Authorizing Fully Electronic Stamps
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I rise to claim the time in opposition.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I do rise in opposition to the legislation that was just sent to the United States House of Representatives from the United States Senate.
I just spent a good deal of time going around the country, traveling to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Madam Speaker, you might imagine why.
I spoke to thousands of Americans. Not one American said: Please, Congressman Roy, add more money to the debt. Please, Congressman Roy, keep spending money we don't have. Keep deficit spending every year, bankrupting our kids and grandkids.
Nonetheless, that is precisely what we are doing yet again, kicking the can down the road. That is what we do. It is what we do best in this Chamber. It is what we do best in Congress. It is why the American people are so frustrated with this town and with the swamp because it is a swamp that is entirely not drained.
We are sitting here doing the same thing again. It is Groundhog Day in the House Chamber all the time, every day, yet again spending money we don't have.
Last year, an agreement was reached with spending levels and caps. Now, I didn't particularly love those levels and caps. A number of us didn't. There were supposedly some side deals.
Madam Speaker, does that sound swampy? Side deals. What was written into the law? What was written into the law was a level that was somewhere around a 1 percent reduction over last year's enormously bloated omnibus spending level, a 1 percent cut.
Can this body possibly adhere to those caps? No. We can't do that.
Last year, we tried to fix this place. We tried to do appropriations bills. We passed 10 appropriations bills out of the committee and 7 appropriations bills off the floor. We tried to restore regular order. We had about 1,100 amendments. We tried to process those so the American people could see their Chamber working again.
Nevertheless, what happened? Everything reverts back to the mean in this town, the same old story because a side deal is cut. We have to spend at a higher level, you see, Madam Speaker, and that is what is going on back and forth between the Senate and the House.
The American people need to understand what is happening. This continuing resolution will fund their government at the same level as last year's massive omnibus spending bill that all of my Republican colleagues, all of them with the exception of two in this Chamber, were adamantly opposed to, voted against, spoke out against, put press releases out against, and campaigned against, and they are going to vote for it.
Right now, they are going to vote to continue to spend at that level. Not only that, they are going to vote to continue to fund the radical progressive policies embedded in it, continue to fund the bureaucracy that is at war with the American people, continue to fund open borders, and continue to fund Alejandro Mayorkas even as we attempt to impeach him in the Homeland Security Committee.
We are going to fund him. We are going to fund those open borders. We are going to fund the United Nations. We are going to fund the World Health Organization. We are going to fund UNRWA to give money to the Palestinians to give to Hamas.
We are going to campaign against those things, but we are going to fund them.
My Democratic colleagues want to hide behind side deals rather than adhere to the agreed-upon caps that would at least modestly reduce spending by 1 percent.
That is what is happening in this Chamber, and we are going to do this CR in order to buy time to cut a deal that will increase spending, that will increase spending past the caps in order to honor side deals and to actually increase the funding for a Federal Government that is at war with the people whom I represent.
That is shameful. Under no circumstances should we vote for that. Under no circumstances is this something that we should be supporting. We should stay here and do our work, but, instead, people said: Why can't you give the time back, Congressman Roy, so we can go catch our planes before the snowstorm gets in?
I am sorry. I think maybe we should stay here and do our job and actually find a way to cut spending like we campaign on over and over again.
General Leave
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Crane).
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Arizona for his comments.
I would note that, in this bill, we will be voting to fund, as I said, a Department of Homeland Security responsible for the border crisis with wide-open borders and continued funding for the CBP One app being used to use parole abusively to flood the zone into Texas where Texas is having to spend $12.5 billion doing the job of the Federal Government.
We will fund the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement, which lost track of 85,000 migrant children, and the Environmental Protection Agency's electric vehicle mandate to make two-thirds of new cars EVs by 2032, destroying our economy and piling up EVs on the lots of car dealerships around the country. We will fund the EPA's natural gas and methane rule, destroying access to reliable energy. We will fund the EPA's power plant rules aimed at knocking off coal and natural gas power plants, making us wholly dependent on wind and sun for energy, the unreliable energy that it is.
We will fund the IRS doling out billions in IRA tax credits to corporations, many of them billion-dollar corporations.
