The American Dream

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, we are sitting here on the precipice of entering December, a month in which those of us who profess the Christian faith and belief in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, celebrate his birth into this world to give the world, and each and every one of us in it, hope for eternal life and eternal salvation.

We are immeasurably blessed to live in a country where we can carry out our faith and exercise our beliefs.

It is critically important that we just came out of the weekend of Thanksgiving. At Thanksgiving, of course, we are thankful to live in a country in which we have In God We Trust emblazoned over the dais on which the Speaker sits in front of the American flag.

The Wall Street Journal eloquently prints every Wednesday before Thanksgiving ``The Desolate Wilderness'' editorial that has run in that paper for--I don't know--probably some 60 years.

It eloquently lays out all of the hardships that faced those Europeans who came to the North American Continent, and what it was like, and what they experienced going out into the desolate wilderness, and what that meant for mankind throughout the world.

I am always struck at how often we, as Americans in this generation and in this day and age, are too often either actually apologetic or forced to be apologetic or taught to be apologetic for being American, for our existence as Americans because of both actual and, frankly, perceived or taught past wrongs.

I started this talking about my Christian faith. My colleagues and constituents and people across this country who share that faith know that we are taught in Romans that we all fall short of the glory of God for we are all sinners.

That is inherently true. It is true in the United States. It is true in Great Britain. It is true in Russia and China and throughout the world. We are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God.

The thing that is unique about this country is that we have set up a system that is designed to protect us against the worst impulses of man in terms of the centralization of power in the hands of a few to be used tyrannically against the many.

That is the great gift that we have inherited from our forefathers who bled, died, and fought so that we could live here and live free, so that we could exercise our conscience, so that we could live according to the dictates of our conscience.

That is why I am thankful. That is what I was thankful for over Thanksgiving because that is what it is supposed to be about.

It is not just about the football game. It is not just about the turkey. It is not just about Friendsgiving or whatever people talk about these days.

It is a specific holiday about our thankfulness as Americans and why that is so critically important to the ethos of being an American because you aren't an American simply because of DNA or blood.

You are an American because of the idea that is embodied in this Chamber, in the people's House. It is for that reason that I came to the House floor on the Thursday before we adjourned for Thanksgiving week, after this body had passed by a suspension of the rules--that is, without the normal debate process, without the regular order that was such a central part of the debates last year in this body--we passed through suspension of the rules some $400 billion to $500 billion of additional spending up and through late January and early February of 2024.

I found that then, and I continue to find it to be repulsive, that that is how we would conduct business, that that is how we would carry out the business of the people's House.

I made clear then that I thought that it was destructive and that it was carrying on the continued policies of the previous regime passed last December over the loud objections of my colleagues on this side of the aisle to pass a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill chock full of leftist priorities that are destroying the American Dream--nothing short of that.

A Wall Street Journal poll from this month found that only 36 percent of voters said the American Dream still holds true.

The American Dream is dying because Americans' government is failing them. It is actively working against them, and our people feel it.

Our country, our society, our culture, our people, the people we represent, are in deep despair. $11,400. According to ``CBS News,'' the typical American household must spend an additional $11,434 annually just to maintain the same standard of living they enjoyed in January of 2021.

That is a problem. The average American family in this country is hurting. I watched the Democrat White House press secretary walk up to the microphone and just dismiss it and just pretend that the average American family is totally fine and can walk right out and go buy their Thanksgiving dinner, and there is no harm, no foul. They are all good. The Biden administration policies and the Democrat policies, they are having no negative effect. Ignore these numbers. Ignore the cost of goods and buying food. Ignore the cost of housing. Ignore the cost of car ownership. That is what this administration wants the American people to do.

Our constituents are literally being priced out of the American Dream of owning a home. My staff, making decent money relative to some people in the world, come to me and say, I don't know how to buy a house. I don't know how I can possibly ever buy a house, certainly not in the Nation's Capitol.

Housing prices have nearly doubled since 2010. In the second quarter of 2023, the median home price was $416,100. In 2010, it was $219,500.

