploit it.

We are worried about FISA? I had some of my colleagues preaching about the need for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to go stop our foreign enemies. Okay, I will spot you. I think we need to make sure we have the tools so long as they are protecting American civil liberties. However, you are worried about FISA when our border is wide open?

You can waltz across the Rio Grande, look at the Border Patrol and say, hi, I am here, and get released into the United States, and we don't do anything about it. That is not a sovereign nation. That is not a free nation. You are not free if you are not secure. You are not free if your border is open and exposed to terrorists. You are not free if you are spending money you don't have to indebt your children and grandchildren to a future where you are no longer able to fund freedom.

How are we going to fund the national defense with a dollar that is not worth anything?

Has anybody seen the absolute devastation in countries with skyrocketing inflation that goes off the charts? Zimbabwe or other countries that have had this over the years. That is where we are headed.

We are not free if we are not sovereign. We are not free without secure borders. We are not free if our military is not strong and not woke. We are not free if we are not able to exercise our First Amendment rights without being censored, which is happening every single day.

How are you free if you lost your job because you didn't want to take an experimental vaccine that had zero to precious little testing, depending on who you listen to? Now with massive amounts of evidence demonstrating vaccine-oriented injuries, somehow you weren't free to be able to go exercise your rights as a human to go carry out your livelihood so you could take care of your family.

You are not free. That is not a free country.

What have we done? How many hearings have we had about COVID tyranny? A couple? We kind of brushed it aside. What have we done? Have we done anything to hold Anthony Fauci accountable? Have we done anything at all to uncover how a country like this could shut down the largest economy in the history of the world, shut down people's abilities to live their lives, force people to take vaccines, force people to walk around with masks on their face or get fined on the very floor of the House of Representatives? Have we done any kind of expose for the American people about how that should never happen again? No.

The American people didn't send us here for this. They didn't. They didn't send us here to keep doing the same thing. Nobody runs for Congress to keep doing the same thing that they think is wrong. People wonder, they say, Chip, you are criticizing Congress, you must not like Congress very much.

Congress polls at like 17 percent, so I feel like if I am against Congress, I am with 83 percent of the American people, and I am right.

Every time I go back to Texas, and I am starting to think, gosh, man, are you crazy? You are up here, you are beating your head against the wall; you are talking to people, and they go, Chip, you are crazy. We can't get that done. We can't force the Senate to do that. You are living in a--no, we have got to win the Presidency. We have got to win more seats in the House. We have got to do better in the Senate.

I have been hearing that my whole life, and we have never done anything, whether we had 56 Members in the Senate or 47; whether we had a majority with 260 or whether we have got our thin majority now; whether we had someone in the White House or not.

With all due respect to former President Trump, they sure as hell didn't get border security done when we had the White House and the House and the Senate. Nothing. Talked a big game about building a wall and having Mexico pay for it. Ain't no wall, and Mexico didn't pay for it, and we didn't pass any border security.

We had Goodlatte 1 and Goodlatte 2. Nobody in America knows what the hell those are. What they know is, our border is wide open.

This year we actually passed an excellent border security bill. Everyone in Washington wants us to walk away from that and do something, Chip, you can't get that done in the Senate. You will never get Joe Biden to sign that. Well, with that self-fulfilling prophecy, you are correct. With that self-fulfilling prophecy, you are right.

If, instead, you look at Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer and say, you are not going to get a damned thing at all until we secure the border of the United States properly and we stop letting people flood into the United States and endanger us--because, I don't know, gee, let me think, that is our job.

When we swear an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States, that includes the laws that say that we must secure the border. I don't know a single Hispanic Texan, a single Brown person in Texas that I talk to who is down there saying, oh, please, more open borders. Oh, please, more fentanyl. Oh, please, more cartels.

