Discussion About Department of Government Efficiency

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Arizona. I didn't get a chance to get down here in time during the time that was set aside to honor her service, but I am glad I was down here and was able to get down at the tail end of it to hear her speech.

It has been an honor. We were classmates. We came in together, served together.

I remember when the gentlewoman told us that she wasn't running again. I found her on the floor, and I said: So, what is going on? Why aren't you staying with us? And she said one word, family. That is the right answer.

You have been a great patriot. Congress is far better for having had you in it, and we will miss you. We know you won't be too far away, and we hope to see you here.

God bless you. Spend time with your family. I feel the pain of being away as you do. I will be very happy for you, but I will give you a few floor speeches to watch every once in a while here just for fun.

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor tonight because there is a lot of talk going on right now about what has been referred to as DOGE, this effort by our friends Elon and Vivek with respect to the Department of Government Efficiency.

I am not 100 percent clear yet what that looks like in terms of formality, how the incoming President, President Trump, plans to establish it and set it up.

We had some great meetings today with those two men and Members of Congress who are interested in facilitating their work.

My only problem with the named Department of Government Efficiency is I would refer to it as the department of government elimination. I think we would be a lot better off if we were eliminating large swaths of that which has been unconstitutionally created to rack up $36 trillion in debt.

I think what merits observation is what this body needs to do to actually deliver on what people are, I think, to some degree across the country, getting excited about with respect to the prospect of the brain power that has been assembled around this department, DOGE, or this effort. Congress has to actually do our part.

We had a meeting today. There was a lot of conversation back and forth, and there were a whole lot of Members of Congress who were looking to them to say to please do this. One Member said to please help give us the fortitude, the spine, to be able to deliver on removing and cutting this waste in government.

Look, to be very clear, the use of technology, crowdsourcing, AI by these guys and other smart people around the country, the use of technology, observe it, figure out what to do with it, great. I am for it.

I support their efforts. I support efforts by the incoming President and his staff, his administration, to, frankly, massively slash and burn the bureaucracy that is sucking away, frankly, the life of the American people through overregulation, overspending, and driving up inflation because we keep spending more and more money in this vast bureaucracy. You can't even keep up with it.

I have a bill that I introduced a few years ago, the Count the Crimes to Cut Act. Do you know why? Nobody can tell me how many crimes there are. Literally, nobody can tell me how many crimes there are in the Federal Government. Does anybody see that as a problem? We literally don't even know how many--forget cataloging them all, organizing them all, figuring out how much of them are repeated or overburdensome or perhaps out of line. We don't even know, and I can't even get that bill through the committee and down to the floor. Members of this body don't want to know how many crimes there are so we can maybe go observe and try to do something about it?

On this score is where I believe Elon and Vivek can add massive value. They don't necessarily need us to pass something to go count the crimes. They can just use technology, AI, crowdsourcing, work and put a whole lot of effort into doing that because, frankly, a lot of people don't understand this, but we are pretty short-staffed here as it relates to our offices on Capitol Hill dealing with constituents services, dealing with the stuff we deal with all the time. Having an army of people and being able to leverage that is going to be really important.

Now, let's cut to the chase. The fact of the matter is, too many Members of the United States Congress are all too excited to hide behind Elon and Vivek to do the work they are supposed to do. That is the truth. I saw colleagues going to the mike thanking them saying, oh, please save us from the scourge of bureaucracy.

Well, what the hell is our job? We actually do have separation of powers. We actually are Article I. We actually do have the ability to use the power of the purse to constrain the leviathan and the executive branch. We just never do it ever.

If we dare try, oh, the scorn, oh, the look from your colleagues when you dare come down and object to a consent request, as I did, for $19 billion. That seems trivial now, doesn't it?

A unanimous consent request was being offered on the floor. I was at the airport. I got word that they were going to do this by consent. I thought, wait a minute, they are going to pass $19 billion by unanimous consent on the floor of the House, and we are not there, and it is not paid for.

Well, it might be meritorious in some respects. I don't know, but I would have to look at the funding and what it is going to be used for in Texas. There are people hurting in Texas, but we have to pay for it. We certainly don't pass things for $19 billion by consent.

Mr. Speaker, I got in my car, canceled the flight, got in a car, an Uber, came back here to the Hill, and ran down on the floor, and I objected.

Do you know what happened back in Texas? The usual suspects, the newspapers, the editorial boards, the people who like to have wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the wine-sipping crowds of the elites in the cities in Austin, they are all like: Oh, you are the devil. This is horrible. How could you do this?

A funny thing happened, and this is my message to my colleagues, my constituents, even though, again, my district wasn't as directly impacted by Harvey, fair, but my constituents and other people around the State of Texas took notice that maybe if a Member of Congress says there ought to be some principles that guide what we do and that there is a right way to do things, maybe our country would be better off. Maybe we wouldn't have $36 trillion of debt.