In May of 2023, median mortgage payments hit an all-time high of $2,165 a month. According to The Wall Street Journal, the buyer of a typical home faces a monthly principal and interest payment of nearly $2,200, more than double the level of early 2021. Goldman Sachs' Housing Affordability Index hit a new record low in August.

That is just homes. What about cars, kind of the second biggest expense? Americans can't even afford to purchase a car because of the efforts of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and this administration to ban the internal combustion engine in pursuit of unicorn energy policies that are going to do nothing to actually reduce CO2, and they are driving the American people into bankruptcy with an inability to afford an automobile to go about their lives and their jobs.

A new car costs $50,000, nearly double the cost just 10 years ago. Electric vehicles are piling up on the lots of dealers across this country because the American people know they can't work for them. They can't afford them. They can't stop to charge like the Secretary of Energy did when she showed up and made a pregnant woman and her family get out of the way for a photo op while she charged her EV driving across the country.

That is the truth. The truth of this administration and my Democratic colleagues is they are perfectly content, as they have admitted to me in the Rules Committee and on this floor, to drive the American family into bankruptcy so they can pursue climate change reform.

That is absolutely a dereliction of duty on the part of the leadership of this country. When we have 250 coal-fired plants in this country and China has 1,100, and they are building two a week and we are building none, and we think we are going to dent CO2 by forcing American families into expensive electric vehicles, the batteries for which are produced by our enemies in China with elements that are mined by child labor across the world, that is what this Democratic Party stands for.

They are bankrupting American families, empowering our enemies, undermining our national security, and exploiting child labor, all in pursuit of things cooked up by radical leftists and universities, all enriching, by the way, through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act massive billion-dollar corporations with subsidies from taxpayers. That is the truth.

We are destroying the American Dream through the policies specifically chosen by my Democratic colleagues in the White House, in this body, and in the Senate.

This administration's EPA has issued a rule to make two-thirds of new vehicles electric by 2032. That is in a mere 8 years.

This body didn't vote on that. The administration could do it by fiat. That is not how this is supposed to work.

That was my point in the opening of this speech. This country is designed to protect against power resting in the hands of a few being exploited against the many.

There are 330 million people in this country whose lives are getting decimated and destroyed while this administration tyrannically uses its power in the bureaucratic and executive branch to level the American Dream.

The average EV costs $16,000 more than an internal combustion engine equivalent.

When I asked my colleagues on the other side of the aisle in the Rules Committee: Well, do you think that is worth it? They say yes. They say yes.

They want every American family to have to cough up another $16,000 for an imperceptible, ineffective, alleged reduction in CO2 production. Meanwhile, we haven't done anything to produce nuclear power, which is actually reliable.

The American people fully recognize that their lives have been upended. They are not 100 percent sure why, although I think they are starting to figure it out as they watch the President of the United States dawdling along, completely unaware of what is going on, while the bureaucrats in the administration are cooking up all these schemes to use their bureaucratic powers to undermine the American Dream and drive up the price of cars; drive up the price of oil; vehicles; drive up the goods and services; drive up the price of houses; spend money we don't have; rising interest rates.

The Federal Government spent $2 trillion more than it took in in fiscal year 2023. We spent a total of $4.4 trillion in 2019. In 2023, we spent over $6 trillion. Our national debt is somewhere around $33.865 trillion, and we are doing nothing about it.

Earlier this week, my friend Jodey Arrington, the chairman of the Budget Committee had a hearing on debt commissions. It is important and it is good that we have those hearings and figure out what we are going to do on a bipartisan basis. However, I have to be very honest, if we cannot in this body figure out how to limit even just the discretionary spending being used to fund bureaucrats and laws and regulations that are undermining our freedom--driving up the price of cars; driving up the price of houses; funding a Department of Justice to go target a guy like Scott Smith, a dad in Loudon County; funding an EPA to go shut down people's livelihoods; arrest a guy on his ranch for building a pond; funding a DOJ to go after some of my colleagues--if we can't reduce that spending as Republicans, then how in God's green earth are we going to sit down and stare an elderly American in the face and tell them that we are going to do something with their Social Security benefits or Medicare benefits.

