An Extraordinary Display of Anti-Semitism

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I would note that today we have seen around the country an extraordinary display of anti-Semitic activity on college campuses throughout the country: Columbia University, USC, and even in Austin, Texas, at the University of Texas near where I live and a city that I represent in part.

We saw today protesters replacing the American flag with the Palestinian flag in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. We are seeing all sorts of derogatory actions and statements being directed to our Jewish brothers and sisters in this country, and it should not be tolerated. It should be called out. It is unacceptable.

It is not speech. It is not speech when you are engaging in the kind of conduct that we are talking about where a young Jewish man was being denied entry into a building and being asked whether he was Zionist.

This is not speech. This is action with these encampments when you take over a university, State-owned or private, in particular the University of Texas, a State university. When you take over at USC, you deny the ability of parents and students who have worked to graduate. You are blocking access. This is not speech. Let me be perfectly clear.

University of Texas President Jay Hartzell and the leadership of that university are doing the exact right thing by clearing out the people in the encampments taking over the university. President Ben Sasse at the University of Florida is doing the exact right thing by saying that the University of Florida is not a daycare, that these are adults, and they know full well what they are doing and that they will get the consequences of their actions. That is leadership.

The University of Texas has allowed free speech multiple times in respect to people who are protesting the conflict, protesting Israel, and supporters of the Palestinians. I think there have been 13 or 14 events at the University of Texas that have been officially sanctioned and other free speech.

Here is the thing. Yet again today, here on the floor of the House of Representatives, we had another show vote to make people feel good about themselves by passing a bill that says anti-Semitism in the title. That is what happened. It was put on the floor by Republican leadership, and it was put on the floor by Republican leadership despite knowing that it was pulled from going through committee. We didn't have a chance to amend it. We didn't have a chance to discuss it and debate it. We didn't have a hearing on it. It was jammed through to take advantage of this political moment while all of these horrific things are going on around the country. Republican leadership wanted to score political points, so they moved through legislation without the kind of deliberation and debate that is supposed to be carried out by the people in this Chamber.

As a result, today, a significant number of my Republican colleagues, including myself, voted no. As a result, we will be accused of--I don't know--being for anti-Semitic behavior, being accused by our friends and allies of not wanting to support Israel, supporting our Jewish-American colleagues and friends, constituents, and fellow Americans. Nothing could be further from the truth, but that is what will happen. It will happen because we dared to stand up and say we don't believe in thought police.

We don't believe that a bill should be brought to the floor of the United States House of Representatives, having not gone through committee, that has a reference to an international organization's definition literally in the statute, and then taking that international organization's definition and then literally in the statute representing and referencing the examples of anti-Semitic behavior.

I find the vast majority of the things that are listed in that to be horrific activity, and most likely, if not certainly, they are anti- Semitic, at least in most contexts. Some of them are problematic.

In totality, they certainly raise First Amendment concerns. They certainly raise concerns about something that I have opposed, to the best of my knowledge and ability, having read through the piece of legislation at every turn and every vote, to oppose the whole notion of hate speech, hate crimes, thought police, thought crimes, and putting the government into your head and your motivations when you are engaged in criminal behavior.

Criminal behavior is criminal behavior. Violating people's civil rights is violating people's civil rights.

When we want to insert the government into what you are thinking and what motivates you, Madam Speaker, then you are empowering that which should never be empowered: the ability of the government to police thought, to police speech, and to police your views, not the views that carry out, then the actions. The actions are the problem. Police the actions.

Yet, that is what we did, and I am damned proud of my colleagues, particularly on this side of the aisle, who stood up and said no because it was a hard vote.

Madam Speaker, do you know what I have to spend my time doing tonight, tomorrow, and this week? I will be explaining to my Jewish constituents, supporters, and friends that I stand with them unequivocally.

They will say: What do you mean unequivocally? You voted against the bill that is titled anti-Semitism.

I will say it is because the slippery slope of tyranny that has led to the death, that has led to the harassment, and that has led to the abject discrimination and oppression of people around this world--those roads lead through the empowerment of government bureaucrats at the expense of liberty. Liberty stops at the door of harming somebody-- taking their stuff, blocking roads, and doing the kinds of things that actually directly impact and harm people--not what you think.

That is what we do. We do things for political motivations. The Republican leadership knew it, and they put it on the floor anyway.

I am sick of it. I am sick of my Republican colleagues who want to go out and campaign for power to maintain power to then come in here and do the very things we said that we oppose.

There is a bill in the House Judiciary Committee right now. That bill will say that the Department of Justice can go into a State and prosecute a cop killer if the local jurisdiction effectively refuses to do that.

