Highlighting Flawed Policies

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I would note just an observation: One of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who is a cancer survivor--and God bless him for it--was raising issues about government funding and about what funding should or shouldn't exist and what this administration may or may not be doing to make sure our bureaucracies are running efficiently and effectively and not wasting money.

I say this as a cancer survivor, stage III, Hodgkin's lymphoma, 13 years ago: I think research is important. I think we need to make sure there is solid research. I think it can be driven heavily by the private-sector businesses who are incentivized to make money for developing lifesaving drugs, but it could be done in concert with governments and universities. What we don't need is continued profligate Federal funding in order to achieve greatness.

The Wright brothers, Henry Ford, the great inventors, the great industrialists, the great innovators in technology, the entrepreneurs out there, for the most part, are not doing that based on government funding and action. They are doing it based on innovation and hard work. That should be our model and approach.

While I appreciate those who have gone through a terrible disease like cancer, as I did, as a number of people in this Chamber, and as millions of Americans across this country have done, it is not always a rationale for more government spending, more government action, and more government bureaucracy.

I would note that the other colleague who came down and talked about high and rising energy prices, I too share some frustration about foreign-owned energy companies and utility companies.

I would remind my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that our energy prices wouldn't be skyrocketing and off the charts had we not gone down the foolish road of massive subsidies for the so-called Green New Deal, which is more rightly called the green new scam, in which foreign companies, Chinese companies, have been enriched because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle wanted to pursue their radical agenda.

Do you want to know why the price of energy is going up? It is because of Democratic policies and mandates, EV mandates, and mandates about solar panels and wind farms that are far less efficient than nuclear and clean-burning natural gas. Those things are driving up the price of energy for the average American and putting that money into the pockets of a handful of wealthy people and the Chinese. I congratulate them, but my colleagues on the other side of the aisle shouldn't come whining to Congress about what they need in order to deal with high energy prices that my Democratic colleagues caused.

That is the truth.

The fact of the matter is that we need to do a lot better job of speaking truth here in this Chamber. As a number of my colleagues were debating a resolution honoring a friend to many of us, Charlie Kirk, who, as is well known now, lost his life last week, I am reminded of the importance of truth. Truth matters.

Charlie stood for the proposition that you should go into the public square and put forward your ideas and put forward what you believe is truth and then hash it out. He did so eloquently, thoughtfully, and engagingly with people of all stripes: Black, White, straight, gay, male, female, whatever it was. He would engage with people on campuses and around this country to pursue truth.

Mr. Speaker, one of my favorite quotes is from Thomas Jefferson where he said that for here, we are willing to pursue truth wherever it may lead. We need to follow truth wherever it may lead, but you also have to have the courage to speak truth.

Charlie Kirk, when he was engaging with Bill Maher, a skeptic, just earlier this year, said: ``In China and, of course, in the Soviet Union, there was an anti-Christian movement. Very hardcore. What book do you think is best for humanity to live by? I say the Bible. The entire arc of the Bible is a story of love and a need for humanity's redemption. The Bible has wisdom in ways you might not ever imagine. Humanity will seek to find a book. They will seek to find a code to live by, and I think it is incumbent upon atheists to tell us what that should be.''

Charlie Kirk earlier this year in April: ``The mechanisms of a religious society are good for everybody. When somebody walks around and thinks that you were created and that you are not God, you tend to have better citizens.'' Charlie was not wrong.

Earlier this year, Charlie Kirk, in a debate with an atheist: ``I would argue you have a lot more faith than I do. You have a lot more blind faith to believe that everything around you, love, joy, peace, sadness, is all just a construct of neurons firing in your brain. We, as Christians, have hope that we are going to see our loved ones again and that we will be in Heaven and that we will be in perfect peace and that this is not it. In fact, there is something even better awaiting us.''