We are not. I have to be honest, we have been profoundly unserious in this body, on both sides of the aisle, about spending and about the abuse of power that we fund with taxpayer dollars and borrowed dollars to fund a bureaucracy that is at war with the American people and at war with the American Dream. That is the truth.

In my Thursday speech just prior to adjourning for the Thanksgiving recess, I noted fairly explicitly and pointedly that we had not produced a significant win for the American people in this Chamber this Congress.

I asked the question: What have we done? And all of my colleagues that are sitting around the complex, I asked then and I ask now: Come to the floor and come tell me what we have been able to do through this body, the Senate, and the White House. What have we been able to do in the last year to make the lives of the American people better, to make them more free, to secure their border, to make their country more secure, or to make their military more focused on its mission rather than social engineering?

I know what we have done here on the Republican side. We have passed a lot of good stuff through the hard work of my colleagues unifying around passing a strong National Defense Authorization bill that undoes the abortion tourism, the transgender surgery, the DEI, the critical race theory that is destroying the mission and the soul and the culture of the United States military, driving down recruiting and making us less safe and secure.

We passed the strongest border security bill we have ever passed. We did that here united as Republicans. We passed seven appropriations bills. We are on the precipice of passing more appropriations bills to take the power out of the hands of a few and return it to the body.

We have done a number of great things fighting here as Republicans, but they don't mean a thing if we are not willing to sit down at the negotiation table and look at our Democratic colleagues in the Senate and look at the President of the United States and tell him: This is how it is going to be done or you are not going to get your funding. This is how it is going to be done or don't even think about another dollar for Ukraine.

That is my message to my Republican colleagues who, frankly, are getting a little too wound up at that question I asked: What have we done?

The simplest solution to your frustration about that question being asked is to have an answer.

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, my friend from Pennsylvania is 100 percent correct. This was a point that I made in the remarks I made right before Thanksgiving, which is what are we going to say that we have accomplished, other than to say that we are less bad than Democrats.

That is my question here for my Republican colleagues. When we are getting zero help from our Democrat colleagues, who are intent on spending money we don't have to fund bureaucrats; to undermine our freedom; our way of life; our ability to afford our lives; our ability to have jobs; our ability to have a secure border; our ability to have secure streets; our ability to have education that is controlled by parents and not by leftist bureaucrats; our ability to have a military that can defend our country rather than being woke and socially engineered, we get zero help from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

Which means what? It means that this Republican majority has to unite and ensure that we are going to force Senate Democrats and the President to come to the table using the leverage that we have for the things that they want.

The Senate majority leader has professed a desire that we continue to fund a proxy war in Ukraine. It is very well documented. The President of the United States, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle in this Chamber, want us to continue to fund a proxy war in Ukraine.

Now, we can have that debate on the floor of the House. We can debate the merits of it. We can debate how much it should be lethal aid versus not. We can debate how to make it more transparent; debate how to make it more focused, or whether to do it at all, but a fundamental and core question that ought to be asked: Why would we ever debate giving another dollar to Ukraine when our borders are wide open, Americans are being killed and endangered by cartels and fentanyl and violence and terrorists and gang members that come across our border, and this administration refuses to do a thing about it?

Why, to my friend from Pennsylvania, would we even utter the word Ukraine on the floor of the House ever again until we have H.R. 2, the strong border security bill that we passed, signed into law by the President of the United States, metrics guaranteeing and demonstrating that we do not have continued flow and automatic entry and releases into the United States?

Why would we do that?

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I agree with my friend from Pennsylvania.

While he is still on the floor, I will close with a couple of questions.

I assume that the gentleman from Pennsylvania, my friend, when he ran for Congress, and when he has run every term since, he ran under a promise to fight to reduce and cut Federal spending. I assume that is correct.

