Providing for Consideration of H.R. Rescissions Act of 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairwoman, my friend from North Carolina, for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, I support this rule, and I rise in support of the rule.

For the American people watching back home, we are here because, on June 3, the House of Representatives received a rescissions request from the White House to eliminate $9 billion in unobligated spending. Let's just say there is much more to go. This is step one.

Under the Impoundment Control Act, once a request is received, Congress has 45 days to act. The House is now acting. These rescissions are, in part, due to what DOGE was able to uncover and bring forward in terms of wasteful government spending.

Just look at what we have been funding with taxpayer dollars: $6 million for net-zero cities in Mexico; $5.1 million for programs to strengthen the resilience of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer--good grief--global movements; $1.5 million to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in Serbia's workplaces; $2 million for Moroccan pottery classes; $2 million for sex changes and LGBT activism in Guatemala; $33,000 for being LGBTI--I can't even keep up with this stuff; $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt; $32,000 for transgender comic books in Peru; and $1 million to help disabled people in Tajikistan become climate leaders.

Is that what Democrats think their taxpayer dollars should go toward? I can promise the minority that the people I represent think that this is absolute garbage.

How on Earth can my Democratic friends possibly defend that? My friends on the other side of the aisle would like you to believe, seriously, that if you don't use your taxpayer dollars to fund this absurd list of projects and thousands of others that I didn't even list, somehow people will die and our global standing in the world will crumble.

Let's just reject this now. The White House is right to send up this rescissions package. This should be just step one. There should be numerous other steps.

We should rescind billions upon billions of dollars of wasteful spending that is destroying our country through inflation and increasing the size and scope of government, undermining the safety and security of the American people.

How about the $160 million we can save by not giving more money to UNRWA, the organization whose own employees participated in Hamas' slaughter of Israeli citizens on October 7, which we now know to be verifiably and completely true?

Why would we continue to shovel money to an organization that is funding terrorism against our allies and against our American citizens? Yet, that is precisely what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would wish us to continue to do.

Mr. Speaker, let's address the One Big Beautiful Bill Act issue. My friends on the other side of the aisle are raising the prospect of $3 trillion of additional deficits. I have been very open in my belief that this bill should be better, that we should cut more spending and be more mindful of reducing the size of government to get deficits down much further than we are seeing in this bill.

To be very clear--and we had this debate in the Committee on Rules-- what my friends on the other side of the aisle are forgetting and not putting forward here in this debate, when they say $3 trillion of additional deficits, is what you believe the growth rate will be if you adopt policies that will actually increase economic growth. That is putting more money into the pockets of the American people and deregulating so that businesses can create wealth.

We assumed 2.6 percent economic growth. That is higher than the CBO's expectation of 1.8 but lower than the historic growth of 3.2 percent.

We hit the sweet spot. We believe that if you get that growth, you will have deficit neutrality on this bill so that you will end up creating wealth, creating jobs, putting more money into people's pockets, and trying to deliver on the spending cuts, reversal and termination of the green new scam, and the application of Medicaid work requirements to make sure that people aren't getting benefits when they should be working.

Mr. Speaker, I believe it is a good bill.

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I believe it is a good bill, and I will say it again: I think the bill can get better. I think the Senate should improve it. I think that we should find more savings, but to say to the American people that it is creating deficits, ignoring economic growth, is just simply not true.

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