Republicans Have Work to Do

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the remarks of the gentleman talking about the state of affairs. We disagree on a number of policies but might actually share some sentiment.

I, too, believe that we have significant issues we need to deal with right now with respect to the economy, the state of affairs for American families, hardworking Americans who are getting left behind, Americans who are not of the belief that they can actually achieve the American Dream. We are raising a generation--or now two--who do not believe they will be able to live in an America stronger than the one they have inherited from their parents.

That is true. I think the question here is: What is actually the culprit?

I think it is worthy to have debate about tax policy and the implications of taxes on corporations and families. Where do you spread the burden?

My Democratic colleagues are too often mesmerized by this attack on trickle down and corporate tax rates, and somehow that is blowing a hole into the revenue of the United States Government, which is simply not true.

In 2022, the United States Government brought in about 19.6 percent of GDP in terms of revenue to the Treasury. That represented the third highest mark in American history--or among the three highest marks--at a level seen only right after World War II and the end of the dot-com boom and the end of the nineties.

Now, why do I bring that up? Because my Democratic colleagues refuse to acknowledge that we are, in fact, bringing in massive amounts of revenue.

Now, where I might agree is maybe that revenue needs to be allocated slightly differently in terms of the impact on corporations or the wealthy or middle class. We can have those debates, but we are bringing in massive amounts of revenue.

I think the question here really is: What is making it difficult for American families to live? I think we all agree it is really difficult right now for an American family to live. I know my family feels it. I know my friends' families feel it. They are trying to figure out how to live, how to afford anything: whether they can send their kids to school; whether they can pay for healthcare.

I would suggest, and my Democratic colleagues would disagree, but I think most of my Republican colleagues would agree, the fundamental problem is that we have inserted the government into every aspect of our life.

Literally, every stinking thing we do the government has a hand. It is regulating us to death, choking out every bit of entrepreneurial spirit, every bit of the ability to get through the day without having to figure out what regulation or what law, what rule you have to abide by.

I can't even get in my car and figure out how to turn something on without figuring out some safety device. I can't fix the windshield without having to fix some regulatory thing that is allegedly there to make me safer that makes the car twice as expensive.

We are making ourselves absolutely incapable of achieving the American Dream. We are doing it to ourselves. That is what is happening. Yet, we just keep doing it over and over again.

This is, I think, the question of the moment: What are we going to do to restore the American Dream for the American people?

We, the Representatives, here in the House of Representatives, the people's House, what are we going to do?

Today wasn't the best day on the political scoreboard for Republicans. I am not going to lie. We spent a day, we came down here, we had a vote on impeaching Alejandro Mayorkas. It was a tie. We had to pull it down.

Then we had to vote on Israel, which was a suspension of the rules that fell short of the votes necessary to move on, so we are going to have to address all these things again.

But there is a bigger issue at play right now. There is something much more important going on. This town has been badly broken. This swamp that President Trump ran against has been consuming any ability for representation, for a government to actually serve the people.

What we have instead is effectively a bipartisan uniparty for decades now that has been driven almost entirely by spending massive amounts of money for government programs and for foreign aid, and for, most importantly, the defense complex, the defense world, driven heavily by war.

We have done that, and we have been messing around with tax policy.

What else? We pass a bill here and there; we do something here and there.

The fact is this whole system has been focused for entirely too long on spending other people's money, borrowing money, to try to buy votes with programs or to use the threat and the fear of war or supposedly our need to stand with some other country. All of that has been used as a political weapon every year to spend your money and spend us into oblivion and grow government and not do the things we say we will do otherwise.

What do I mean by all of that?

For the bulk of this entire century, we have been at war in some form or fashion. Not a declared war. We have had a couple of authorizations of the use of military force. We haven't declared war formally, but we have nevertheless been effectively at war for the bulk of the 21st century.

We spent $7 trillion, $8 trillion. We lost almost 10,000 Americans. We have had 75,000, 80,000 injuries. That is not talking about post- traumatic stress. That is not talking about the hundreds of billions of dollars we just set aside for burn pits. We have ongoing conflict right now.

We just had the President of the United States engaging in Syria and Iraq because we have troops in Syria and Iraq getting fired upon, and nobody in America knows why. Shouldn't this body speak to that? Shouldn't this body do something about that?

We are sitting back watching the President of the United States using powers under the Constitution to carry out defense of our men and women in uniform, which everybody in this Chamber with half a brain and heart wants to see us defend our men and women in uniform, but we are doing it because they are over there in a constant perpetuation of whatever this body did 20 years ago to sign an authorization of the use of military force for things that don't even exist now.

