When Will It Be Enough
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas for his service to this great country, both in uniform and here in this body. I am honored to serve with him. I am honored to serve with all of the great Members of Congress that wore the uniform. I appreciate his remarks just now honoring many of those who have served and were properly awarded and recognized and many of his own constituents. It is an honor to serve with him, just as it is an honor to serve with the Speaker, also from Texas.
I am reminded, as I listened to my friend from Texas, of the engagements that I had with veterans that I represent in the 21st Congressional District in Texas between Austin and San Antonio just over August. One of the great things about when you are in your work period is engaging with your constituents. They have a funny way of reminding us why they sent us here.
I had countless veterans, civilians, asking me what is happening to their country, and many veterans, several men later in life, breaking down in tears asking questions like, what did they fight for to watch what is unfolding currently under this administration? What is happening to the country that they believe in?
My question right now for my colleagues in this Chamber is, when will it be enough? When will what we are experiencing, seeing with our own eyes every day be enough for us to act? I am not just speaking to colleagues on my side of the aisle, but the whole Chamber.
We have a responsibility under the Constitution of the United States to stand up in a government of separated powers and check an executive branch that is flouting the law on a daily basis. This is an administration that is engaging in utterly lawless acts on a daily basis, and it is resulting in the endangerment of not just individual American citizens but the Republic itself.
That is not hyperbole, and I don't say it lightly. I very much share the optimistic tenor of my colleague from Texas who just spoke on the floor talking about the hope that he has for this country, given the strength of this country in its past and the strength of so many of our American people.
As a friend of mine and a good, mutual friend of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Ellzey) former Governor Rick Perry, wrote in the first chapter of a book about a decade ago: ``America is great, Washington is broken.'' Unfortunately, it remains broken, badly broken. No longer following the constitutional guidelines set forth, no longer serving the American people, and as the Constitution calls for, carrying out the general welfare of the people and securing the blessings of liberty. That is literally what our call is as servants in Washington.
My question, again, is when will it be enough?
There is a long laundry list of things that should be giving us great pause. Actual existential crises.
Spending. We will spend $2 trillion more this year than we take in. We are $32 trillion in debt, barreling toward $33, $34 trillion. We just passed a debt ceiling increase of $4 trillion, frankly, probably more than that; and, oh, by the way, our interest payments are now more than we spend on national defense.
Inflation is rampant. Are we going to do anything about it? The resounding answer currently from this body is ``No.'' We continue to fund appropriations bills that spend more than last year. It is just going up.
Are we going to do anything about spending? When will it be enough?
How about our Defense Department? This Defense Department is undermining our national defense by turning our military into what I describe as a social engineering experiment in a uniform. President Biden's Pentagon is outright ignoring the law by funding abortion tourism with taxpayer funding, in blatant violation of the traditional bipartisan agreement under the Hyde amendment to not do that. Let States decide, that is what the Court just said. We continue to fund it with Federal dollars.
President Biden's Pentagon is using millions of taxpayer dollars to fund gender-transition procedures. The Air Force released a memo entitled, Department of the Air Force Observance of LGBTQ Pride Month, which empowered installation commanders to plan and conduct activities in honor of Pride Month.
Color me crazy and reactionary that I think that every single dollar we fund to the Department of Defense ought to go to planes, boats, bullets, bombs, missiles, and training soldiers to use them.
Our military is paying chief diversity officers and inclusion officials upwards of $183,000 a year. The United States Marine Corps University has a year-long program that is dedicated to exploring gender insecurity issues. According to the official syllabus, which we found because we saw it on Twitter when they were trying to defend their position, they discuss program themes like ``gendering war'' with questions like, what is gender and how is it different from biological sex or how war narratives are constructed through gender discourse?
Again, we are $2 trillion in debt. Our recruiting levels are in the toilet at the Pentagon, China is building their military, and this is what we are funding. It is not like we have a $2 trillion surplus.
What are we doing? Do you really think having marines discuss how ``war narratives are constructed through gender discourse'' helps us win a war?
COVID, the hysteria and the tyranny are already on the march again. This week we learned that CIA whistleblowers told the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic that the CIA bribed its analysts to deny the lab leak theory. The whistleblower claims that six of seven analysts believed that the evidence pointed toward the Wuhan lab leak theory. The six were then given a ``significant monetary incentive'' to change their position.