Also earlier this year with Bill Maher: ``The greatest minds of history have been mesmerized by the Scriptures: Isaac Newton, Thomas Aquinas. Isaac Newton wrote more about biblical prophecy than even physics. And so there is something about the Scriptures that are intellectual, that does push your limits. And that is what I think is so beautiful about our faith is it can be accessible to everyone, but infinitely nourishing in exploration.''

Earlier this year, Charlie said about his goal of conservatism. He said: ``You have to try to point them toward ultimate purposes and toward getting back to the church, getting back to faith, getting married, having children. That is the type of conservatism that I represent, and I am trying to paint a picture of virtue, of lifting people up. . . .''

In another exchange with Bill Maher: ``It defies reason to think that this is just a roll of the dice. When you see a baby come into the world, when you see how we naturally heal, when you see even consciousness itself, I think it is a pretty miraculous thing. To think that it is all just a bunch of happy accidents, I think it is more rational to think that it is a byproduct of design.''

Four days before Charlie was shot, I think he tweeted out: ``Jesus defeated death so you can live.''

Earlier this year, Charlie said: ``I want to be remembered for courage for my faith. That would be the most important thing. The most important thing is my faith.''

I can go further.

My point of sharing these things is the importance of us standing up and speaking truth. People say, Well, Chip, how can you say it is truth? It is just what you believe when you talk about your faith.

Well, I, of course, believe it to be true. It is truth. Jesus did die so that we may live and Jesus lives.

It is important that we remember our Nation's founding and our Nation's convictions and the spirit that binds us together as a Nation, actual spirit, in God we trust. We cannot be bound together as a Nation if we do not adhere to a commonsense set of principles and values, rooted in a collective faith, a collective faith in God Almighty.

It does not mean that every individual has to believe anything specific. It doesn't mean that anybody has to go to church. It doesn't mean that we have to go around doing something in violation of the First Amendment, which says you can believe what you want to believe, but the First Amendment also does not stand for the proposition that we should walk away from our collective faith. It does not do that. Nowhere in the First Amendment does it say that.

How does a Nation conquer evil? How does a nation conquer Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union? Was it all because we just got together and decided to put together a military, or was there something bigger? Was there something more important? Was there a collective faith in the Almighty that bound us together and gave us the courage for those young men to walk into a wall of bullets at Normandy?

People always ask me what is wrong with our country. Why is there so much division? When the Nation turns its back on God, when the Nation walks away from that collective faith, then do we really even have a Nation?

A lot of people keep branding Charlie as a conservative activist. Sure. He unapologetically advanced his definition of conservatism, but remember, as I said, when he tried to define that conservatism, he talked about it in the context of faith. He said, as I said a minute ago: ``You have to try to point them toward ultimate purposes and toward getting back to the church, getting back to faith, getting married, having children. That is the type of conservatism that I represent.''

I got to be honest, that should be the essence of conservatism and the essence of who we are. What point is there to living free if you are not advancing toward the kingdom of God?

Charlie had courage to speak to this, to raise these issues to a lost generation, consumed into devices that are destroying the minds of our youth, devices that I would wipe away from the face of the planet tomorrow if I could. I would, God's honest truth. The Amish are on to something, but since I can't do that, can we not at least recognize that these are poisoning our children?

The first thought I had after I had received word that Charlie was shot was to call my wife and to figure out how to get word to my son, also named Charlie, who I knew was an enormous fan of Charlie Kirk and who does not have social media or access to it on his telephone but is around a lot of friends who do. I wanted to get word to him not to look at anything because I knew immediately that the horrific images would be spread around instantly, and no children should be watching that.

That is just one example of millions every day polluting the minds of our children, coarsening our culture, breaking us down, addicting our children to devices instead of engagement, conversation, life, family, and being outside.

We are at each other's throats because we have turned our backs on God. We are at each other's throats because nonstop there is a deluge of imagery and horrific thoughts that are flooding into the in-boxes and into the visibility of our children and, frankly, ourselves.

Charlie Kirk was correct, that we have to focus on getting back to church, getting our Nation, our families, and our communities back to church. Would that this Sunday everybody that is going to be at a National Football League game or parked in front of a TV watching an NFL game, would that every single American doing that would be in church with devices off, TVs off, having supper with their families, which society would be stronger?