That sounds good, doesn't it, Madam Speaker, if you are pro-cop and pro-police and have a George Soros prosecutor sitting in Austin, Texas, or New York City who is refusing to do their job, do their duty, and follow their conscience to go prosecute a dangerous individual who killed a cop? You say, well, Chip, of course, we should bring in the Department of Justice and take care of that horrific result.

Here is the problem: There is no end.

The bill is based on commerce. The gun transports in commerce. The defendant traveled in commerce.

Why does that matter? Let me ask you a question, Madam Speaker. The bill before the Judiciary Committee says that if something is involved in commerce, then the Federal Government and the Department of Justice, whether it is led by a Republican or Merrick Garland, can come in, based on whatever rationale they want, and say they are going to prosecute this crime committed against a cop.

Why not against a nurse? Why not against a doctor? Why not a firefighter? Why not a teacher? Why not a member of the clergy? It won't end.

Our Founders didn't set up a Federal police. Our Constitution does not contemplate a Federal police. Our Federal Government is not supposed to police us in our homes and in our communities.

It is egregious that there are cops who have been murdered and DAs who refuse to do their duty to prosecute their killers, but I will be damned if I am going to empower a government to extend beyond its constitutional limits using the same bastardized use of the Commerce Clause that we have decried for decades because it has expanded a government that is now tyrannically using its power to go after the American people, go after former politicians, including the former President, that is spending money we don't have, that is using that power to regulate us to death on virtually every bill that virtually every Republican on this side of the aisle who claims to be a limited government conservative votes for.

Why? It is because they don't want the Fraternal Order of Police or other law enforcement organizations to come after them.

Last night, I didn't even have an amendment circulated yet. I simply begged the question: Why are we putting forward a bill that expands the power of the Department of Justice under the Commerce Clause, no matter how meritorious our goal is in ensuring cop killers go to jail? Why are we doing that?

Aren't we limited government conservatives who don't believe in the expansive use of the Commerce Clause to expand the power of the Federal Government because it is used for thousands of other things that we don't like?

I hadn't even gotten the ink dry on the concept of an amendment when someone in the body had already notified police organizations and said: Go after him.

Do you know what, Madam Speaker? Go ahead. I work for 750,000 Texans. I respond to them, God, and the Constitution of the United States. I do not work for anybody in this Chamber. I do not work for any organization. I don't work for any donor. I work for the people, and I work for a people who are sick and damn tired of this institution run by a bunch of people who campaign saying one thing and get here and do another.

Madam Speaker, $34.5 trillion of debt, $1 trillion every 3 months--we already spend more on interest than on defense. We are about to crack $1 trillion of interest. They say we will hit $2 trillion to $3 trillion of interest by 2030. Our borders are wide open. We have kids dying. In Austin, Texas, four more people the other night died from fentanyl poisoning. A bunch of others had to be resuscitated with Narcan. The people of Texas are continuing to deal with thousands of people pouring across the border.

It is not in the headlines right now because universities are in the headlines, but everybody in Texas who is reeling from inflation, who can't afford a car, who can't afford their home, who can't afford the interest on their mortgage, who can't afford to buy groceries, who is dealing with crime on their streets, and who is dealing with open borders want some sort of sanity coming out of this institution.

What do we do? What are Republicans doing in all their infinite wisdom? We fund more of it. We fund the Department of Homeland Security again. We give the FBI a brand-new $200 million headquarters.

Madam Speaker, you can't even make this stuff up.

We give more power to the intelligence community to spy on Americans. We don't even protect Americans with warrants. Madam Speaker, you can't even make it up.

Over the last 16 months, there has been a battle that represents the larger war brewing within the Republican Party. That is because, unfortunately, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have gone far down the rabbit hole of radical progressive policies that absolutely destroy our country every single day. They are littering our country with regulations, littering our country with all sorts of crime, littering our country with open borders, and engaging in endless wars.

All the stuff that is happening is because our Democratic colleagues are, frankly, undermining the American Dream, undermining Western civilization, and undermining everything we hold dear.

I want to tell you, Madam Speaker, there is a battle going on for the soul of the party and the country within the Republican Party. I want to tell you, Madam Speaker, I am not in the majority. I am not.

You say, Chip, you are in the majority of the House, and you have a razor-thin majority. No, I am not. I am not in the majority. I am in the minority, a minority of Republicans who try to wake up here and change this place rather than just campaign on it. That is the truth.

