We Have to Cut Spending
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Arizona battling through as he is recuperating from illness to come down on the floor and make sure that the American people fully understand the fiscal state of our country. He does it well. He does it eloquently, but it is about time we turn it into action as I know the gentleman from Arizona agrees.
My friend from Arizona was holding a chart that said $36 trillion because our country is about to cross the Rubicon of $36 trillion of debt. We will be staring at well over $40 trillion of debt within the next year and a half.
If there is anything that should guide the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, the Republican majority in the United States Senate, and President Trump in the White House, it is that we must stop this disastrous spending of other people's money by the Federal Government in such a way that we are destroying the future of our kids and grandkids.
The problem is, I will say this here tonight and my friend from Arizona will say this, but what are we going to do about it?
Let me just lay out a couple of thoughts about this. As we come out of this historic win by President Trump with Republicans controlling the White House, the House, and the Senate, what are we going to do with it?
Well, I will tell you what we have to do, we have to actually deliver on the promises that we made that we campaigned upon. As my friend from Ohio, Congressman Jim Jordan likes to say, do what we said we would do. It is time. There is no room for excuses.
What are some of the excuses I am already hearing? We don't have 60 votes in the Senate. I was hearing that excuse last summer before we even had the elections. I heard one of my colleagues go on national television and talk about how we can't deport the people that have been released into the United States, backing away from the sign that was on the front of the building at the RNC that said mass deportations.
The American people will remember whether we respond and do what we said we would do.
In Britain, the Tories said we are going to stop all of the illegal immigration. We are going to remove people that came here illegally. They didn't do it, and they were sent to the ash bin of history. They were removed. The United Kingdom right now is struggling. That cannot be where we go as Americans.
President Trump was ushered in with a mandate. Republicans in the House were ushered in with a mandate. Republicans in the Senate were ushered in with a mandate. The mandate was to make the cost of living affordable again for the average American family so they can live their lives, pay their bills, afford a house, afford a car, afford healthcare, afford a school for their kids, and remove their kids from trapped, failing public schools.
The other part of the mandate was to secure the border of the United States, secure our country, restore sovereignty, and remove the people who are illegally and ill-legitimately dumped into the United States lawlessly, illegally by President Biden, Vice President, border czar Kamala Harris, and impeached, disgracefully, Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.
What will we do as Republicans?
It is my view and the view of many in this Chamber that we must immediately secure the border of the United States and provide President Trump what is necessary to do so, both in terms of resources, but also in terms of law.
We, I am proud to say, passed the strongest border security measure we have ever passed a year and a half ago, H.R. 2. We should pass that bill in January. We should send it to the Senate. We should force that debate in the Senate. We should make those seven Democrats have to answer to their constituents about whether they want to secure the border of the United States. We should not be afraid of that.
We should send over a reconciliation package from the House of Representatives that immediately addresses remittances to Mexico. We should take fees on the remittances sent there and other countries around the world when people come to our country illegally and wire money back home, we should tax those remittances. Take that money and use it to pay for the wall, to pay for ICE agents, to pay for Border Patrol.
Apply fees, parole fees, to the parolees that were released unlawfully into the United States with notices to appear in court all the way into the 2030s, make them pay fees, and they can pay those fees and then go through the process or they can leave.
We are going to have to take all of those folks and remove them from the country and in the process, they can pay fees while we wait and figure out their notices to appear that were given to them, I believe, unlawfully. We can use that to pay for the process while we deport criminals, while we deport the people who came here who were got-aways, while we deport the 1 million people who have already been issued orders of removal. We can then line up the people who were given those notices to appear, take those fees, process those claims, and remove the vast majority of them.
We should do all of that as soon as we can in January, but we have got to do that here in the Chamber with a reconciliation package that will empower the President, give him the tools necessary to secure the border, and put pressure on those who are here illegally.
We also need to repeal these subsidies that were in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act that are jacking up the cost of energy and utilities for the vast majority of the American people, empowering our enemies, empowering China, actively engaging in corporate cronyism that are enriching the few at the expense of the many.
I look straight at big corporate America, including some of our folks in Texas in Big Oil and Big Gas that are now saddling up to the trough to take these great big subsidies. Your time is up. It has got to be up because while I have some colleagues here in the Chamber, including on my side of the aisle, who are running around to the microphone talking about how we are going to need to lift the caps, get rid of the caps that are currently in place on the deductions that people can take for State and local taxes, i.e., a Federal subsidy for high-tax jurisdictions, particularly in the northeast, but I will look in the mirror as that includes property taxes in Texas, which are off the charts, embarrassingly so, we shouldn't do that.
