Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in true opposition to the legislation.

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Mr. ROY. The last time we moved all 12 appropriations bills through the House, I believe, was in FY 2010. The last time that we did not have to use a continuing resolution to be able to fund government, I believe, was 1997. I think four times in my lifetime have we been able to pass all 12 appropriations bills through both bodies and get them signed by the President of the United States.

This institution is failing. It is failing to do the one core thing it is supposed to try to figure out what to do, and that isn't the spending bills. It is actually defending the United States of America, securing the border of the United States, doing what the Constitution actually prescribes, what the preamble lays out, securing the blessings of liberty. We are not doing that.

We end up in a vicious circle every single year, the same vicious circle. The American people are watching, and they are wondering why on Earth cannot the 435 people sent here to represent them figure out how to do what every other family and business and nonprofit in the United States has to do?

The short answer is because we can and do print money. We irresponsibly continue to spend money that we do not have, that we have not collected, and we continue to retreat to the corners of our safe political spaces and hide behind them in order to try to sell something to the American people.

My colleagues on this side of the aisle tend to hide behind national defense and say, well, we must do this, and therefore we must spend more money that we don't have in order to accomplish the goal of defending the United States which, by the way, I would question whether we are actually defending the United States when our borders are not secure.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have never met a program they don't want to advance to make another promise that we can't fully honor to the American people in the form of some additional welfare payment or additional bunch of free stuff, but yet we never pay for any of this, not a dime.

We are taking in $4.5 to $5 trillion, and we are spending $6.5 to $7 trillion. What are we doing? I mean, it is absurd. The American people look at us and ask what on Earth is wrong in Washington. We end up back at the same spot every single year.

This year, the Speaker put forward a proposal that would have the continuing resolution extend into 2025 and then would have guaranteed that we know that only American citizens vote in American elections, in Federal elections.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to dismiss that as an issue that is not a problem, nonexistent, despite the data rolling in from States with their limited tools to go determine citizenship.

We had the secretary of state of Florida testify in front of the Constitution and Limited Government Subcommittee that they don't have the tools they need. They had to sue the Federal Government to get the limited tools they are using. Other States, Texas, identified people who were on the rolls that were noncitizens. We know it is a real issue.

Give us this simple measure that just reinforces existing law to ensure that issue, and we have violent opposition from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. Then, inexplicably, a handful of people on this side of the aisle wanted to oppose that measure out of some sort of deference to opposition to a CR and then set the circumstances for where we are right now, today, where we find ourselves with the Speaker putting a short-term CR into December, which was the natural outcome, the predictable outcome of the opposition of the plan put forward by the Speaker 2 weeks ago.

It is more of the same games that get bemoaned by the very people complaining about the games. You can't complain that the games are going on and then play games. That is the truth.

I appreciate the Appropriations Committee chairman for working and trying to work across the Conference, across the entire body, to figure out how to get something done.

We passed 5 appropriations bills--better than none, not 12. Last year, we passed 7 appropriations bills--better than none, not all 12. The Senate, led by our Democratic colleagues over there, passed zero, not one. Not one appropriations bill has the Senate sent out of that Chamber to this Chamber.

Who is it who is serious about wanting to do our job? I will say, despite my publicly stated concerns about some decisions on this side of the aisle, the truth of the matter is that had our Democratic colleagues been in charge of this Chamber, what we would have seen is a massive increase in spending. The nondefense spending would have gone up, whereas we have kept it flat. The defense spending that did go up we paid for out of the IRS expansion. We pulled that back so you didn't have IRS agents in your living rooms if you are a middle-class taxpayer.

We took COVID money and paid for that defense increase and were able to stop what the Democrats would have done, which would have passed legislation in the name of border security that would codify that dangerous release of individuals onto the streets of the United States that have led directly to the death of Americans, Americans like Jocelyn Nungaray, whose beautiful 27-year-old mom testified in the Judiciary Committee because her daughter went missing after she put her to bed on Sunday night and then, on Monday, she finds out that she was gagged, bound, and raped in Houston, Texas, and murdered.

Alexis Nungaray is a hero and had the courage to come testify about that, about what happened to her daughter. Are we doing anything about that? No. Our Democrat colleagues refuse.

Instead, they want to hide behind a bill in the Senate, which they couldn't even get out of the Democrat-controlled Senate, that never had any chance of passage. They want to say somehow that that was a grand bipartisan bill because--what?--a couple of Republican Senators had a couple of conversations with them about it.