Saddam Hussein is dead. What the hell are we doing? When is this body going to actually stand up and decide what we are going to actually do and mean it?

Right now, today, we had to vote on whether or not we are going to fund Israel. I am a Christian. Israel is at the epicenter of my faith and the epicenter of most people in this world's faith. I have Jewish friends who are absolutely devastated about what happened in Israel on October 7. Of course we must and should stand alongside Israel, because the attack against them isn't just an attack against Israel, not just an attack against our ally. It is an attack against our way of life in western civilization, nothing less. Of course we should stand by Israel.

I voted to fund Israel in November, $14.3 billion. Today I voted ``no.'' I did not want to vote ``no'' with respect to a vote about standing alongside our brothers and sisters in Israel, but the people I represent at home, the American family trying to get by, are sick and tired of this town continuing to do the same thing over and over again. Pick a conflict, fund it; pick another conflict, fund it. Send our men and women in uniform overseas, fund it, with money we don't have.

We are not passing war bonds. We are not limiting sugar. We are just rolling around acting like nothing is actually happening, while we have $34.2 trillion of debt, and it is adding up something like $80,000 a second. What are we doing?

We should pay for that. Now it is not $14 billion but $17.6 billion. We have loads of slush funds around this town just sitting there, we could go grab and pay for it. Our Democratic colleagues refuse to do it. Republican colleagues tried to do it. Now we are walking away from that. I disagree. I disagree with walking away from that just so we can try to send a political message over to the Senate and embarrass Schumer and embarrass Biden. I think we should actually mean it when we say we should pay for supplemental spending. I don't just mean it for Israel. I mean it for Ukraine.

Senate Democrats, with a handful of Republicans, tried to just jam the American people with a $118 billion monstrosity that would fund Ukraine $60 billion; fund Taiwan; fund Israel at $17.6 billion; and fund, allegedly, border security to the tune of $20 billion. That bill is falling apart in the Senate because it doesn't actually secure the border.

Most Americans are sick and damn tired of getting sold a bill of goods, a bill that wouldn't secure the border that costs them $120 billion that is not paid for.

God bless, I am not afraid to criticize my friends on this side of the aisle. Republicans united, at least here, to tell the American people the truth about the bill they are trying to jam through in the Senate, and it looks like it is dead.

Going back to my original point, this town operates on autopilot, spending money to fund wars, spending money to fund government, to fund programs, and if you dare challenge that, the establishment bites back. That is what was happening in the Senate. That is what was happening with Mitch McConnell. That is what is happening with the cadre of people in this town who desperately want that $60 billion funding for Ukraine. It is not about the border.

They head pat people and say: We will give you some crumbs on the border; give us our $60 billion for Ukraine. We will go out, thump our chest, put a blue and yellow flag pin on our lapel, say we love people, and then we are going to go out and keep the war machine going. That is the truth.

Let's be very clear. I love Israel. If you talk to Israelis, they will tell you a part of our annual $4 billion that we send to Israel is a part of the same operation. That $4 billion, we will spend that money, it will come back over here to defense contractors to keep doing what they do.

Are they getting the right planes? Are they getting the right supplies? Is it the right cost? Is Israel able to defend itself without the United States, or is that $4 billion annual MOU, which I support-- maybe that is counterproductive. Maybe we want Israel to be standalone over there. When are we going to do something different? When are we going to peel all of this back?

I would posit, to great credit to my Republican colleagues right now, we are wrestling with changing this town. That is why it is messy.

I am not afraid to criticize colleagues on both sides of the aisle, including my Republican colleagues, like I said. Right now, I am actually proud of a Republican Conference that is struggling to try to find a way to stop an out-of-control executive branch led by President Biden and my Democratic colleagues, trying to save this country, trying to step up and protect American families, trying to secure the border of the United States, trying to find a way to limit spending, trying to find a way to stand with Israel, but to do it responsibly.

At every damn turn, my Democratic colleagues are trying to thwart us, because they are more interested in political posturing than figuring out how to stand up for the hardworking men and women of this country. They are more interested in advancing a radical leftist agenda that is advancing their crazy climate agenda, advancing wide open borders, advancing open streets where criminals are running lawless, judges in place that won't prosecute criminals, cops that are getting persecuted, walking away from Israel, and undermining Israel's sovereignty.

That is the face of the Democratic Party: open borders, dangerous streets, undermining the American family, forced transgender surgeries, girls in boy bathrooms, boys swimming against girls in swim meets. It is a radical leftist Democratic Party trying to destroy the America we know, western civilization, and our way of life on a daily basis.

Republicans are trying to stand to thwart that, with a bare minimum majority, and it is messy. That part is okay.