The Federal Government should not be subsidizing high-tax jurisdictions. While some of my colleagues here from States that have allowed it to fester to become high-tax jurisdictions, we shouldn't subsidize that.
If we get rid of the cap that was put in place in the 2017 deal that will cost over a trillion dollars over 10 years. Let me put that in perspective.
If we were to renew the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 from President Trump's agenda, according to the Congressional Budget Office, that would cost somewhere over $5 trillion over 10 years, or $500 billion a year for 10 years.
That does not factor in economic growth. There would be some, but the corporate rates are permanent. The provisions in the TCJA, by all objective measures, would not generate the revenue to pay for themselves, so we are going to have to cut spending so that we can leave that money in the hands of the American people as the TCJA set out to do. That means you are going to have to cut the Inflation Reduction Act. We are going to have to do it.
This isn't a debatable proposition, Mr. Speaker. If you want to have anything resembling a deficit neutral, tax reconciliation package, we must cut the Inflation Reduction Act. We must repeal it. We must roll back the abusive student loan forgiveness programs. We must make changes that were dotted throughout the discretionary spending with respect to the IRS expansion, leftover COVID moneys. We should restore nondefense spending to pre-COVID levels, which would save somewhere around $200 billion a year.
My point is, Republicans are going to have to actually put up or shut up. We cannot walk out of here, throw up a board, and say we are going to just pass all of these tax cuts or restore the existing tax cuts and then pretend like we don't need to cut spending at the same time.
We do. We must, and we mustn't remove the tax pay-fors that enabled that bill to pass in the first place, including those limits on the deduction for high-tax jurisdiction State and local tax deductions.
The fact of the matter is, if we are going to serve our country well--I think this is really important for everybody to know.
It is going to be pitched battle for some of us to convince our own Republican Party that we need to fight to get it to even deficit neutral. If we get it to deficit neutral, deficit neutrality, we are still losing $2 trillion a year.
We spend about $6.5 trillion, almost $7 trillion. We bring in about $4.5 trillion to $5 trillion.
My friend from Arizona put up all the charts on the mandatory spending. He is right. We need reforms. We need innovation, but most of all, we need a backbone and a willingness to actually address the problem.
However, if my friends are going to come in in January and say, we are just going to throw out all these tax policies but we are not going to deal with spending, then we are going to leave our country in a worse place.
There are a lot of things we could consider. President Trump has talked about doing tariffs. That would certainly bring in revenue. There are pros and cons to tariffs, and we certainly should consider the pro of significant revenue you can bring in.
Let's be very clear. If you are going to do a tariff, which is a tax, and you are going to tax goods and services that are coming in from overseas, fine. There might be some upsides to that in terms of American manufacturing.
Then we should consider what that impact is on the average, hardworking family. When tariffs were put in place 8 years ago, we then had to pass a bill for $45 billion to bail out farmers.
I am just trying to lay down a marker for my colleagues and for my constituents and for people viewing at home that we have to deliver. To deliver means being serious, and being serious means we must stop spending money we don't have.
We have to balance the budget of the United States, which we have been talking about for four decades. We need to enact good, sensible tax policy that will create growth. It can't be blind. When you are ignoring our duty to cut the size and scope of government and reduce spending, you can't just pretend, throw it out, and say: Oh, this will all pay for itself.
If taxes are cut all the way to zero, I am for it; but stop spending money. I will take bets right now on whether we have the willpower to do the actual cutting that is necessary.
Watch for the games that are played. Oh, we can't get it done in 10 years. Well, let's make it a 4-year deal. If it is a 4-year deal, then maybe you can pay for it. You can afford it. Then what does that do? That sets up another cliff in 4 years.
Do you want to get investment going in the United States? Make low tax rates permanent. Do you want to get capital formation moving? Stop letting the tax rates expire in 2 years, 4 years, or 6 years. Set sensible tax policy, make it permanent, and make it responsible. Then get the hell out of the way of America's innovators, entrepreneurs, inventors, and strong businessmen and businesswomen. I am not sure we are going to do that.
K Street would love to walk in here and say the TCJA has to get done. We need our R&D and expensing. We need to go cut some spending over here. No, no, no, don't cut my subsidies. You have Exxon and Big Oil and Big Gas companies in here saying: No, no, no, I want to keep those subsidies.