Earlier this week, the FDA approved new COVID-19 boosters for children as young as 6 months old. Just one panel member argued that the new shot should initially be recommended only for older people. CDC's own data shows that giving 1 million teens the COVID vaccine will save between zero and one life and cause between 100,000 to 200,000 side effects, all while Moderna and Pfizer make more than $1.6 billion on the contract. Coincidence?
How about health? We are funding a healthcare system, broken by Washington and big insurance, and average Americans can no longer afford healthcare, no longer go to the doctors of their choice. ObamaCare is set to cost you 6 percent more in 2024. Some plans may spike 10 percent.
When I had cancer about 11 years ago, I went to MD Anderson. To the best of my understanding, under the ObamaCare plan that I would have to use as a Member of Congress, I wouldn't be able to go to MD Anderson.
How is that coverage? How are we doing that to the American people?
However, don't fear, big insurance revenue reached $1.25 trillion and profits hit $70 billion, a 300 percent increase in revenue and a 300 percent increase in profits from just 10 years ago. Life is good for big insurance.
UnitedHealth Group, $20.6 billion up, 16 percent year over year. Cigna, $6.7 billion up, 24 percent year over year. CVS Health, $4.2 billion. Humana, $2.8 billion. Meanwhile, the average American family spends more than $22,000 a year on premiums, which is expected to increase 6.4 percent this year.
In 2023, we will spend more than $1 trillion subsidizing insurance. Yes, we are borrowing another trillion dollars to subsidize those insurance companies I was just describing.
You like corporate cronyism? Well, you have got it.
How about energy? Are any of these things going to be enough? Healthcare, COVID, Department of Defense, wokeism, energy?
We are actively destroying our ability to have reliable energy to the benefit of China and a bunch of elitists who don't live in reality.
The Inflation Reduction Act has essentially a $1.2 trillion handout to subsidize billion-dollar corporations. Something like 90 percent of the subsidies are to billion-dollar corporations. Pretty much heavily led by very rich, White, elitist liberals, making money hand over fist with your subsidized money, giving money to China to fund solar panels from China, battery-powered cars, batteries with cobalt mined in the Congo almost entirely by slave labor, heavily including children.
Your taxpayer dollars and borrowed money at work.
Yet, it is not even producing a good result for the American people. Energy prices have increased by 40 percent since Biden took office, gasoline is up over 50 percent, electricity is up almost 30 percent. While oil is at $90 a barrel, our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level since 1983 because the President has been dumping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to try to keep gas prices down while advancing a radical leftist agenda that is making it impossible for us to have affordable energy.
The Inflation Reduction Act expands subsidies for electric vehicles, 78 percent of which are claimed by Americans making over $100,000--of course--because the average EV costs $17,000 more than one with an internal combustion engine, which this administration wants to end. They don't want you to have an affordable car.
Then Secretary Granholm decides to go on a trek across the country to prove how great electric vehicles are. She goes up to a charging station, they are running behind. Oh, oh, we have got to find a charging station. They take a gas-powered vehicle, put it in a slot, block the slot, so the Secretary can get a photo op, and a family with a baby with an EV was sitting there waiting for a slot and couldn't get one.
That is your Biden administration at work trying to promote the propaganda of a leftwing radical vision for energy that is destroying hardworking Americans' ability to live their lives.
Poor people across this country, working-class people across this country are wondering how they can afford a car because this administration is living in a dreamland that won't dent carbon dioxide. India and China are dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. You can get rid of every internal combustion engine in America and you will drop CO
We are unilaterally disarming our competitiveness, our security advantage with respect to energy, and empowering China in the process.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration's EPA has implemented a rule that would enforce two-thirds of the new vehicles sold in the United States to be EVs by 2030. You can't make this up. That is a direct assault on the well-being of the American people.
What are we in Congress doing about it?
We passed a bill today trying to pull back on some of California's nonsense. We are really good at that, ladies and gentlemen, passing bills, knowing they will die in the Senate, going home, and campaigning about how crazy the administration is, and then putting all our eggs in the basket of one day in the future, trust us, when we have the biggest majority in the House and we have 60 in the Senate, and we have that President, one day, all at once, trust us, we will get it done.
How is that working out for you?
When will we use the tools we have before us right now? We have the power of the purse. Last time I checked, Republicans have the majority in this body. We should use the power of the purse to stop the radical abuses of this President and his administration.