The question here is what are we doing now as Republicans? We cannot lose sight of the unity we have as Republicans that there is a way to secure border, we know what it is, we are going to stand up for it, and we are going to fight for it. We are going to keep fighting for it now. We are going to fight for it in this Congress. We are going to fight for it through the elections. We are going to fight for it next year when, Lord willing, there will be a Republican President.

No, we are not just going to pass the buck and say that any President can walk in and secure the border. I saw former President Trump make an allegation earlier today on one of his social media posts that all a President has to do is declare the border is closed and it is closed. With all due respect, that didn't happen in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. There were millions of people who came into the United States during those 4 years.

What did happen was that that administration, led by the President, led by people who believe in America, led by strong leaders at DHS, worked to secure the border. They worked to get those numbers down, and they worked to force Mexico to hold people in place with the migrant protection protocols.

Now, we have got a job here as Republicans. Are we going to stand up and pass legislation to force this administration to do its job and to set the stage for a future administration to do its job?

There are loopholes in the law. I have many Republicans colleagues who will go out and say it is fine; we will just let the President do it. No. We have many things we need to fix in the law: asylum reform, parole reform, catch and release.

Our job is to stand up and fight and not walk away from what we have accomplished. This whole debate has been on our side of the field, which is border security. We are not talking about amnesty. We are not talking about wild-eyed future flowing immigration. We are talking about border security. That is precisely where the American people want us to be. That is precisely where we ought to be. We just need to finish the job.

You are not going to get solutions in this town with gangs of eight coming out of the Senate. All of these backroom deals that get cooked up and dropped on a weekend always fail, every time.

They come through the hard work of doing the process. Let's rewind the clock to last year for a second. People criticized the debate over the Speaker. We had a fight over the Speaker a little over a year ago, and then we started working. We started working to pass bills through regular order, with single subject, with 72 hours to review it, and with amendments in committee.

Guess what. We passed the best border security bill that has ever been passed, and it was focused on border security and it would work. We passed the best National Defense Authorization Act, and it undid all of the woke nonsense that is destroying the military and refocused it on its mission. We passed caps to spending. Not what I wanted. But through Limit, Save, Grow, we set the standard, and we ended up working out a deal that Democrats signed onto that put caps in place.

We passed seven appropriations bills off of this floor and sent them to the Senate. We passed three other appropriations bills out of committee and to the floor. We had two others ready to go. We moved the ball forward. We processed 1,100 amendments. We were doing what we should do and it created unity.

That is the process we must go back to. For the last 3 months, we have been passing legislation through suspension of the rules, jamming through big bills for political points, and that is when you fail. That is when things fall apart.

The eyes of the world and the eyes of the American people are now on this place. There is no more hiding. There is no more cooking up backroom deals. The deals will be exposed, and the truth will come out. The bills that say they secure the border but don't will be exposed, as the one in the Senate just was. The big spending bills, the eyes of the world will see.

People are capable of making a decision. They are able to look up and say: You know what? I love Israel. I want Israel to wipe Hamas off the face of the planet, but I am not comfortable with giving them another $17.6 billion unpaid for, borrowed, while our border is wide open, exposed to terrorists coming across, while the Democrat administration, funded by our own body, is funding UNRWA and the United Nations, giving dollars that are going to the Palestinian authority and Hamas. We are funding the enemies of our allies, while Secretary Blinken is going to Israel and going around the world and undermining Netanyahu, undermining the domestic tranquility of Israel, purposefully.

All of that is going on, and we are going around saying: Oh, we must pass this check, we must give them money for munitions. Meanwhile, our own administration is slow-walking the munitions getting from America to Israel.

The American people get the joke. They see what is happening, and that is what you are seeing unfold on the House floor, Madam Speaker. People don't know what to do. The normal machinery in this place was designed to move large bills driven heavily by lobbyists, driven mainly by defense spending and some negotiation of defense versus nondefense in order to get a massive, bloated bill that would buy votes in November. That has been the MO of the United States House for as long as I can remember.

The gig is up. The American people are on to it. The American people are getting tired of being taken for a ride. They want us to actually do what we said we would do. They want us to actually secure the border. They want us to actually cut spending. Yes, they want us to stand with Israel, but they don't want us to write blank checks. This is not that hard.

Our colleagues in the Senate want to jam us here in the House. Democrat colleagues and some Republican colleagues in the Senate want to send over now with their border effort--not to secure the border but border political effort--very specifically designed as cover for our Democratic colleagues to have some reason to be able to run in November and say that it is Republicans' fault that the borders are wide open and not President Biden's.