We have got to actually do something about it. When we come back from Thanksgiving, I am hearing lots of promises about what we will do. Well, let me just lay down a marker and lay down a gauntlet here, we better damn well do it. It is time. It is time to use the full power of the majority of the House of Representatives to ensure that the President of the United States and the Senate Democrat majority understands that the era of excuses is over and that we are going to reclaim the mantle for Americans of having a secure and sovereign nation with a secure border, with a strong military, and stop bankrupting the future for our kids and grandkids because that is actually our duty under the Constitution.

Instead of promising things we can't deliver, instead of creating programs that undermine American effectiveness and American prosperity, instead of continuing to bow down to world authorities to take away our sovereignty at the United Nations or the World Health Organization, instead of empowering our enemies like Iran and China, we have a duty, a responsibility under the Constitution, and standing before that flag to actually defend the United States of America.

That is what I want to hear that we are going to be doing when we return on Tuesday, November 28. It happens to be my mom's birthday. Happy birthday, Mom. We are going to fight for a free America when we come back from Thanksgiving. That is what I want to hear. That is what I want this Republican majority to stand up and do.

I want to see 220 Republicans standing on the steps of this building pledging to lay it all on the line. I am tired of speeches. Don't give me your crap about putting Christmas wreaths walking around Arlington National Cemetery or in the national cemeteries across America, don't give me your speeches on Veterans Day, your speeches on Memorial Day. Why don't we put everything we have got, all of our political lives, on the line and say we are going to stand up for this country?

Who cares if you lose your election? Why does it matter if you are here if you don't do something? We don't have anything to risk. Mean tweets? Who cares? Put it all on the line. Fight for the country and maybe, just maybe, the American people will look at that and reward you for it; but who cares?

We came here to do what is right. No one believes spending money we don't have and indebting our kids and grandkids is right. Nobody.

Nobody believes, no rational person, no sane person believes that an open border with terrorists and cartel members and fentanyl pouring across it is right.

Nobody believes that Hamas going across a border into Israel and putting a baby in an oven while people are raping that baby's mother is right.

Nobody can possibly believe that, and I want to be perfectly clear about this: If you do, you have no business being in the United States of America protesting against us standing up in defense against that.

Moral clarity matters. Moral clarity in the face of evil matters. I am sympathetic to wanting to stand up against Putin and the evils and the horrors against the people of Ukraine. I just want a mission to know how it is going to be accomplished and how the money is being used. And I am very sympathetic to what happened on October 7 to our friends in Israel. We should help them. I was fine with helping Ukraine until I started learning about all the corruption and the improper use of the money.

However, we have got to pay for it. We have got to actually have sacrifice. You can't write blank checks because then there is no moral authority behind the blank check. If you are the world's ATM, all you are doing is perpetuating the very violence and the wars without sacrifice. That is the whole point.

When I think back about that police officer last week, he was alive on Friday, and on Saturday he was not. His family--his wife, his stepkids--they now don't have their husband, their father. He went into a house to go protect two people. His partner got shot, sent to the hospital. He was fighting for his life all week.

Later that day, a police officer, a woman, committed suicide in the same department in Austin, Texas.

Later that night or the next morning a recently retired police officer in that same department died in a tragic car accident.

In a matter of 48 hours, the Austin Police Department lost two of their own, one of their recent own, and one was in the hospital fighting for his life. It was a rough 48 hours.

These are strong men and women. They are resilient. They will stay on watch, but it makes me think about what are they doing? They are putting their lives on the line, standing on that thin blue line to protect us in the face of disparaging remarks about how they are evil, about how they are biased, defunding by the Austin City Council of $150 million which, by the way, is a part of the mental health issues, a part of the danger that some of these guys face, a part of the danger that we send these guys into dangerous situations, into a house, and they are questioning can they shoot, can they act.

We are doing that to them. We are. The leaders of this country are doing that to them. They go out, they defend us. They get in a car. They walk and they put their bodies in front of gangs, between gangs and us. They fight drug lords. They stand up against the most violent and insidious evil, and we are back here questioning their plays. We are Monday-morning quarterbacking everything they do, so of course they have got issues, of course it is more dangerous for them.