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Mr. ROY. To my friend from Pennsylvania, do you think that it is a fulfillment of your promise and pledge to work here to try to cut spending to pass continuing resolutions that fund government at the preceding year's astronomically high spending levels, particularly that of Nancy Pelosi's $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill? Does my friend think that gets it done?

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Mr. ROY. That woman, your constituent, recognizes the impact from the policies of this current administration and, frankly, I must say, the policies that are perpetuated by this body, including some on both sides of the aisle that have resulted in families having to spend $11,400 more just to break even to where they were at the beginning of this administration.

The question is, what are we going to do about it? I mean, I think that is the fundamental question. Did your constituents send you here to file bills, to file amendments, to simply vote, and then say: Oh, isn't it so great that we voted and passed something out of committee? Do your constituents know when we pass something out of committee, as a general matter? Do they know how many bills you have filed? Do they know whether or not you got some amendment inserted in whatever unless you tell them? Or are they looking for results? Do they want the border to actually be secure? Do they want spending to actually go down so there is less inflation and they can afford to live?

Do they want us to have a military that is focused rather than woke? Do they want us to deliver results, or do they just want us to sit up here and pound our chest about how we got certain bills introduced and I got some vote on some measure on the floor of the House?

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Mr. ROY. I assume your constituents, like mine, totally understand that we don't have both Chambers and the White House. They know that we can't move all the mountains. Nevertheless, they want us not to just shrug and give up and send a bill over to the Senate and say, ``Sorry, we don't have the Senate. Blame Chuck Schumer,'' and then go campaign.

Even when we had the majority in the House, had a majority in the Senate, and had the White House, how many times did you hear the excuse: ``Oh, I am sorry, Congressman Perry. We don't have 60 votes in the Senate.'' Did you ever hear that one?

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the good gentleman from Pennsylvania. He is a good friend, and I am honored to serve with him. I agree with him.

I will say that our constituents don't send us to Washington to campaign. They don't send us to Washington to run around trying to figure out how we are going to score some political victory and set up votes so we can run against our colleagues.

Our constituents recognize that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are continuing to leave them behind and ignore them in pursuit of fantasy energy policies, woke ideology, and radical leftist views of open borders that empower our enemies and endanger Americans. They fully get that.

They expect us to stand up and fight for them. They expect us to do the right thing and then let the voters decide.

I would submit that it is a critical juncture in this country, that we are facing existential threats, that it is critical that the 200 and however many Republicans we have right now unite together and go over to the Senate to tell the Senate that we have to solve problems for the American people, secure borders, strengthen our military, reduce spending, get inflation down, make the American people believe that the American Dream exists again.

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that. I know my colleague is about to leave. I know that he appreciates and we share our faith in the good Lord and our faith in Jesus Christ. He will appreciate the words of Paul in 2 Timothy: I have fought the good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved him appearing.

That is obviously a spiritual reference and speaking in spiritual terms, but they are the kind of words that I think my friend agrees with me should be inspiring us as Members of this body, regardless of party, that we advance, that we move forward, that we defend this country.

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Pennsylvania. When I started this speech, I talked about The Wall Street Journal poll from this month finding that only 36 percent of voters said the American Dream still holds true and that our country, our society, is in deep despair and needs help. I talked about the $11,400, according to CBS, that the typical American household must spend additionally every year just to maintain the same standard of living that they enjoyed in January 2021.

The fact of the matter is, the American people are suffering. We in this body know it, yet we are doing nothing about it. All we are doing is making it worse by spending more money we don't have, indebting our children and grandchildren.

We are now $34 trillion in debt, and all I get from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is lip service about taxes when we have been bringing in revenue to the Treasury at the top level we have ever done in the history of this country, 19.2 percent. We have plenty of revenue. What we refuse to do is deal with our spending problem, promises that we have made but cannot honestly deliver on without printing money.