Our Senate colleagues want to send to us now a Ukraine package with Israel. So for all of the viewers at home, what is happening is that we are responding by saying: Well, we are going to jump in front of that by sending a clean Israel bill, so we can separate Ukraine.

None of this is the regular order that the American people would expect. Put a bill on the floor, offer amendments, and let it rise or fall. Put Israel on the floor, put an amendment that would pay for it, and see what happens. Put an amendment on it that would cut UNRWA funding because why are we funding Israel while we are also funding their enemies?

Why don't we just put that on the floor with amendments and see what happens?

How about FISA?

Do all you Americans out there love being spied on?

Let's put FISA on the floor, let's put four or five amendments on it, and see what happens.

See if the American people want us to have warrants when people's information is being looked at.

Put the bills on the floor.

Ukraine, put the bill on the floor. Make a decision: yes or no, up or down.

Are we going to fund it?

Where are we getting $60 billion?

Are we just going to print it?

Do you want to know why your inflation is up, Madam Speaker?

Put it on the floor. Have a vote.

Madam Speaker, $60 billion. What is the mission?

What are we going to get out of it?

What are the limits?

Are the oligarchs getting it?

Are we paying for pensions?

Is it lethal aid?

Are we expecting to get Crimea and Donbas back, or are we expecting just to have a sovereign nation and Russians to be pushed back out?

Is that our call?

Do the American people want to spend their treasure?

Seriously. This is the question, and yet today we did it with Israel.

Why?

It is because we love Israel. Israel holds a special place in our heart. They are our friends and our allies, but, importantly, we all get the truth, it is our faith. We don't want to see Israel attacked.

Many of my colleagues have a Biblical belief that they have to stand by Israel. I do, too. I think it is important, but if we don't have rules, then we lose our own country. There will be no America to stand with Israel if we don't have sovereignty and we have open borders and terrorists coming in who are undermining our security.

There will be no America to stand with Israel if we are bankrupt and $34 trillion in debt and we are spending money we don't have even if it is for Israel. There have to be some rules. There have to be.

We go home, and we campaign we are going to cut spending, but we don't do it. We are going to vote in 3 weeks allegedly on omnibus or minibus spending bills. What that means is a big package of bills all brought over from the Senate with maybe some policy changes for the next 6 months, I doubt much, that spends $30 billion more than Nancy Pelosi's bloated spending levels that we all campaigned against.

How is that changing Washington or cutting spending or draining the swamp or fiscal responsibility or balancing the budget?

It is none of those things. It is none.

Yet my colleagues will run on passing balanced budget amendments which will not happen. We are going to go spend $17 billion and throw that out there to go fund Israel because they are our friend. I agree, but we are going to do that unpaid for.

So we just racked up another $17 billion on top of the $13 billion we appropriated last November for hurricanes and emergency relief, and now they ask for $60 billion for Ukraine.

When is that madness going to stop?

Meanwhile, my people in Texas are saying: When is the border going to get secure?

They want to know when the fentanyl is going to stop pouring into their communities and when migrants are not going to be walking through the streets grabbing people. An MS-13 gang member is grabbing young women and dragging them out of bathrooms. They killed a young woman, and a mom is saying: Where are you, America?

Do we not have a duty to defend this country?

Nevertheless, we are not going to do that.

We are going to vote to fund the government in 3 weeks that leaves this country exposed to criminals, to terrorists, to cartels, and to fentanyl. We are going to do it, Madam Speaker, you watch. A bipartisan, uniparty bill will get voted off of this floor that does not a damn thing to fundamentally alter what is happening at the border while Texas takes it on the chin.

Why should Texans pay their Federal taxes? Why?

Why should Texans give a rip about what we do in this body when it is all against them? It is all against us as Texans?

For that matter, why should anybody pay taxes?

The rule of law matters if you want people to follow it. If we are printing money, destroying the dollar, and destroying the economy and bloating the government in hiring and funding bureaucrats to undermine your liberty to pass regulations to take away your happiness and undermine your ability to prosper, you are printing money and borrowing money to do that, what is the point of paying your taxes?

It hurts to write that check. It hurts to lose that money to go to the Federal Government, but if the Federal Government is just going to spend money anyway, why do Americans believe that they have a duty to go pay their taxes?

So we pay $2 trillion in taxes but borrow $2 trillion or pay $4 trillion in taxes but borrow $4 trillion?

That is crazy. I have got some colleagues who are waiting to come out on the floor, so I am going to in a few minutes yield.

Madam Speaker, here is the thing. This country is not done yet, but it is getting damn close. That is where we are. We cannot be a free and secure country if we are $34 trillion in debt and bleeding $2 trillion a year.