Again, spending, $2 trillion deficit. Are we going to do anything about it besides, oh, it is a little better than what they would have done?
Are we going to do anything about energy? Oh, we passed a bill. Are we going to do anything about it?
Are we going to do anything about those healthcare prices?
Are we going to do anything about the continued advancement of COVID tyranny, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and importantly the subsidy of vaccines to be forced upon American people? Are we going to do anything about it?
Anything about the Pentagon?
The Department of Justice, instead of focusing on locking up bad guys--and I say this as a former Federal prosecutor who locked up a few bad guys--instead of doing that, this Department of Justice is advancing a politicized form of injustice against American citizens and a former President.
My friend, Scott Smith, in Loudoun County, Governor Glenn Youngkin just pardoned Scott Smith. Now, remember, he was targeted as a domestic terrorist in conjunction with the National School Boards Association and the Department of Justice for going to a school board meeting to defend his daughter.
Mark Houck in Philadelphia, he was targeted, had a SWAT team show up at his door in Philadelphia because he dared to defend his son while engaging in his free speech rights in front of an abortion clinic.
The FBI is weaponizing the so-called FACE Act to target pro-life Americans, overwhelmingly targeting only pro-life Americans when they go engage in their free speech rights. Of course, they are targeting former President Trump; doing all they can to target the former President while also doing all they can to ensure that Hunter Biden and President Biden do not face justice.
Under the Department of Justice, we have the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Earlier this year, the ATF issued a rule banning pistol stabilizing braces that are intended for recruiting shooters with physical disabilities and disabled veterans. That rule potentially makes felons out of up to 40 million Americans. It wasn't made in Congress, wasn't codified here. It was made by bureaucrats.
Now they are targeting private sales, trying to promote a universal background check, despite the fact Congress has rejected it.
How about your food? Will we do anything about food? We are ceding control of our food supplies to foreign nations because our government is making it really difficult, if not impossible, to farm in this country. The USDA projected the U.S. will become a net importer of food for the first time in its entire history in 2023.
Foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land doubled from 2009 to 2019. China's agriculture investment in other nations has grown by more than tenfold since 2009, and Chinese companies are purchasing land near key defensive installations.
What are we doing about it?
What is this Republican majority and this Congress doing about it?
The IRS. We are still fully funding an IRS, and it just received a massive expansion. Yet, this IRS targets political opponents.
In 2021, the IRS targeted the nonprofit status of my friend Bunni Pounds' group, Christian Engaged, for simply being an organization that encourages Christians to vote.
It is not the first time. Remember, Lois Lerner?
The IRS has a history of this.
What are we doing about it?
We keep writing the checks to fund the bureaucrats that are at war with the American people. We do it every day, and everybody just shrugs. They just walk around and they say, Chip, don't you understand? The Democrats control the Senate. Joe Biden is in the White House. We just got a position to win an election next year, and then, then we will fight.
Do you know how many times I have heard that? When I was Senator Cruz's chief of staff 10 years ago, when I was a lawyer on the Senate Judiciary Committee 15 years ago, it is all I have ever heard.
Trust us. One day. One day we will use the power that we have in this body to change the trajectory of this country and to stop this weaponization of the Federal Government against the American people. You can't ignore that that is what it is.
When the Department of Justice is not blind and it is targeting people based on their political beliefs and targeting a former President instead of the current President because of its political beliefs, that destroys the rule of law in this country.
When the Department of Defense is more concerned about being woke than actually be weaponized against our enemies, that destroys morale and recruiting.
When the IRS is targeting people for their political beliefs, you don't have faith in your system of government. When your Department of Energy is more concerned about advancing a radical leftist agenda than ensuring our own national security and our own ability to power our people, our jobs, our ability to travel, you are funding the very mechanisms in government that are undermining the liberty and the freedom of people's right to go have a job, a right to go provide for their family.
Perhaps worst of all, the southern border.
In July alone, Border Patrol encountered across this country 240- something-thousand individuals. Reports today indicate that preliminary CBP data show migrant encounters for August are on track to surpass 230,000, making it the sixth month in 2023 above 200,000.
On Tuesday, a report surfaced that CBP apprehended more than 7,300 individuals across the southern border; I believe maybe 9,000 nationally.
Three of the four busiest Border Patrol sectors were in Texas:
The El Paso Sector had 1,100 illegal crossings.