We will fund the World Health Organization undermining our own sovereignty and cozying up to the CCP.
We will fund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA, which supports Hamas over our ally Israel. Even as we go out and give lip service to supporting Israel, we will be voting to fund their enemies right now, today, on the floor of the House.
We will fund the pro-China, anti-Israel United Nations Human Rights Council.
We will fund a weaponized Department of Justice and FBI going after parents like Scott Smith and Mark Houck.
I have more.
That is what we are doing. We are voting to fund a Federal bureaucracy that is at war with the American people while we indebt our children for generations.
Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good).
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Virginia.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, there are other things that we are funding that we shouldn't: The ATF rule banning up to 40 million pistol braces; the ATF rule massively expanding background checks without the consent of Congress; the Department of Education's student debt cancellation schemes, despite the Supreme Court ruling against them; public health agencies like the CDC, the NIH, and FSA held unaccountable for COVID tyranny, enforcing masks and vaccines upon our children; the Department of Veterans Affairs vaccine mandate, which I have introduced legislation to get rid of; the chief diversity officers at the Department of Defense and throughout government, indoctrinating people, pushing out a radical, leftist agenda with critical race theory and DEI; the Pentagon's abortion travel fund; the FDA's rule allowing abortion drugs to be shipped by mail; taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries at the Department of Defense.
We are funding all of that with taxpayer money and borrowed money. We are indebting our kids and our grandkids to fund the bureaucrats that are undermining the freedom of the American people, preventing them from being able to prosper, according to the rights given to them by the Almighty because this government is failing to do its job, and worse, is interfering with their God-given rights to do what they want to do for their families.
Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Davidson).
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
The American people are tired of getting a complete lack of representation from their Representatives. Nobody in this country looks at Congress and says: Wow. Heck of a job, guys and gals. Well done.
Who would do that? Would we do that?
By the way, it does not matter who is sitting in the Speaker's seat or who has got the majority. We keep doing the same stupid stuff.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have no problem with wide-open borders endangering the people that I represent. None. My constituents are the ones left holding the bag, and the people of Texas are the ones left spending $12.5 billion. My people are the ones who have had six kids die from fentanyl poisoning in the school district that I represent.
It is not fun to smirk at that, is it? We are talking about dead children from fentanyl poisoning because of wide-open borders because of the policies of my Democrat colleagues who refuse to do anything about it. My colleagues won't do anything about the wide-open borders. I will continue to speak to my colleagues.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I am addressing my comments to the Chair. I am addressing the Chair on behalf of the people that I represent who are dying in Texas because of Democrats, directly because of Democrat policies. They can shake their heads all they want, but the blood of the people in Texas is on their hands.
My colleagues flippantly dismiss the fact that people in Texas are dying because of their policies, and the migrants that they pretend to care about are dying because of their policies. Then they lie and say that Texas is responsible for migrants who die in the Rio Grande River when their own Department of Justice offers the truth, which is, those migrants died in the river and were pulled out by Mexican authorities before Border Patrol was ever contacted.
The Democrats have no problem lying to the American people just like Alejandro Mayorkas lied to the American people about Border Patrol agents whipping Haitian migrants.
It is something that happens over and over and over again, but the question for my colleagues on this side of the aisle is: What are we going to do about it? Are we going to keep writing them a blank check? Are we going to keep saying: Here is more money, Secretary Mayorkas? Leave us exposed. Leave people dying. Leave children dying from fentanyl. Migrants are dying in the Rio Grande, so we can go out and campaign on border security.
Why don't we do something about it?
Here we are, again. Catch your flights. Get on out of Washington, D.C., before the snowstorm comes in, but give them all the money in the world they need to endanger the people that we represent.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Madam Speaker, everybody in this country expects us to do our job, and yet, we continually fail to do it.
We continue to spend money we don't have, undermining our own national security, and our own well-being, funding a bureaucracy that is at war with the people that we represent.
At some point, we ought to actually do what we campaign on. At some point, on both sides of the aisle, we should actually recognize that the American people expected a republic for the Representatives that they send to the United States House of Representatives to actually represent them.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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