Why do they need subsidies? Why are we paying them to build inefficient, nonreliable energy? Why are we subsidizing electronic vehicles which won't dent CO
I have multiple Members of this body saying we have got to lift the SALT cap. A lot of people are saying the tax cuts will pay for themselves. Some will. Some won't. Nobody is saying we should cut spending other than on the margins. That is not going to work. That math will not add up.
The fact is we have great news coming out of the President's transition team with Elon and Vivek and a lot of people around the President, talking about the Department of Government Efficiency. For what it is worth, I would prefer it be called the department of government elimination. I think that would be better. I am not looking for an efficient government. I am looking for a much smaller government.
I love what I am hearing out of Elon and Vivek and others that they want to slash and burn all the waste, fraud, and abuse. It is overdue. We need to fire the bureaucrats. We need to downsize and cut the bureaucracy.
Whatever programs should exist under the Constitution should be small, minimal. Blocks should be granted to the States. Get the Federal Government out of the way. Let the Federal Government do its job. Secure the border. Secure our communities by removing illegal aliens who are dangerous. Get people off of the social welfare States. Get every person who is here illegally, anybody who is here and not a citizen, off of the social welfare State. Strengthen our military. Destroy the woke policies and DEI and critical race theory that are killing the military. Get rid of it.
End endless wars. Rebuild our military to be modern but sparingly used. Take care of our veterans by giving them what they need to go to doctors and communities rather than a big, bloated bureaucracy that I think is now the fifth biggest line item on our budget.
These are all things we can do if we have the willpower to do it. Reform Medicaid. Reform Medicare. Do the things that we need to help the average American.
What are we going to do about healthcare? My friend, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who was nominated by the President, talks about making America healthy again. He is right. Much like the corruption in our energy world where big corporate America and the big wind and solar are getting big subsidies from the government to build inefficient energy, so, too, are insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies getting rich off of taxpayers, getting subsidies, getting mandates, getting monopolies to roll right over the American people. All while we have collusion between USDA and NIH and CDC and all the rules and regulations they make that subsidies through the SNAP program, subsidizing sugary drinks, subsidizing processed food, making America unhealthy, making them sicker. Then they are prescribing medicine, overprescribing medicine, over-vaccinating so they get 50 shots by the time you are 20 for 14 or 15 vaccines--overmedicating people, medicating them for depression.
Then they are taking away their ability to go to the doctor of their choice because they have given all the power to insurance bureaucrats who tell them what their healthcare looks like. They have given all the power to big, monopolistic hospital corporations buying up regional hospitals and making it impossible for physicians to own hospitals while they allow private equity firms to own hospitals.
What are we doing? We are destroying the doctor-patient relationship. We are destroying American healthcare. If we want to save it, we need to embrace healthcare freedom.
In our reconciliation package, we must be aggressive in expansive health savings accounts, expansive direct primary care. Pull out the bias toward the employer-provided care by allowing employers to give employees the same subsidy for the same tax break into a health savings account and an American citizen who doesn't work for a big corporation can put their money for the same tax break in the same health savings account.
They can take that and go to the market and pay for a doctor and pay for medicine. They can go to direct primary care. They can get insurance in a market that is not overly regulated so they can actually get healthcare. Right now the American people aren't getting it. The American people are getting screwed. They are getting fatter. They are getting sicker. They are unhealthy because of government bureaucracy, because of government regulation, and because we refused, as Republicans, to deliver on what we have been saying for three decades: We would get government out of the way.
It is not about repealing ObamaCare. It is about repealing the alphabet soup of government regulation that is constraining the ability for innovation, the entrepreneurial spirit, the ability of doctors and patients to be able to provide the care that is necessary.
We can do it. We just have to decide to do it. We are going to have one or two or three bites at this apple early this year to deliver for the American people.
ObamaCare was passed on reconciliation. If you are familiar with COBRA, COBRA is that thing that allows you to extend between your employment, when you get a gap in employment, to get insurance coverage. Do you know why it is called COBRA? It is the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act.
COBRA was passed on a reconciliation bill. We do this all the time. Frankly, it is not the best way to make policy. We need to use the reconciliation tool in the House Chamber and send over to the Senate transformational policy changes, not nibbling around the edges.
It is time to transform this country. If we don't do it now, we are going to lose it. If we don't constrain spending now, if we don't set the trajectory of lower debt now, we will not have a dollar. We will not have a strong economy. If we don't set our country on the trajectory to healthcare freedom now, we will lose it. We will be jammed with single-payer healthcare and left with a life of begging some bureaucrat in an insurance company being run by people on Wall Street that are basically being told what to do by government bureaucrats. That is how you get your healthcare in a worse-than- single-payer system if we don't act right now.