Right now, President Biden is considering bringing refugees from Gaza into the United States. I don't know what the background checks will be. I don't know what we will do to ensure that these are individuals who are not affiliated with terrorist organizations.

The number is something like three-quarters of the people of Gaza support what Hamas is doing in attacking Israel. Large numbers of civilians were involved in the attacks on Israel.

The bill we just voted on last week, the foreign aid package of $95 billion, is it paid for? No. Does it fund Ukraine with no clear mission? Yes.

Everybody here who voted for it said: Don't worry. That will be the last. We just need that money, and when President Trump gets elected, it will be over.

The ink was not even dry, and they were already talking about a new Ukraine package for the fall, more Ukraine money. Do you think that will be paid for? No.

The money for Israel, $17 billion, is that paid for? No.

Was there another $9 billion that is going to be used for the nongovernmental organizations, the NGOs, and filter that money to Hamas? Yes.

Was there $5 billion in there that will go to refugee assistance? Yes. Will that refugee assistance fund moving some of these folks from Gaza to America to be your neighbor, Madam Speaker? Yes.

That is what we voted on. That is what we voted for. Thankfully, a majority of Republicans voted against it, but our illustrious Republican leadership brought it to the floor anyway. Why? We are told that we had no choice. There is no choice. That is always the excuse.

Meanwhile, here, in addition to the refugees who may be dumped in here from Gaza, in 2023, last year, in an 8-month stretch, about 200,000 migrants flew into the United States via the President's parole program. Eighty percent of those folks went to Florida, thousands went to Texas, and thousands were flown around our country.

The American people have no idea how bad the border situation really is. Our Democratic colleagues are practically giddy at what they are getting out of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, which is nada in terms of opposition. It is nothing, zero opposition to what our Democratic colleagues are trying to perpetrate on the American people by way of a President ignoring the law, racking up, I am told by independent outside organizations making determinations of the cost, about $800 billion to $1.4 trillion in student loan forgiveness.

Madam Speaker, you can't even make this up. What do we do? We pay for it. We keep paying for it. We are paying for the administration of it.

We didn't put any blocks in place through the omnibus appropriations bill. We didn't get a single change to open borders. We didn't get a single change to the student loan repayments or forgiveness. We didn't get a single change to the continuation of endless wars. We got negligible change on the FISA spying program. Right now, we have a backlog of several million people waiting for court proceedings as late as 2035 or 2037.

I was talking to some friends of mine the other night, who are a little bit more on the other side of the aisle, and they were saying: Republicans have issues with immigrants.

I said: Well, let me ask you a question: How many people do you think are in the United States who are foreign born?

I told them the answer: About 51\1/2\ million.

How many are legally coming every year? It depends on the year, but somewhere between 800,000, a million, 1.1 million. It depends on the year. It is almost a million. No other country is even close, by the way.

We are anti-immigrant because we think maybe we ought to pause for a second, maybe take stock of the state of our country? We can't pay for Medicare. We can't pay for Social Security without printing money. Hell, we can't pay for anything pretty much without printing money.

Here is the thing I would say to all of my Republican colleagues: Enjoy it when I come down here to the floor and I file a bill to raise taxes on whoever I decide needs to have their taxes raised on and have my colleagues explain how the majority is voting for more spending for endless wars and endless conflict and $95 billion for Ukraine and overseas conflict and not paying for it. I will tell you what, I will give you the ability to pay for it.

Do my colleagues want to go out and sell tax increases to all of their donor friends? Go ahead. Go ahead to my Republican colleagues because Republicans have been taking a free ride on the idea of trickle down now for 25 years.

Now, I believe in low broad tax rates creating the maximum economic growth and opportunity and driving up revenues to the Treasury without constraining the productivity of the American people. I believe that.

However, I don't believe in listening to people complain to me that we are somehow obstructing the great Ronald Reagan's view of what we need to do through peace through strength to go help other people around the world, like Ukraine. We are now $175 billion in. They already know they want another $60 billion, $100 billion. Hell, I saw a news account of $500 billion. Who is going to pay for that?

Some people around town have had the temerity to tell me: Chip, that is not that much money. Why are you gagging on an add? It is just $60 billion. It is just $175 billion.

The real problem is Medicare. Let me ask anybody who wants to jump in here. Oh, that is right, there are no more colleagues here.

Do you think that if you can't vote against a gay senior center in Massachusetts as an earmark that you are somehow going to go out and sell Medicare reform? No, you are not. You are selling a lie.