I would mention right now, in that very same context, we are currently considering a disaster supplemental bill again. Every year, we consider some sort of disaster supplemental bill. Why is that? That is because the world has events. They have always had events. Galveston was hit at the turn of the last century. It was wiped out. There have been floods. There have been fires. There have been constant issues, tornadoes. This isn't all related to climate change. It is over the course of the history of mankind. In fact, our use of technology makes us able to manage those better, our use of energy. We can manage that better by abundant, reliable energy.

What happens is every year there is something that strikes at our heart. There was Katrina in 2005, Ike, Harvey, what happened in Hawaii. Go down the list of things that we care about. We are in a massive drought in Texas, a massive drought.

We have all sorts of different things that pop up. So here we are, and we have $113 billion that has been put forward from the administration under the name of disaster relief.

There are all manners of things in that bill, and we are looking at those things: replenish the disaster relief fund, what we call the DRF, $40 billion; $16 billion for some stuff on defense; another pot of money for farmers who have had issues across the country related to disaster and otherwise; and go down the list to the tune of $111 billion or $113 billion.

It is not paid for. It is just another check-writing exercise, but it is the writing of a check by printing of money because that is what we do. There is no limiting principle.

My question for anybody watching this is: What do you think the limiting principle ought to be for the elected Representatives you send here to represent you? Is it, well, man, that is a really sympathetic thing; write the check. Is that our limiting principle? ``Chip, there are people hurting in North Carolina.'' Yes, I know. I pray for them. We try to support organizations like Samaritan's Purse and others that help.

I have had colleagues like Cory Mills who went in early trying to deal with disaster relief. The last time I checked, the State of North Carolina is not a Third World country that has no resources or abilities. They have a very robust economy and a very strong State.

Are they unable to issue bonds?

Are they unable to find ways to come up with their own dollars to build their own infrastructure and rebuild?

The State of Texas when we have a calamity--the State of Texas is literally the eighth biggest economy in the world. Just Texas is the eighth largest economy in the world. Other than immediate disaster relief using the resources of the National Guard or the resources at FEMA where you have an actual emergency, where you have got to move people and help them deal with being in floods, we all help each other out. Send the resources, yes, Governors, go help.

However, we are now 1 month later, 2 months later.

Why is the State of Texas not able to deal with a disaster?

Are we unable to deal with it?

We have, I think, almost a $400 billion biennial budget, i.e., roughly a $200 billion a year budget in Texas.

So is Texas, the eighth largest economy, are we not able to deal with disasters?

I think we can. I think most States in this country can. I think most of us can do what we need to do.

The Federal Government doesn't need to be an ATM, but that is what we are turning it into.

If there isn't a limiting principle on printing money, then how can DOGE be successful?

Someone explain to me how all the efforts by Elon, all of the efforts by Vivek, and all of the efforts of the incoming Office of Management and Budget and President Trump, if this body, if this Congress, if this Republican majority does nothing but do the same old thing we have always done, which is come down here and write checks that have no backing, we are literally the Fed just printing money, then how can we possibly limit the size, the scope, and the growth of the Federal Government?

In other words, Mr. Speaker, look in the mirror. Don't look for a fiscal savior. Don't look for salvation for the future of the country's well-being with some folks over in the executive branch or who are friends with the executive branch who are going to provide us great information. Be grateful for it, but remember when we go through the appropriations process, it is our job. They can make the executive branch more efficient, yes, but we are the ones who create these departments and create these programs. We are supposed to authorize them, but we don't.

The Homeland Security Department was created over 20 years ago. We have never reauthorized it. It is insane. There are 200 and something thousand employees at the Department of Homeland Security. We have never reauthorized it. That is our job, but all we do is sit around and shrug our shoulders and say: Well, man, have you been to the mountains of Western North Carolina? It is just awful.

We have to write that check.

What if I say: Okay, fine. God bless these awesome Americans. They need assistance. Yeah, fine, you don't have to pay for it. Write the check.

Then what?

Do we write the next check?

Do we just keep printing money for everybody's illness?

Mr. Speaker, do you know that right now under FEMA we are using FEMA emergency dollars to pay for COVID-related burials?

Why? Why?

It is because somebody declared an energy at some point, the administration was given large pots of money, and now everybody just shrugs and walks away.

The fact of the matter is the President, President Trump, was elected in, in today's time, what you could describe as a landslide. In today's divided world with what we call the trifecta, Republicans will control the House, and Republicans will control the Senate. They are pretty thin majorities in both Chambers.

The question that will be for Republicans is: What are we going to do? Will we deliver?

Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to you that we are not going to truly deliver unless at least two things are true, and I think there are three, four, or five, but at least two things are true.

One, we fully secure the border and undo the damage caused by the open borders of the last 4-plus years; and two, we stop spending money we don't have. If we can't do those two things, then we won't have a country left.