We cannot be a free, secure, and sovereign nation if our borders are wide open, terrorists are coming in, cartels are coming in, and fentanyl is pouring in.

We cannot be a free, secure, and sovereign nation if we are printing money to fund foreign conflicts that we don't have an actual vested interest in or if we do we are not acting like it, when we never declared war and we never really specifically authorized the force and we continue to fund it so that the machine in this godforsaken town can keep making money.

Why are the seven wealthiest counties in America right here?

We are printing money and funding it.

Three-quarters of the cars I drive by in this town are a hell of a lot nicer than any of the cars that I have got or that any of the hardworking people whom I represent have because we are printing money and funding this place to stick it to the American people every single day.

This is what the American people are on to. They are sick of the same game. They are sick of bills that come to this floor and are designed for a political purpose rather than to achieve an end that is constitutional, that is paid for, and that is responsible.

I was spending a lot of time in the last month out on the campaign trail, and my friend, the Governor of Florida, Governor DeSantis, would talk about his time in service in the United States Navy, but, more importantly, he would talk about when flying into Ronald Reagan National Airport looking out of the left side of the plane and seeing the Washington Monument, the United States Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, and the White House, and all of these monuments to our ideals, who we are as a people, the inspiring white buildings. Nevertheless, then he would point out that if you look out of the right side of the plane, Madam Speaker, when you are coming in that northern route down the Potomac River, you see a whole bunch of other monuments, evenly distributed, small, and all identical of the 400,000 men and women who are buried there having fought under that flag, the American flag, the 13 stripes and the 50 stars.

When we come here on this floor, all 400,000 of them, all of the hundreds of thousands buried around this country, all of those who have given the last full measure of devotion for something bigger than themselves, we carry that burden. We have to actually do the hard work of representation.

That does not mean flying here on Monday for a fly-in vote, having a dinner with some meaningless votes, getting up on Tuesday and Wednesday to do a series of preprogrammed votes for political purposes, and then flying out Thursday to go do a damn fundraiser back home.

That is what we do.

We have a responsibility to actually finish the work that those 400,000 started, that George Washington called ``the sacred fire of liberty.''

Liberty depends on us, though, and we are not going to be free if we are mortgaging our future.

We are not going to be free if we come down here and we are forced to choose to stand by our friend Israel or print more money.

That was the choice I was given. That is not a choice. That is not a choice we have to make; we choose to make it. We choose to take the easy path. We choose to fail to do our job and to actually follow some rules that will keep us somewhere close to the straight and narrow of caring for the legacy of those who came before us.

The hardworking American family out there today, right now struggling to get by, is looking to us to fix it.

It is not acceptable for a migrant to come into this country illegally, beat a cop in New York, get sent out on no bail, flick off the American people. That will destroy our country more than anything else.

That is not acceptable. It is not acceptable, and we have to end it, or we won't have a country left.

We have to stop spending money we don't have. We have to. It is not hyperbole. You can't make a good decision here about balancing interests if you just write blank checks. You can't do it.

One of my strong Jewish friends out in conservative radio was pointing out we are $34 trillion in debt--hell, $300 trillion in debt if you look at the entire Fed's balance sheet and everything that we have going on. What is $17 billion? That is exactly right, except I have to say it is exactly wrong, or we will never change this place.

I came here and said I wouldn't vote for unpaid-for supplemental spending, and even if my best friend is out there getting hurt, I have to find a way to do it the right way, or we are going to lose this country. Then, as I said, there will be no America left to stand with Israel. There will be no America left for some people to go to, no America left for migrants to seek to come to, to live a better life because the rule of law will be gone. The fiscal health of our country will be gone. The American Dream will be unattainable.

I think we can choose a different path, and I think Republicans are actually in the process of choosing a different path right now by challenging the status quo of this town that our Democratic colleagues want to continue to exploit to grow government and to regulate and to have open borders and to have our streets wide open. Republicans are standing athwart that, and right now is the opportunity for Republicans to make good on what we have been saying for my entire life. That is that the American Dream depends on what we do here to ensure that the Federal Government is not meddling in the lives of the American people, undermining their ability to prosper, undermining the American economy, making us less secure, empowering our enemies, emboldening those who want to do us harm, undermining Western civilization.

We can stop that. We can, in fact, as William Buckley said, stand athwart history yelling stop. The progressive movement that is designed to undermine our very way of life needs to end right now, and it ends by Republicans standing up on the wall and saying no.

That is our calling. That is what we need to do. If we do that and if we unite, then we will actually have the majority that we tend to try to buy with single votes on the House floor when, instead, you earn them by doing what we are supposed to do under the Constitution.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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