[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 208 (Wednesday, December 9, 2020)]
[House]
[Pages H7104-H7107]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     CAPITOL HILL CHRISTMAS PAGEANT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Roy) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Mississippi for his 
great remarks about these wonderful heroes, men and women in uniform 
who served our country valiantly overseas and here in law enforcement.
  I had the honor of attending the funeral of a constituent who passed 
away when the helicopter went down in Sinai a few weeks back because he 
was one of my constituents in San Antonio, and it was a great 
celebration of his life.
  I want to thank the gentleman from Mississippi for honoring these 
great folks, your constituents in Mississippi. I appreciate it.
  Mr. Speaker, here we are, as predictable as Christmas. We are at it 
again, a 7-day continuing resolution, which the American people look at 
in wonder and amazement during the Christmas season, that every year 
their illustrious leaders in the House of Representatives can find 
their way to be even more incompetent, year to year, in how we conduct 
the affairs of this great Nation.
  We might as well call these funding debacles the Capitol Hill 
Christmas Pageant. We show up. We put on a show. We sell out the 
American people. We close up and head home. And we do it like 
clockwork.
  I don't know if anybody has noticed, but we are almost at $28 
trillion in debt. We are blowing past our gross domestic product, a 
general sign in history of a nation in decline, which none of us, of 
course, would want to acknowledge that the United States of America 
would be facing.

                              {time}  1900

  I am in amazement as I watch my colleagues running around talking 
about budget caps. I am a fan of budget caps, but there are no budget 
caps here. Anyone who is talking about budget caps, going over them or 
going under them, we don't adhere to budget caps. We set budget caps in 
2011, and had we adhered to them we would have saved almost $800 
billion since then.
  But what do we do? We have these deals. We come together. We jack up 
the budget caps. We blow out spending in defense. We blow out 
nondefense discretionary spending. And then we all kind of wave at each 
other and complain about spending and go home. That is we do.
  What are we going to do next week? We are going to spend another $1.4 
trillion, which, again, will bust existing caps by at least a little, 
and then some will jockey around about that, about whether we should 
save the $12 billion and try to adhere to those caps, forgetting the 
fact that we are $300 billion over the 2011 caps. In other words, there 
are no caps.
  We have already spent $2.6 trillion on COVID relief spending.
  So what does that mean next year, Mr. Speaker? We are blowing past 
$30 trillion in debt.

[[Page H7105]]

  Think about it. Yes, tonight constituents back home, or anybody 
watching, the 14 people watching C-SPAN right now, there is nobody else 
in the Chamber. This is our version of debate, Mr. Speaker. This is 
what our constituents' House of Representatives, their people's House, 
this is what we do. This is what debate looks like.
  So we are continuing to spend money that we don't have, and we are 
going to now debate another COVID relief bill, another trillion-dollar 
bill.
  But we refuse to help the people government is actually running over. 
We are not helping the small businesses that governments across this 
country are using their power to shut down. Small businesses are 
getting destroyed by government tyranny.
  Now, you can say, Mr. Speaker, and pat yourself on the back that it 
is in the name of public health, and everybody can go back home and 
say: Oh, aren't we nice. But you are shutting people's livelihoods down 
and walking away, and yet this body is refusing to do anything about 
it.
  I was proud to work with my Democratic colleague Dean Phillips this 
last summer to pass the PPP Flexibility Act to try to keep a lot of 
these businesses alive. I was thanked by hundreds, if not thousands, of 
people in my district for doing so. But what good is that if we are 
failing them now?
  Mr. Speaker, 100,000 restaurants are already closed, and 10,000 more 
restaurants have closed since our last survey in July. Forty percent of 
remaining restaurants were closed without more support. Jobs at bars 
and restaurants are down 2 million this year.
  Seventy-one percent of hotels report they will only be able to last 6 
more months, and 63 hotels have less than half of pre-crisis staff.
  Forty percent of small business owners report they will close in the 
next 12 months if things do not improve.
  What did the Speaker of the House do? The Speaker of the House 
admitted that she withheld relief from small businesses and struggling 
workers for political gamesmanship. She acknowledged it. She said it.
  Why aren't we debating that? Why aren't we having conversations about 
that? Why aren't we debating a clean PPP bill right now?
  This Chamber is empty. We just adjourned, passing a 7-week CR that 
blows our spending out of proportion, setting up the table for next 
week doing the same thing for a year, and this Chamber is empty. 
Everyone is flying home. It is absurd.
  The American people look at this every day, and they wonder what in 
the world, and now we are going to pass a $1 trillion bill that bails 
out, in many cases, the very State and local governments that are 
shutting down these local businesses with their tyrannical activity.
  More than that, when we actually spend the money, we are going to 
fund the very institutions that are crushing the American way of life. 
We fund, as I said, the tyrant mayors and city councils, like Mayor 
Adler in Austin, Texas, who are killing small businesses. The good 
mayor had the unbelievable hutzpah to record a video in Cabo San Lucas 
telling Austin residents to stay home.
  We fund the very schools that are failing our kids, the very schools 
that are locking down our kids from an education. Suicide rates are up, 
failing grades are up, fear levels are up among our children, and the 
very schools that are indoctrinating our kids to hate this country and 
what it stands for, to apologize for this country, to declare this 
country is evil, to tear down the statues in this country, the very 
education system doing that, we are going to fund, while we blow past 
caps, passing to those very children a massive amount of debt.
  We fund the very local governments that are defunding police but 
expect them to enforce lockdowns.
  We fund corporate cronyism by giving a bailout that undeniably 
favored massive retail corporations that can absorb the costs that 
small businesses can't. Mom-and-pop shops are getting killed, and great 
big companies are getting rich.
  Where is this body? It is nowhere to be found, an empty Chamber.
  We just passed a defense bill yesterday that will burden those small 
businesses even further with potentially more regulations.
  Mr. Speaker, you can't even make this up.
  A defense bill has language in there that will hurt small businesses 
even when they are at their low point getting beat up by a virus and 
tyrants are shutting them down.
  We fund an immigration system that fails immigrants, fails Americans, 
empowers cartels, and is a national embarrassment while we have people 
who are held hostage in homes in this country by cartel-driven illegal 
enterprises. It is happening right now at our border, and this body is 
empty. Mr. Speaker, 67,000 people were apprehended at our border in 
October.