What are we doing about it? What? What are we doing about it? That cop still has to get in the car today. The cop still has to walk the street today. What are we doing to defend them, to protect them?

What are we doing for our men and women in uniform who are wondering what they are doing when they have to sit in sessions about social engineering and wokeness training? They are doing it. I have exposed it, put it out on social media, all of the different classes, all of the stuff they have to go through.

All they want to do is get trained on how to jump out of helicopters and shoot guns and fly planes and drive boats and figure out how to defend the United States of America which, by the way, is its mission.

You want to know why recruiting levels are in the toilet? It is because we are turning it into a social engineering experiment.

When we set out in January to change the House of Representatives, we set out to make this place get back to what we would call regular order. We have had some successes and some monumental failures in doing that. We have had a brief spell where we had something sort of close to resembling open amendments on the floor. We have had some increases in some of the structured rules. That means amendments that we kind of approve certain ones, not others. We go to the Rules Committee, we have a debate about it and sort of get some debate. We have had seven appropriations bills pass off the floor. We have had another, I don't know, three or four get debated fully. We will see if we can get all 12 done.

However, we are still miles away from the deliberative engagement about ideas and about how we are going to carry the country forward that the Founders envisioned. We are miles away from being able to have a process by which people can believe that the House of Representatives is actually representing them. The election certificate for every Member of Congress is just as good as the Speaker or any chairman or any member of the Appropriations Committee or Rules Committee, but for too long that is not how this place has operated. It hasn't, and we saw that unfold this week.

The continuing resolution that was brought forward yesterday suspended the rules, so there was no real debate, there were no amendments. It was brought to the floor. It had a vote, and it was kicked off the floor and sent to the Senate by suspension of the rules. A total of 209 Democrats voted for it, 2 Democrats voted against it. A total 127 Republicans voted for it, 93 Republicans voted against it.

For my constituents back home, you might look at that math and say that it doesn't sound like a very good bill. You would be correct. You would be right.

It is a bill that continues the Pelosi funding levels that I would point out last year. Then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy called this bill ``a slap in the face.''

All of my Republican colleagues who were in this Chamber today, except for two, voted against it, calling it what it was: a bloated omnibus spending bill passed right before Christmas.

What we did on October 1 was continue that for 45 days and spend an additional $16 billion for disaster FEMA funding--unpaid for.

What we did yesterday, which the Senate will presumably take up and pass, is continue it for another 60ish days until January 19 and another 75ish days until early February.

Again, we are talking about $500 billion or $600 billion that we passed with these continuing resolutions, funding government at levels that Nancy Pelosi set and policies Nancy Pelosi put in place.

This bill yesterday, House Progressive Caucus Chair Jayapal called maintaining the spending levels ``a very big win.'' I guess that would be, from a Democrat's standpoint.

Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, Congresswoman Tlaib, and Congresswoman Omar all voted for this bill. Mr. Speaker, 93 Republicans voted against this bill.

Another point about this omnibus spending bill that we are continuing, do you know how it was passed last December? The floor staff probably remembers. It was passed with 226 of the House of Representatives not even here. Mr. Speaker, 226 of the House of Representatives voted by proxy last December to pass $1.7 trillion of disastrous funding to continue to advance the bureaucracy that is at war with the American people, and we Republicans are voting to continue it.

That is what a continuing resolution is. We are voting to perpetuate what I would say was an unconstitutional bill.

Litigation is currently underway in Texas v. Department of Justice. I filed an amicus brief in that, saying it was unconstitutional.

You are supposed to have a quorum. How can you have a quorum if 226, a majority of the body, are literally not even here? That is the whole definition of quorum.

We have what I believe, regardless of what the court ultimately says because the court doesn't like to stick its nose in the business of the House--it should in this case because it is plain, black letter I would say English, but it is really Latin, what a quorum is.