I talked about the extent to which the average American family can no longer afford a car. A new car costs $50,000, nearly double what it cost 10 years ago. Why? Because of absurd regulations and mandates coming out of this administration unilaterally, through bureaucrats, backed up by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle passing legislation to mandate EVs that are piling up on the lots of dealerships that people can't afford and that don't allow them to do their job. Debt is piling up. Interest rates are going up. Houses are unaffordable.

With healthcare, Americans are expected to spend $6,500 for a family policy and $1,400 for an individual. They are expecting 2024 premiums to increase 8 percent for group rates. Healthcare is completely unaffordable for the average American.

All this is happening as Big Healthcare gets richer, and the Federal Government continues to flood more money into the market. Big Insurance revenue is $1.25 trillion. The CBO estimates Federal subsidies to health insurance for Americans under 65 will reach $1 trillion.

Nobody in America knows what these numbers mean. What they mean is you can't afford healthcare, can't go to the doctor, and can't choose the doctor of your choice.

We are enriching bureaucrats and healthcare companies. We are enriching bureaucrats, pharma, hospitals, and Big Insurance. We are doing it through crony capitalism that was inflated under ObamaCare.

I have a constituent who came up to me last week who is on ObamaCare and can't go to MD Anderson for the cancer that is killing her, yet my colleagues on the other side of the aisle pat themselves on the back for coverage.

I would like to know if any of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to call up my constituent and congratulate her for having coverage she can't use. She can't use it to go get healthcare while we enrich the insurance companies at levels they were never enriched before, while we devastate them. She literally can't go get the care she needs under the coverage of ObamaCare, while healthcare companies are rolling in money.

I can't go back to MD Anderson, if my cancer comes back, on the plan that I would have under ObamaCare as a Member of Congress. That is the truth.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle pretend that it is not devastating the American family that we are driving up the cost of healthcare, making it impossible to get the doctor of your choice, making it impossible for people to live and enjoy the American Dream.

On the southern border in Texas, my constituents text and call me every single day--every day. I have constituents and friends in south Texas calling me about the devastation being wrought in south Texas.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't care. They don't care about the little girls getting sold into the sex trafficking trade, the almost 1,000 migrants who died along the Rio Grande and southern border last year. They don't care about the fentanyl pouring into Texas that is killing my constituents. Last year, I had six kids die in the school district I live in from fentanyl poisoning. It is pouring into our communities through wide open borders, and everybody knows it.

Mayorkas goes down to the border and won't even apologize to the Border Patrol agents he accused of whipping people, which didn't happen.

Mr. Speaker, there have been 6.6 million illegal aliens since January 21 and 1.7 million known got-aways. That is bigger than the entire population of San Antonio, Texas, which I represent and is the seventh largest city. We don't know who they are.

I had members of the Texas legislature showing me videos of people they saw over Thanksgiving weekend in south Texas, single adult males running away from Border Patrol. If you are running away from Border Patrol in 2023, I assure you it is because you are up to no good.

The entire world knows that if you come here and you go up to Border Patrol and you say the word asylum, you are going to get released into the United States.

Texas is under siege. We spent $12.5 billion of our own money to do the job the Federal Government refuses to do, while my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, Secretary Mayorkas, President Biden, Senate Democrats, and Chuck Schumer ignore the crisis and pretend that sending more money down to process more people will make a damn difference. It won't.

Texas would be well within its rights to tell this Federal Government to go straight to hell. Stop sending any tax receipts and do what we need to do to secure Texas. Frankly, Governor Abbott should do that. Shut off the flow across the border because this Federal Government refuses to do it.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't care. The fact of the matter is, this current Democrat administration and my Democratic colleagues are all too fine while the American family suffers, losing the American Dream. They have $11,000 of additional costs every year under this administration. Kids die in their schools from fentanyl. People pour into communities in Texas and Arizona and throughout the country. They are piling up in New York, so bad that they had to cut a deal to move them onto military installations and Federal properties.