You are selling a fiction that, oh, trust me, one day, when we get the full power in the House, the Senate--never mind that we won't have 60 votes in the Senate, we will give that excuse next year--then, trust me, Chip, we will do something like set a percentage of GDP that we can tolerate as our overall spend level, and we will constrain, and we will fix this, and we will fix the doughnut hole, and we will fix all of these things nobody in America knows about, and we will pass some bills.

We will pat ourselves on the back, and we will pass another 10-year budget that has all of its cuts in the tenth year. Then, when it comes to the tax cut time, we are going to be for those tax cuts.

Again, I want to be very clear. I am for low taxes on the American people. Let me even go farther. If we are going to keep printing money, why do we have taxes at all?

I have asked that question in the Budget Committee. Nobody can answer it. If we are literally not going to actually adhere to a budget, balance the budget, constrain spending and do the responsible thing, which we never do, why on Earth would we not just get rid of taxes? If you are going to spend almost twice as much as you take in--which we are getting dangerously close to--if you take in $4 trillion and you are spending $3 trillion more than that--I don't know what the numbers are--why not just print the $7 trillion? It was a genuine question.

Oh, Chip, well, that would be irresponsible.

Why? We all know why. It is because we are living a fiction. We are living like this is something that isn't going to blow up on us. It is.

For all my colleagues who said: Oh, Chip, 1980s, Ronald Reagan, he stood up and he said: ``Tear down this wall.'' ``Peace through strength.'' Built the military. Do you know what our debt-to-GDP ratio was then? About 35 percent. Do you know what it is today? About 120 percent, depending on which numbers you look at.

It is insane. It is like, oh, well, we will send this because Ukraine will stop Putin. Well, let's put aside whether that is even true or not. When are you going to pay for it? You are not.

Then, today, it is like we are going to go put forward a bill so we can feel good about ourselves so we can go out to our Jewish friends and say: Look, we passed an anti-Semitism bill. Pat me on the back. I am anti-anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, you completely destroy any notion of a principle that we should be against thought police.

Last year, we set out to change this place. I think we successfully did it for a while. We got seven appropriations bills passed out of the House Chamber. We had votes on about 1,100 amendments. We passed the strongest National Defense Authorization Act we have ever passed. We passed the strongest border security package in H.R. 2 we have ever passed. We finally put to bed notions that, to do that, you had to advance amnesty.

We were able to, over the course of the last year and a half, move all of the spending debate to the point where nondefense spending was held flat and the defense spending that went up was paid for by taking money out of the IRS expansion and COVID funds. We were having serious conversations across the ideological spectrum, getting votes on bills, having regular order, going to committee, voting on amendments, and this place was briefly working again.

Right now, I have never seen it worse, with bills being cooked up in back rooms, being jammed through without going to committee, without amendment, many of which have miserable policies in them. We spent $1.7 trillion in omnibus spending with all sorts of earmarks, all sorts of funding for FBI headquarters, continuation of broken and open borders, continuation of endless wars. We have busted the caps. Less than a year after passing the caps, we have busted the caps.

We then fund $95 billion of additional foreign aid after passing a reauthorization to FISA. I will note: Conservatives jumped in there, and I think we forced it down to a 2-year reauthorization of FISA, so we will get another bite at that apple in 2 years. You are welcome. They are crumbs of freedom and liberty.

I am telling you, if you want to save this country, you need to make sure that we have a Republican Conference that is going to do what they said they were going to do. You need to make sure that the minority of us who are coming to the floor to fight for you are no longer in the minority.

We have a little bit of time. I said good-bye this last weekend to my 89-year-old grandmother. She passed away Sunday morning. I know she is up there with Jesus, no doubt getting a laugh at some of my antics down here. She was a wonderful woman, went to church every Sunday. She lived right.

She, her generation, all who came before her, they didn't fight as she did. She served for 35 years in the Air Force as a civilian at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Neither she, nor any of the other people who wore the uniform, nor any of the 400,000 tombstones at Arlington National Cemetery, nor any of the tombstones that are sitting over in Normandy when we go over there and we celebrate D-Day on June 6, on the 80th anniversary--none of those people gave the last full measure of devotion or are willing to risk the last full measure of devotion to mortgage this country away vote by vote, dollar by dollar, year by year.

We have a duty right now to take our country back because the radical, progressive Democrats and leftists who want to destroy it and who are going around city by city and university by university, they are not the majority. They don't represent a fraction of the people in this country who want to go about their job, honor God, take care of their family, work hard, earn a living, take care of their kids, start a business, achieve the American Dream. I am here to tell you: I am not going anywhere. We are going to take this country back because they don't get to have it.

We have to stand up as a party and do what we said we would do, or we will be in the ash bin of history.

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

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