The fact of the matter is, when I had to tell my son that, unfortunately, Charlie had passed, and he asked if that was formally known in public, and I said: Yes, he is gone. I am sorry, buddy.

He said: I would have loved to have met him one day. Then he sent me a Bible verse that said: Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. First Corinthians 15:58.

Well, thank goodness his mom is doing something right.

A lot of people have asked me why one of my first reactions in light of all this was to raise the prospect of an organized, radical left that has been fomenting the targeting of people that I care about, people like Charlie Kirk, groups like the Family Research Council, targeting families and communities and our way of life, Chip, why would you do that? Aren't you just sowing more division in calling for a select committee to investigate the organized efforts of the radical left?

Actually, I think it is the opposite of that. I started this talking about the need to pursue truth. Our job in Congress, in part, is oversight and investigation, and pursuing truth and exposing it to the American people.

It is a problem that organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center creates hate maps in which they targeted the Family Research Council a decade ago resulting in an individual shooting it up and a security guard getting shot right here in D.C. or Charlie Kirk's organization, TPUSA, being put on that same map with a target being put on their backs. Antifa is known to be radicalized and engaging in terrorist activities, which the President recognized just yesterday, I believe rightfully.

The extent to which there is an extraordinary network funded not just by George Soros but a large number of radical billionaires that are funding organizations dedicated to putting into office DAs and judges who put criminals on the street, who allow dangerous criminals to walk among us in our communities, on trains in Charlotte, North Carolina, where a young woman from Ukraine was butchered by someone who had been in and out of jail, arrested 14 times.

It is not just an accident. It is not just one random DA or judge or, oh, George Soros funded one election. It is a coordinated effort to put DAs and judges and other law enforcement officials into places in communities--including in the communities I represent in Austin and San Antonio and throughout Texas--purposely to then have organizations like the Wren Collective, which is now known through reporting just this week from the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, putting out the known networks where they are going in and telling these DAs and prosecutors precisely what to do, precisely how to get people back on the streets sooner or not prosecute them at all. The result of this is that dangerous individuals are walking among us and hurting us and our loved ones, which is a direct threat to the security of our Nation.

Yes, I think we should investigate that. Yes, I think we should get to the bottom of that. Yes, I want to know how those dollars are flowing. Yes, I want to know why the people of San Antonio have to be turned upside down or the people of Charlotte, North Carolina, have to be turned upside down because a radical group of billionaires are funding organizations that are funding these people to be put on our streets.

How about our borders? Should we not know the flow of the dollars, of the coordinated network through the United Nations and through international organizations and through supposedly religious organizations, or the 250 organizations that our friends at the Center for Immigration Studies put out, demonstrating the network that was responsible for dumping millions of people into our communities, including violent gang members from around the world that resulted in the death of Americans, Americans like Jocelyn Nungaray, Americans like Laken Riley, Americans like Rachel Morin? I could go down the list of people who were killed, abused, assaulted, or harmed because a radical group of leftists decided that open borders for their political purposes was more important than your safety and security as Americans.

Yes, I think we should have a select committee or an organized effort among the Judiciary Committee and the Oversight Committee to expose this network, to expose the funders, to expose the people who are doing this purposely to undermine your security as a nation. Yes, we should know that. The only question is why isn't every single Representative in this body standing up and saying: Yes, I agree?

I agree with Vice President JD Vance and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. They put forward plans to go after leftist nongovernmental organizations in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder. The Vice President said: We are going to go after the NGO networks that foment, facilitate, and engage in violence. We are going to channel all the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.

The Vice President is correct. My friend, Stephen Miller, is correct. The President is correct to be declaring antifa a terrorist organization. Enough is enough. Enough with the disruption of our Nation. For those who say this is somehow clamping down on speech: Wrong. You can say virtually anything you want to say in this country, but number one, there is consequences to that, including getting fired and having television shows canceled because there is a limit to what a society should have to take.