The RGV Sector, 1,400.
The Del Rio Sector, 1,800.
We have had 10,000 criminals caught at the border in FY23.
Here is the thing. With over a million got-aways, who are we not catching? What do we do about the story we just saw unfold in Pennsylvania where a guy was charged with crimes in Brazil; he came to our country, brutally stabbed to death his girlfriend, then he's on a jailbreak in Pennsylvania? Illegal. Not legally present.
How about the 11-year-old boy in Ohio who just died because someone released by the President ran into a schoolbus on the first day of school. An 11-year-old boy, dead by someone here illegally released by this President.
According to the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security, DHS has the wrong addresses for 177,000 of the nearly 1 million people released into the United States between the spring of `21 and the summer of `22. Think about that.
Many of those addresses were used more than 50 times each. A car dealership, a bus station, a restaurant in Maryland, a church in Illinois were the addresses used.
Who are they and where are they?
If 99 percent of them are great people looking for a better way of life, God bless them. What about the other 1 percent?
You feel good about that? You feel secure in the United States, do you? Because as you drive around your suburban enclaves and you feel safe and secure, this is going to catch up to you, just like the New Yorkers who are starting to wake up and say, oh, this is kind of a problem.
Yeah, it is a problem.
The problem is there is a human toll. These are human beings. An illegal immigrant in Baltimore who was being held up for ransom for $23,000 while his wife and little girl were in a stash house in Fort Worth, Texas. They called them up and said: We are going to rape your little girl if you don't give us $23,000.
Is that what we are for in this country?
Are we for perpetuating the sex trafficking trade, the human trafficking trade, and slave labor?
Are we for what is happening to our Border Patrol, where we are losing Border Patrol because they are being lied about by this Department of Homeland Security?
Are we for a million people being released into the United States in a year?
Are we for the criminal activity we just saw in Pennsylvania or the boy in Ohio?
Are we for all the migrants now in New York?
Are we for the young man who came in as an unaccompanied alien child, a family took him into their home and he stabbed the father and killed them?
Is that what we are for?
If we are not for it, what the hell are we going to do about it? Besides preen, posture, campaign, and say, oh, yeah, we are going to do something about the border one day. Trust us. One day.
Well, that day is now. If we don't secure the United States, we shouldn't fund the agencies that refuse to secure it. That is what this is about.
When my Democratic colleagues complain in October if we are unable to find a resolution to fund the United States Government, I want them to look squarely in the mirror. It is you who is causing it. It is you who is abandoning your responsibility to secure the border of the United States.
It is you that is causing little girls to get sold in the sex trafficking trade. It is you that is causing ranches in Texas to get overrun. It is you that is causing criminals to get released into the United States. It is you that is undermining our strength in the Western Hemisphere, empowering China, empowering cartels to undermine our national security.
Over my dead body am I going to say that I am going to support funding a government that refuses to do its job to secure the border.
That is what the House of Representatives should be saying, in unison, to a President flouting the law.
That is what this is about.
Our Founders gave us the power of the purse. James Madison wrote about it in the Federalist Papers. It is not just a happenstance that the House of Representatives has that power.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote, ``When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them''--the people--``under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.''
When they created our government and gave us the Constitution, they gave us tools to avoid that, but let's be very clear. What happened to us?
The Declaration of Independence outlined 27 grievances. I have listed more than that just here. A complete abandonment of the job and the responsibility of the Federal Government, leaving the State of Texas $10 billion poorer while it tries to do the job the Federal Government is suppose to do.
The American colonists protested because they weren't represented in Parliament. I would suggest right now that the American people, frankly, aren't being well represented in this body because this body is letting the executive branch run over them every bit as much as King George III was doing to the colonists in 1776.
You think it is hyperbole.
Look at our border; look at our system of justice; look at our energy, economy; look at our level of spending--a complete abandonment of our job.
Where are we? Why even go home this weekend?
Why were we gone in August?
Why aren't we right here forcing the conversation, forcing Senator Schumer and the President to come down to the Republican-led House of Representatives and say enough. It is enough. Enough to open borders, enough to a devastating energy policy, enough to lawlessness, enough to targeting the American people, enough words, enough promises. It is time to fight.
If we are not going to secure the United States of America, we shouldn't fund the government that refuses to do so. We should stand up and fight to defend the people that sent us here to fight for them.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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