The bill had no chance of moving, and that bill would have codified Kamala Harris', the border czar's, mass-release policies into the United States.

Laken Riley is dead. Jocelyn Nungaray is dead. Kayla Hamilton is dead. Rachel Morin is dead. I could go down the laundry list of Americans who have died at the hands of people released into the United States by this administration.

I could go down a laundry list of examples of noncitizens voting and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle not caring about it, wanting to continue to fund an executive branch that is refusing to follow the law, blatantly disregarding asylum laws, blatantly disregarding parole laws to endanger the American people.

That is why some of my colleagues here, by the way, didn't want to support a CR. They don't want to fund an executive branch that is at war with the people. If you are a Texan and now increasingly across the country, like Laken Riley in Georgia or Kayla and Rachel in Maryland, you can't help but believe that this administration is, in fact, at war with your well-being.

You have gangs now operating in Dallas and gangs operating in Colorado. You have expansive criminal activity and fentanyl pouring into our streets. We are not doing anything about it as the Article I branch that is sent here to check the Article II executive branch.

Here we are again, kicking the can down the road, to quote my friend--and he is my friend--the gentleman from Kentucky, Thomas Massie, with whom I disagree on our tactical strategy with respect to the CR plus SAVE Act.

The CR plus SAVE Act was designed for a reason. We should secure American elections. We should guarantee that only American citizens vote in American elections. We should not be kicking the can down the road to December 20, a mere 5 days before Christmas.

That is what this town always does because this town is built around K Street. It is built around people believing they need to spend more money, and when we do that, then we just take another chunk out of the hide that is the fabric of this country, racking up more debt.

Mr. Speaker, 2 years ago, in 2022, a $1.7 trillion omnibus bill was passed when? December 23. That is not an accident. It is by design. It is on purpose. That is what people in this town want. They want the pressure so that everybody will clap, get on their planes, and go home to open their gifts and be around the Christmas tree with their kids while they destroy the very country that they are here to represent.

That is what will happen unless we fight it. Now, we are going to have to spend a lot of time--and I will--fighting against whatever massive omnibus bill is tried to jam down our throats on December 20 before Christmas so that everybody can enjoy their jet fumes and role out of D.C. Last time, we threw in $45 billion for Ukraine for good measure in that massive omnibus spending bill right before Christmas.

We shouldn't be in this place. We shouldn't be in this position. I think the Speaker was correct. I think the Committee on Appropriations chair was correct in working with the Speaker, and our body was correct in putting forward a bill that would have extended spending into next year.

Allow the next President and allow the next Congress to deal with this issue while we try to preserve and protect American elections. That is what we should have done.

Mr. Speaker, I would note that the reason that there is a question about veterans funding is because, despite the observation and protest of many at least on this side of the aisle that the PACT Act, which was passed, I believe, 2 years ago, was not going to be able to deal with the claims against it and would create funding problems in addition to this massive mandatory bloc of funding. This was all laid bare, and now here we are and we have to pay the piper.

You have to say, okay, we passed the PACT Act with this kind of open- ended amount of funding all in the name of doing something righteous that we all want to do, to care for veterans who were harmed with burn pits, but we did it the worst way possible because we are Congress, and that is what we do. We identify a problem, and we come up with literally the worst possible solution you can come up with. Then the American people kind of look at you and go, well, here we are again.

You have to go write a check like we did last week for $3 billion, and then guess what happens? The CBO, in all of its infinite wisdom, will come forward and actually, with a straight face, say something about the baseline and how that $3 billion that we needed to appropriate really doesn't cost anything, doesn't score. That is what your CBO will do because that is what it just did.

Guess what? The $12 billion that we are talking about in the additional veterans money that we know we are going to go ahead and fund, as the gentleman was just referring to, CBO will say the same thing. They will say it again. They will say that mandatory spending at baseline is already built in, that this doesn't cost anything. Then why do we have to appropriate it? Why do we come down here and write the check?

This is why you are $35.6 trillion in debt, Mr. Speaker, because nobody here is serious. They are literally not serious. If we were serious, then we would say that we messed up when we passed the PACT Act, and it is now costing more than they said it was going to cost.

If this were my home, I would say that I thought that if I spent this amount of money, it was going to all be fine. I bought the house, the mortgage, interest rates. Now, it costs more. Do I just walk away from that? Do I just go print some money to go pay for my bills at my house?