All of our streets are unsafe because DAs refuse to enforce the laws--funded by George Soros--DAs in Texas and throughout this country. Literally, the DA in San Antonio, it was just reported, has dismissed more than 6,000 criminal cases in the first 3 months of 2023. That is a 50 percent rise in dismissed cases.

One of these dismissed cases led career criminal Michael Kirkland to be free to shoot at police officers and motorists in San Antonio while evading arrest, leading to an officer being injured this past August. Those are the policies of this Democrat regime and of Democrats across this country.

Violent crime is surging, borders are open, fentanyl is pouring into our schools, inflation is up, interest rates are up, and life expectancy is down.

The fact of the matter is, Republicans have a duty to check this administration and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. It is why I demand and implore my Republican colleagues that we answer the question: What have we done?

I can assure you my Democratic colleagues--the answer to what they have done is destroy the Republic by passing legislation that bankrupts the American family, pursuing unicorn energy policies, forcing EVs to pile up on dealership lots, driving families into bankruptcy, and now they are unable to afford houses.

Democrats are actively doing that. Republicans basically say, well, we got elected, we are at least stopping that. We are at least stopping the passage of really bad bills, like the so-called Inflation Reduction Act or the American Rescue Plan. These bills all spend money we don't have. It is driving us into debt, funding and enriching White, elitist liberals in their big, supposedly, green corporations.

Every time Republicans run for office we make a lot of promises about things like cutting spending, shrinking bureaucracy, or securing the border. That is what you do when you run for office, you make a lot of promises. You make a lot of pledges.

We don't have the luxury of grading ourselves on our intentions. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The American people, the history books, and the good Lord are going to judge based on the actions we take and the results we deliver and whether or not we deliver for the American people.

To deliver for the American people, Republicans must force the Senate Democratic leadership, Majority Leader Schumer, and President Biden, to understand a handful of very key truths. Under no circumstances should we give another dollar to Ukraine. No bills should come to the House floor until H.R. 2 is signed by the President and the flow stops across our southern border.

That ought to be the very clear message that is sent to the President and Majority Leader Schumer. If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and the Senate want to choose to refuse to secure the border, then they can call up Mr. Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine and explain why.

They can explain that it is more important to keep open borders in America and undermine our sovereignty and our security and our well- being. They can call up Israel and explain to Israel that they refuse to actually fund support for Israel because they are more interested in funding Internal Revenue Service bureaucrats to go after the American people.

That is what our Democratic colleagues in the Senate have chosen to do, and they know it. They know it. We pass a bipartisan bill that chooses to move dollars that were allocated to expand the IRS to go after the American people, take those dollars and give it to our friends from Israel. Our Democratic colleagues in the Senate, on a party-line vote, voted no.

They refused to fund our friends in Israel because they were more committed to the leftist makeover of this country. They are more committed to open borders than they are to securing the communities of the American people and allowing us to have a full and open debate about Ukraine and how we can proceed to fund our government.

Mr. Speaker, the American people are sick of excuses. They want us to do our job. I understand the difficulty of dealing with a razor-thin majority with colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have no interest in doing the things that we want to do to secure the United States, secure our border, reduce spending, reduce inflation, focus the military on what it needs to be focused on, and to do our job under the Constitution in our limited powers. I understand the difficulty of that.

We have done a great job and we have been united as a Republican Party to send good bills over to the Senate. Now we should hold the Senate accountable to doing the work of the American people to follow up on what we have already done. To send a border security bill, H.R. 2, that would do the job of securing the border. Sending a National Defense Authorization bill that would restore our military to its mission rather than social engineering.

There are seven appropriations bills, and others that are ready to go if our Democratic colleagues on the other side of the Capitol in the Senate will sit down with us to actually reduce spending year over year from 2023 to 2024. We can constrain spending. We can constrain inflation. We can constrain the bureaucrats that are interfering with the lives of the American people and undermining their freedom and their ability to produce and prosper according to their God-given talents.

Voters are watching what we are doing. They are watching whether we are going to stand up and actually do our job, and whether or not we are going to deliver for them rather than engaging in lip service. I think we need to do our job.

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