Mr. Speaker, I am not sitting here telling you that I think we can balance the $2 trillion deficit in 1 year. I think that would be difficult to continue to have economic growth and do what we need to do. However, I am telling you, Mr. Speaker, that we need to actually be serious because I would say to my fellow Republicans, I have said that we need to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which is subsidizing Chinese wind and solar. It is now putting American companies on the hook, and they are wanting to get the big drug high of getting more money and more subsidies.

We are now turning ourselves away from what is the strength of the reliable American oil and gas industry. We are driving up the cost of goods and driving up inflation all under the Inflation Reduction Act.

My view is, and the view of most Americans, and I promise you, virtually everybody in this Chamber--not all--we ran on repealing the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, ending those subsidies, returning to market forces determining the best reliable energy and, importantly, stop spending money we don't have for the subsidies to enrich the Chinese and enrich our enemies who undermine our own well-being.

A handful of my colleagues signed a letter saying that they don't want to do that.

Let me just posit: What if I am successful?

What if we are successful and we repeal it?

What have we done?

We have returned to the status quo of 2022.

Basically, on that issue I am begging to return to the halcyon days of old in 2022 when everything was great, deficits were great, and everything was wonderful.

I am being sarcastic.

So if I am successful, I fight, and I struggle for all the people who don't want to tell their big corporations ``no,'' who are now hooked on the subsidies, because that is what is going to happen, including Texas, I am looking at you, Texas, all your big oil and gas companies are getting on the hook because they like free money. It ain't free, by the way. They like subsidies they can turn into current-day profits at the expense of your children's future. It is because they don't care because they will get a good earnings report, and they will make money now.

However, the debt will keep going up and the dollar will keep getting weakened and inflation will keep being real.

So if we can do it, if we can repeal it, if we are successful, then all we will do is rewind the clock to 2022. If we return to pre-COVID spending, Mr. Speaker, all you do is return the clock to 2020. That would basically save us $200 billion a year.

Repealing the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and ending those subsidies would save us, oh, probably about $70 billion a year over 10 years.

What if we secure the border tomorrow?

Now, mind you, Mr. Speaker, securing the border even under President Trump meant we had 30,000 or so a month still coming across the border. Let's just say we secure the border.

Now what are we doing with the, what, 10 million people or so who are now in our country that weren't?

Okay, let's repatriate them.

How many will we repatriate?

We would have to repatriate them all just to return to the status quo.

Mr. Speaker, my point of all this is: If you want to transform the country, then we need transformative policies, and you need a Congress willing to do it. You need a Congress willing to actually deliver on what they said they would do.

This is a refrain I have offered in a number of speeches here on the floor of the House. They are not always that well received. I gave a speech saying: Name one thing. Some of my colleagues got a little mad, as I said, the best way to do that is to do the thing, deliver.

However, we are $36 trillion in debt. If we do everything I just said, if we renew the Trump tax cuts from 2017 and we extend them so that everybody's taxes--again, I am going back to my point, go to the status quo. If we do all of those things, then we will be struggling just to get to deficit neutrality on the issue, meaning we will still be at $2 trillion of debt a year.

Now, if Elon, Vivek and company can find a bunch of waste and we can cut that out and then we can use that to either bring back savings or maybe cut down on drugs or take that money and use it for additional things that would be better, say, the Pentagon. Okay, that is great, maybe we will save a little bit.

However, if you save 30 percent of our discretionary budget, let's say they go and they hack out just mountains of waste, fire bureaucrats, and one-third, 33 percent, of the discretionary budget just goes away, poof, that is about $600 billion. We are running about a $2 trillion deficit. I am just trying to put this in perspective.

I am for that.

Do you know why I am for it, Mr. Speaker?

Fire the bureaucrats, end the weaponization, end the waste, and end the people who are targeting us. Make them have to go out and get a real job. I am for all of those things, and our country would be better off. If we do it, then we will earn the right to deal with mandatory spending.

I said to some of my colleagues today in a meeting when Vivek and Elon were here, and I pointed out that we have a $113 billion bill on the floor for the disaster supplemental. I am pointing out that it is not going to be paid for. I am pointing out it is going to continue to perpetuate waste. I am talking about a bike path in Alaska, COVID spending across the country, and I think a church parking lot in Vermont. I mean, I could go down a laundry list of things that the current FEMA emergency funding is being used for, Mr. Speaker. Then we are going to just throw another $40 billion at it after we have been criticizing FEMA all through the fall about how incompetent they are and how bad they are.

We will say: Do you know what your reward is?

Here is more money, keep doing your bureaucratic thing. Don't worry, Elon and Vivek will save us. That is because we sure as hell aren't going to save us.

That is what we do.