That is what we do. We just say let's go to the magic tree, print more money for the $3 billion that we messed up, and then we will go back and do it again and say: Well, $12 billion next year. Don't worry. It won't score.

Nobody in America knows what the hell that means. What it means is you are racking up more debt because of our incompetence. That is what that means, and it is done in the name of veterans because you are not allowed to oppose a bill if the word ``veteran'' is in the title. You are not allowed to oppose a bill if the words ``teacher'' or ``firefighter'' or ``police officer'' are in the title.

Do you know how many bills last week we passed on suspension, racking up more billions because it had something in there about autism or something in there for a study or more funding for something else because you don't dare oppose it because you put something like that in the title? Then all of the people are left holding the bag.

At what point are we going to actually be serious? My friend, the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, Jodey Arrington, posed this question of the Committee on the Budget a little bit earlier: Are we ever going to come together and have an actual conversation, or are we just going to say every tax cut, no matter what it is, magically pays for itself?

Let me give a little hint to Republicans: They don't all pay for themselves. They don't. It is simple math. Some tax cuts do because they create economic growth. Some tax cuts don't.

Can we be serious about that on this side of the aisle?

Can my colleagues on the other side of the aisle admit that there is any limit at all to another feel-good program that they want to pass to be able to go buy votes because they put a nice little title in the bill? I doubt it. That is why we are $35.6 trillion in debt.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time, and I do say with respect to the Appropriations Committee--and by the way, a shout-out to their staff processing a lot of amendments this year, the hard work of the Appropriations Committee. When you process 1,000-odd amendments or whatever it has been, it is an extraordinary amount of work. I am deeply appreciative of the Appropriations Committee.

Those amendments are important. They are an important part of the process. I am proud of the fact that we process amendments.

I am proud of the bills that we produced, the five bills that we passed.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are not wrong. There are some divisions on this side of the aisle. You know what, I am proud of those divisions, too, because at least we are having a debate. At least we are having a full-throated debate about how we can try to get out of this mess while our colleagues on the other side of the aisle bury their heads in the sand.

We are trying to figure out how you can possibly continue to spend money like this without consequences. That is why those 14, 16 Republicans opposed the CR, plus SAVE. I understand why. I am sympathetic to some of their arguments, but I don't believe that you can come down here, do that, and then complain about the result of where we now find ourselves, which is now we have before us the continuing resolution into December, which many of us wanted to avoid. It was the logical outcome of the tactics chosen by a handful of my colleagues.

I am proud of the Republican Conference. When we have been united over the last 20 months, we have done some extraordinary things. We have reopened the process with amendments in the appropriations process. We have passed appropriations bills, which we hadn't been doing for a while. We did pass a budget out of the Budget Committee. I wish we had brought it to the floor. We did pass H.R. 2, one of the strongest border security measures we have ever passed. It was vehemently opposed by our colleagues on the other side of the aisle while they hide behind legislation that had no chance of passing out of the Senate.

We passed strong National Defense Authorization Acts. We were able to get real reforms, real changes in terms of policies through the National Defense Authorization Act, pulling back on DEI, pulling back on the excessive climate policies of this administration because we went through that amendment process both for appropriations and the NDAA.

I am proud of those things.

I am proud of passing a strong ICC sanction bill to go after the International Criminal Court that is trying to go after and make a war criminal out of our friend Prime Minister Netanyahu who came and addressed this Chamber. The Vice President of the United States wouldn't even come here to the Chamber and stand behind the Prime Minister.

I am proud of doing that.

I am proud of standing alongside Israel. I am proud of my colleagues coming together to do those things and fight for the American people and ensure that nondefense spending stayed flat, defense spending went up, but it was paid for.

I am proud of culling back on the IRS.

We have done a lot of good things when we were united and when we have done it.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are committed to spending money we don't have. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are committed to wide-open borders, endangering the American people. They are committed to wide-open borders and allowing noncitizens to vote, and they wouldn't even allow us to move the legislation on the appropriations bills to try to make sure we solved that problem.

Chuck Schumer has a bill right now, the SAVE Act, that he won't bring to the floor of the Senate. That is a choice.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are for open borders, spending money we don't have, watering down our national defense with woke priorities, DEI, and critical race theory. That is all true.

I am proud of the debate being had on this side of the aisle, sometimes with strong disagreement, but we are, in fact, each one-four hundred and thirty-fifth of one-half of one-third of this Federal Government, so we have to figure out how to come here and figure out how to work together to get this done.

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