If you are going to say crazy things, then there can be a consequence to saying those crazy things. That is okay.

No, it is not interfering with your First Amendment rights to say that you cannot engage in effecting a conspiracy to foment violence-- including, by the way, the riots in 2020--in the false name of supposedly healing racial division or in the name of certain lives mattering because we want to divide our country further.

Organizations funded for a specific purpose, to create instability and to undermine our way of life and our freedoms, should be investigated. Leftwing groups that are providing material support to that kind of violence should be investigated.

They say, ``Chip, why just leftwing groups? Why not rightwing groups?'' Fine. Go look at any groups fomenting said violence.

All I know is, in the wake of Charlie Kirk getting shot, I didn't see the streets around this country burning. I didn't see people's businesses and livelihoods getting looted, destroyed, and burned, from Minneapolis to California to our Nation's Capital. I didn't see statues getting toppled and tossed into water. I didn't see spray-painting and destruction of public monuments and statues.

What I saw was prayer. What I saw was people coming together in defense of their collective belief in God and their belief in this country, but willing to not just say we need unity for the sake of it.

I am tired of that. I am tired of this nonsense where they say, ``Come together. We must unite. We need unity.'' Unity for what? Unity under what? Unity under a Constitution, under a flag, and under God, yes. In defense of a country with shared values, yes. Not unity for the sake of it, not turning the other cheek to a lawless bunch of organizations designed to take down and destroy our way of life and our country, to undermine our faith, undermine our country, undermine our freedoms, because that is what we see.

You have to be blind to ignore it, and you have to be willful in that blindness to ignore the conspiracy and coordination to dismantle so much of what made this country great, to target institutions of faith; to target people for their conservative views and beliefs; to destabilize our society; to put criminals on the streets; to import people from around the world with criminal backgrounds and gang members for your own crass political purposes, to try to pack your districts and try to expand your voter base.

It is not working because this administration and those of us who have stood up to fight and expose this are seeing to it that we are removing people from this country who should be removed, securing the border so that people aren't flowing across it, standing with law enforcement, securing our communities, backing the blue, restoring safety and security, not just in our Nation's Capital but around the country, making this country a place where you can achieve the American Dream again, but only if we are willing to take on these organizations that are still causing the lawless to be walking among us.

That resulted directly in the death of a Ukrainian refugee who thought she could live the American Dream. It was taken away from her because people were purposely put on the street who are dangerous. There is no other way to look at that. That is literally what happened.

I know that there is going to be a lot more conversation and speeches about Charlie coming up, but I will close with this. In a 1981 speech, which is hard to believe was almost 45 years ago, President Reagan declared liberal pro-criminal policies rooted in ``utopian presumptions about human nature.'' ``For all our science and sophistication, for all our justified pride in intellectual accomplishment, we must never forget the jungle is always there waiting to take us over.''

He observed that the liberal belief that criminal justice is solely for rehabilitation instead of incapacitation and deterrence is rooted in ``a belief that there was nothing permanent or absolute about any man's nature . . . and that by changing his environment, we could permanently change man and usher in a great new era.''

President Reagan was right. There is a place appropriately for forgiveness and rehabilitation, but there is not a place for allowing the rampant, lawless, and dangerous to be walking among our families and our communities, and our borders to be wide open to endanger our societies for this crazy notion of some utopian nonsense or, worse yet, a purposeful use of this tool for political purposes.

I applaud the President for what he is doing for trying to secure our country.

I call on my colleagues to band together to expose to the American people these organized efforts that are undermining our security and our way of life--targeted specifically at us. It is high time that we expose it. It is high time that we do something about it.

If we learned anything from what we saw unfold that resulted in the murder of Charlie, it is that we go find the people that are just as guilty as the young man that pulled that trigger, the people who are just as guilty because they created that environment. They fomented the radicalization and the creation of an environment where that occurred knowingly, knowingly destabilizing our society in the process.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source