It is, nevertheless, unconstitutional. You didn't have 226 people; 226 weren't even here. They voted by proxy.

You have an omnibus spending bill that is, in my opinion, unconstitutional that we have been operating under since last December. Now, we are perpetuating an unconstitutional bill by voting for a continuing resolution of unconstitutional funding to fund the government at war with the American people at levels that are indebting our kids and grandkids.

Congratu-friggin-lations. Well done, us. We will see what happens. That litigation is currently underway. I think it is going to go before a district judge sometime here in December.

My friends here on the floor and in the Parliamentarian's Office, we might have a fun December if the court makes a decision that that omnibus bill is unconstitutional. We will see what happens then.

Nobody is under the delusion that it isn't a difficult environment in this current day and age in Washington to get things done. Nobody here is saying that we need to get everything we want. Nobody is here saying that we need to change this town overnight or in a day.

I know what I am saying, which is we are never going to change this town meaningfully if we don't stand up and fight to change it. It is just not possible. You have to take risks.

You can't just sit back while Moody's downgrades the U.S. Federal debt outlook to negative and a Treasury auction goes south and just shrug your shoulders and say, sorry, too hard to do. We don't want to have a shutdown over Thanksgiving; they might say mean things about us. Oh, no. Mean things.

They say, Chip, you don't understand. The truth is, what that means is that, by November 30, our troops won't get paid.

I am sensitive to that. There are, of course, solutions and alternatives to that. You can offer legislation to fund the troops. Does Chuck Schumer not want to fund the troops? You can offer legislation to fund Border Patrol. Does Chuck Schumer not want to fund Border Patrol? Call his bluff, and if he won't do it, let the American people decide.

No, Chip. We don't have the media. Ronald Reagan didn't have the media either. You can't sit back and watch your country burn, complain about it burning, and then come here and provide the fuel for the fire. That is what we are doing.

The national debt hit $33 trillion. It is now approaching $34 trillion. It has grown by $2.2 trillion since President Biden signed the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

We come up with these cute names. The Fiscal Responsibility Act--who can oppose that? $2.2 trillion later, I am not sure exactly what was responsible about the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

We head into Thanksgiving. Every, I think, Wednesday before Thanksgiving, The Wall Street Journal, in their editorial section, reprints an editorial that was written decades ago, probably in the fifties. I think it is called something like ``The Desolate Wilderness.'' It talks about the early American settlers, the Pilgrims, if you will, coming to the United States and going into the desolate wilderness.

They knew the dangers. Some dangers that they didn't know about, they learned about. Obviously, the history you know is replete with knowing and dealing with disease and the difficulty of traversing the Atlantic in the boats coming here, dealing with the engagement with the natives here in North America.

We have for too long now been shunning the bravery and courage of those founding settlers who came to this country and gave us the chance to have this, the greatest hope the world has ever known, the freest and greatest country and one for which I will never apologize.

We are now an apologetic generation, not a prosperous and genius one. Perhaps we should get back to being genius and engaging in prosperity and advancing the world rather than retreating in a mist of apology. All of those people came here courageously to settle that desolate wilderness, and all of those who died and bled did so to preserve and protect the values and freedoms that this country not just represents but embodies.

The soul of our country is not blood. The soul of this country is freedom. If the freedom that this country represents is no longer able to be lived, then the country is dead.

My goal in this brief spell on this planet--and it is brief--is to try to give some honor and glory to the God who created this Earth and gave me life, and to stand up for the freedom of my children to do the same.

Living free is more important than a constitution or a country. Living free is why we set up this country. If we can't unite, at least as Republicans, to defend freedom for our kids and our grandkids, then the country is, indeed, not going to survive.