If we don't act right now, we are not going to secure the border permanently. We are going to give lip service. We can't do that. It is not enough to reinstate remain in Mexico. It is not enough to reinstate title 42. It is not enough to stop the flow at the border to 30,000 instead of 180,000. If I recall, when President Trump ran in 2016, and he said build the wall, that is what the numbers were.
Republicans have to remember to not let them shift the Overton window and then beg for the crumbs to go partly back. If we repeal the Inflation Reduction Act fully right now, we just restore the status quo from 2022. I didn't run for Congress in 2018 to get my butt kicked in 2022 with a crappy bill and then beg to try to get it back to the place right before the crappy bill.
We can't do that. I didn't come here to say that we are $36 trillion in debt, man, God bless America. I really hope that we are only going to be $59 trillion in debt instead of $62 trillion in debt in 10 years.
I just made those numbers up. They are probably not even close.
My point is that we have to transform the country. We have American people right now who are inspired, inspired for change. They sent us here to secure the border, not to make excuses. They sent us here to stop the flow, deport the people illegitimately put in our country, freeze legal immigration, modernize our system, figure out what our labor supply is, and figure out what the workforce looks like.
We need to train American citizens. Let those citizens go to trade academies to learn how to do the jobs we need. We need to get all of these American workers who are sitting on the couch who are upside-down in the workforce while we import people but American citizens aren't working, fix that, and then talk to me about more immigration.
Don't come in here with your Chamber of Commerce talking points. I don't want to hear it. I am sick of it. The Chamber of Commerce and all of big corporate America and Wall Street have been screwing this country for two or three decades. They have. It is because of them and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal that we haven't fixed our border over the last three decades. If we don't do our job now, we are going to be sent to the ashbin of history as Republicans.
Secure the border--no excuses. Mass deportations--no excuses. Freeze immigration. Fix the system. Pass budgets that balance and cut spending. Reduce the debt. Reduce the bureaucracy. Cut the bureaucrats. Fire the people who need to be fired. Don't make excuses about why you can't do it.
Give the American people the healthcare freedom they deserve. Give them expanded health savings accounts. Give them access to direct primary care. Give them access to real insurance products. Allow them to choose.
Don't keep empowering big corporate America. Don't keep empowering pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies. Empower Americans. Empower doctors. Empower entrepreneurs. Empower small businesses. Empower American energy.
Repeal the Inflation Reduction Act. Stop subsidizing China. Stop subsidizing Big Oil with the subsidies they are taking on wind and solar.
President Trump is creating a team that wants to go through and dismantle the bureaucratic state. God bless him for it.
Tom Homan as the border czar, God bless him. He is a good friend, and I expect him to do a great job.
Bobby Kennedy, Jr., I don't agree with him on everything. I don't. He knows that. We talk about it. I do expect him to challenge the status quo. I expect him to try to make America healthy again. I expect him to try to make sure that the American people have the truth about the food they eat, the vaccines they take, and the medicine they take.
End the corruption and the revolving door between all the entities that are making money and the people in the government that are helping them make money while we don't get the truth on what food we are putting in our body, what medicines we are putting in our body, and then free up the American people.
Tulsi Gabbard, a good friend, was herself targeted by the intelligence community. I hope she will break that down.
We will have Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor.
Brendan Carr at the FCC--he believes in free speech, but more importantly in stopping Big Tech stomping on our rights.
Marco Rubio is nominated as Secretary of State.
Matt Gaetz at the Attorney General's Office in the Department of Justice.
We need people who are going to root out corruption, who are going to root out all of the weaponized state over in the bureaucracy.
However, the President can't do it alone. We are Article I. We are the people's House. We have an obligation in this body to do the job the American people sent us here to do. Each of us represents 750,000 people. I represent 750,000 Texans. I answer to them; I answer to God; and I answer to the Constitution. That is it. I don't answer to party leadership. I don't answer to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. I answer to them.
That should guide us. We should come together so that we are all responding to the people who sent us here to change this town. No more doing the same old thing. The time is up. We cannot look at our kids and grandkids and believe that we are going to pass down a country to them if we continue to do the same old thing.
We have been given an opportunity, and we should take it. I do not want to have to give another speech on the floor of the House in which I say to ``name one thing.'' I want to be able to say: ``Name a 100 things that we have done for the American people. Name a 100 things that we have accomplished.''
Those things should be shrinking government, cutting spending, empowering people, restoring liberty, securing the country, doing the things the Constitution gave us the power to do--nothing more, nothing less. That is our obligation. That is our mandate.
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