My perspective is we should look in the mirror. We should do our job and constrain that spending. Don't give it to bureaucrats. Do our part. Find the savings and do what we can do to make it work.

However, do you know what my colleagues said?

My colleagues said: Well, Chip, the discretionary spending doesn't matter because of the point I said a minute ago. If you cut one-third of it, then you save $600 billion, and you still have a $2 trillion deficit.

Why?

It is because we have made promises for at least one-half a century on Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid and increasingly on veterans' benefits that we can't keep up with. Then Republicans go around pounding their chest on tax policy: We will cut taxes so we will create economic growth. We will bring in revenue, and we will ignore the deficits.

I am for the tax cuts, but if you are not doing the spending cuts, then you end up with $36 trillion in debt.

Republicans need to look in the mirror. If my colleagues think we are going to just waltz in to a reconciliation debate in January and it is all going to be kumbaya because K Street wants tax cuts and because certain people think that they are going to get their bread buttered, but we are not going to focus on deficits, then I would just suggest that maybe they think long and hard about the calendar that the House put out whereby we are only here 3 days a week, 3 weeks a month, and maybe we should follow the Senate calendar, which to his great credit the incoming leader put out, 5 days a week every week for the first 3 months of the year.

We were elected to do something different, and by goodness, we are going to do something different. We must. We have no choice. Failure is not an option.

I will make just one other point in closing here as we deal with all of that on the spending issue. I watched the Senate Republicans doing this dance of hand-wringing and concern about the President's nominees.

The President was elected by the American people to change this town. He has nominated people who want to change this town. Mr. Speaker, if you want to go turn over every rock of everybody's past and then say that they are not capable or they don't deserve to serve in a position like Secretary of Defense as is currently occurring with the targeted attacks on Pete Hegseth, then maybe you should take the board out of your eye.

I am not saying that we don't have standards that are appropriate in the advise-and-consent process. We do, and we should. I am a believer in that separation of powers. However, the President also is deserving of the courtesy and the respect of his own party, in particular, of the individuals he is nominating to change the town.

He was elected to change it.

You don't like Tulsi because she is a Democrat?

Get over it. She is not anymore. She is a Republican now, but she was. In this Chamber, I served with her, she was a Democrat.

You don't like Bobby Kennedy because he is from an iconic Democrat family?

Get over it. I don't agree with Bobby Kennedy on a lot of different things, but I agree with him that we need to fundamentally change our healthcare system and that we need to make America healthy again.

I agree with Tulsi that we have been involved in endless wars and endless conflict that is draining our resources and undermining our men and women in uniform.

I agree with Pete Hegseth that wokeism is destroying the United States military. I agree with Pete that we don't need to have endless wars. I agree with Pete that we ought to have somebody who has served in battle and understands it who is at the top of the Pentagon, rather than the brass, who, frankly, often like the ribbons more than actually doing the work that is necessary to defend this country.

I like the fact that we have people who the President is nominating who will take on the establishment and take on, for example, the FBI with Kash Patel.

The fact of the matter is we have Senators who are wanting to challenge it. For example, the Senator from Iowa who is going after Pete Hegseth, or seemingly, being critical. This is the same Senator, by the way, who voted for an NDAA that would draft our daughters and has been fighting to draft our daughters.

I tell her: You will do that over my dead body. There will be no draft of my daughter.

She voted for The Respect for Marriage Act to codify gay marriage. She went out to her constituents and talked about how the horrible Senate border bill was somehow a good bill and then scolded President Trump for opposing it. She voted for Garland for Attorney General, voted for Lloyd Austin for Defense, voted for Buttigieg for DOT, voted for Janet Yellen, voted for Ukraine's borders over America's borders.

With all due respect to the Senator from Iowa, she is not where the American people are. President Trump is, and Pete Hegseth is.

We have an obligation to change this town, or we are going to lose this country. If Republicans do not deliver and if we do not do what we said we would do, this party will end. There will not be a Republican Party if we fail in this term, this Congress, to deliver.

That is not hyperbole. It is true. We will go the way of the whigs. We will secure the border. We will return order to our streets. We will cut spending. We will move toward balancing our budgets.

As the President has nominated, we will confirm people who will change this town and take on the bureaucracy. We will listen to and work with Elon and Vivek, root out the waste and fraud, but do it ourselves.

We will pass bills that actually get the job done. We will undo the damage of the Biden administration, replace it with a legacy that our kids and grandkids can be proud of, root out the wokeism, root out all of the DEI and the critical race theory. Kill it. Kill it now.

We will do these things, or we will not exist. We will organize ourselves as a Conference to do those things, or we won't succeed.

Our job between now, the first week of December, and the first week of January is to get our heads in the right places. They currently aren't there.

We are not structured right now to deliver, and we have 1 month to do it. That is my calling. We are not here to take breaks. We are not here for codels. We are not here for trips. We are here to get the job done.

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