If instead we go into Thanksgiving and head into Christmas thankful for the world that God gave us, uplifted by the knowledge that Jesus Christ died on the cross so that we could have eternal life, uplifted by what we can accomplish when we come together and live in prosperity and live in freedom, then we can again be the shining city on the hill and be the greatest country in the history of the Earth. We can drag this world forward and defend freedom for ourselves and establish stability and prosperity for not just us but around the world because everyone knows what we stand for.

We have to reclaim the banner that the world looks to to know what the rule of law means, to know what living under freedom means. That is our calling. That is why we are here.

We are not here for second place. We are not here for apologies. We are not here for excuses. We owe it to the poorest among us who look to this body to secure the blessings of liberty as the Constitution outlined.

The Constitution doesn't promise you an outcome. It doesn't promise you a certain way of life. It doesn't promise you prosperity. It gives you the freedoms and the structures or the honors, I should say, the freedoms and the structures in place so that you can prosper and live free--nothing more, nothing less. When we promise more, we are giving people less.

Let us head into the holiday season thankful that we still live in the greatest country in the history of the world but resolved to protect it, save it, advance it under the principles that made it great, not under the false accusations for which we should somehow crawl into the corner and apologize rather than recognizing that through the turmoil, through the mistakes, through the sins, we have thrived and stood tall to pursue righteousness as a country.

I am, indeed, thankful as a cancer survivor, as a father, as a husband. I am thankful to live in the greatest district in the greatest State in the greatest country in the history of the world. I am proud of it. I am unapologetic for it.

I am unapologetic for our Nation's founding. I am unapologetic for our Nation's advancements. I am unapologetic for the prosperity it has produced. I am unapologetic for the blood that we have shed around the world, not for tyranny, not for world domination, but for freedom. I will never apologize for that.

I will hold my colleagues on both sides of the aisle accountable-- including myself--for what we promise to do when we take the oath, when we campaign, when we come here, when we give speeches, because it is our duty to protect this country for our kids and our grandkids.

We are called in 2 Timothy to finish the race. I am going to leave it all on the field, I can tell you that, for my kids. Every time my son or my daughter calls me and says, Daddy, when are you coming home--we have been here for 10 straight weeks. We were here for 10 out of 12 weeks before the August break. It has been a long run. It has been a run that, as I just articulated, has not produced all the things that I would like to produce, but it has produced an observation for the American people that we are not going to be deterred in continuing to fight for what is right and to change this institution to restore it to the people's House.

I am not going to fly home, look at my kids and say, well, I tried. I am going fly back home, and I am going to tell my kids, we are just beginning. We are just starting. When I am away from you, just like our men and women in uniform are away from their kids when they are serving overseas, fathers who went away throughout World War II--my father didn't know his father until my father was 3 years old. My grandfather was in the Pacific. All my colleagues say, oh, I have got to get home. I have got to get home for the fundraiser. I have got to get home for the football game. We have a job to do. And when I go home and I look at my kids, I am going to tell them that the reason I come here is for them, and they know that.

My friend Pat Fallon, who was thinking about not running for reelection--a Congressman from Texas in the district where my parents used to live, they now live in my district--Pat wasn't going to run for reelection. He was going to go back and run for State senate so he could be closer to his family and be in the State of Texas.

His son, according to Pat, convinced him not to do that. Pat's father was very proud of him for running for Congress before his father passed away a couple years ago. His son said, Dad, you are up there trying to do something bigger, and when you are away from here, we miss you, but we know why you are doing it.

To all of our families, to all of our wives, to all of our husbands, to all of our children, to all the staff who have been here for 10 straight weeks, I thank you. I mean that. As a former staffer I know it is not easy, especially if you're having to recite a lot of names. Thank you for your work.

To the parents of staff like Lynne Dayer, Jordan's mom, hi, the staff is always here. They are always working hard. They always serve us respectfully, regardless of what our views are, and I appreciate it. I appreciate my staff who work night and day tirelessly trying to defend this country just as much as we do.

It is an honor to serve in this House, but we owe the courtesy to the people that we represent to honor them by fighting for them.

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