  Where is this Chamber talking about anything about border security? 
It would be better for immigrants and better for our country, but we 
won't do it.
  We fund a massive healthcare system that reduces doctor availability 
but empowers insurance companies, and we are doing it by the second. 
You have to ask an insurance company about how to get healthcare.
  Why? Because this body is failing.
  We fund ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and on and on 
and on in myriad countries around the world--I can't even count them--
despite not having passed an authorization of force in almost 20 years.
  World War II, Mr. Speaker, went from December 7, 1941, to August of 
1945. We have kids today enlisting in the military who were not alive 
when we passed the authorization of force in 2001 under which they are 
operating.
  What kind of a people's body is it that won't even debate an 
authorization of force? We are nowhere to be found.
  Steak dinners or on airplanes flying home right now, that is where 
the 400 colleagues are--if they were even here in the first place, 
because they have been voting by proxy from home sitting on boats.
  We fund election systems that fail us. What is this House doing to 
ensure election integrity?
  There is a lot of politics flying around the air right now about 
elections, but do you believe in our elections, I ask the ladies and 
gentlemen who are watching this. Do they believe every vote is counted? 
Do they believe that every vote was legal?
  In 2012, The New York Times admitted that mail-in ballots are a 
problem. Votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely 
to be compromised, and more likely to be contested than those cast in a 
voting booth, statistics show. Election officials reject almost 2 
percent of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in-person voting.
  The Carter-Baker Commission--that is former President Jimmy Carter 
and former Secretary of State Jim Baker--was formed in 2005: ``Absentee 
ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud''--
bipartisan, 2005.
  Citizens who vote at home, at nursing homes, at the workplace, or in 
church are more susceptible to pressure, overt and subtle, or 
intimidation. Vote buying schemes are far more difficult to detect when 
citizens vote by mail--bipartisan, Jimmy Carter, Jim Baker.
  Why won't we even talk about it here? Why are we making this all 
about the President, not the President, the votes?
  We had a massive increase in mail-in ballots this year, and we are 
wondering whether our election system is even working.
  Examples of known fraud: In 2016, 83 registered voters in San Pedro, 
California, received absentee ballots at the same small, two-bedroom 
apartment. Prosecutors rarely pursue this type of case.
  In 2018, a North Carolina congressional case, a Republican operative, 
McCrae Dowless, Jr., had allegedly requested more than 1,200 absentee 
ballots on voters' behalf and then collected the ballots in voters' 
homes.
  In 2017, an investigation of a Dallas city council election found 
some 700 fraudulent mail-in ballots signed by the same witness using a 
fake name.
  I could go on and on. There are problems with mail-in ballots.
  What did we just see this year, Mr. Speaker? In Georgia, 2016 general 
election, 208,000 mail-in ballots; this year, 1.3 million mail-in 
ballots. In Arizona, 2016, they had 2.4 million mail-in ballots; this 
year, 3.6 million mail-in ballots. Pennsylvania, 2016, 314,000 mail-in

[[Page H7106]]

ballots; this year, 3.1 million mail-in ballots.
  I am not suggesting that I know what the numbers should or shouldn't 
be in Georgia, Pennsylvania, or Arizona in this case. What I am 
suggesting is that even minor changes in rejection rates on these 
ballots--of which there are very large questions right now about the 
rejection rates--would impact the election.
  Regardless of what you want to see happen with the election, Mr. 
Speaker, do you not want to know that you can believe in your election?
  Why are we not holding hearings? Have we had a hearing this week on 
this, bipartisan, calling it in, making sure that we believe in our 
elections? Is the Senate holding hearings?
  The American people are raising legitimate questions about our 
elections, and this body is missing in action and doing nothing.
  But I will tell you where Congress is, Mr. Speaker. It is passing 
bills like yesterday which amount to political garbage masquerading as 
defense authorization.
  We passed the defense authorization bill which does, in fact, contain 
critically important components to support America's troops but, in 
fact, actually fails our troops in many respects.
  Mr. Speaker, we were all told to vote for it, you see. We were told 
to vote for it because you can't vote against a defense authorization 
bill because you are voting against pay increases and you are voting 
against badly needed resources for your men and women in uniform. Yet 
the people telling us to vote for it have no qualms about holding our 
Armed Forces' pay hostage with no ability to amend the bill on the 
floor and no ability to debate the bill.
  Has anybody seen an amendment brought down here to the floor, an open 
amendment, saying: ``Hey, I am Congressman Roy. I have got an 
amendment, and I would like to offer it?'' Has that ever happened in 
this body? Has anybody ever seen that happen down here?
  It doesn't happen.
  We fund 20-year wars with no clear mission and no clear end date. We 
fund a war that is now older than millions of young Americans signing 
up to fight in it, as I said before.
  This defense authorization bill has a cheap diversity officer and 
other race-based programs in it, which I personally find deeply un-
American, while defense is increasingly challenged by China and Iran.

  When you pass something like that, Mr. Speaker, you are saying that 
the body values waging a war with no clear mission and appeasing 
leftwing diversity political mob rule more than protecting the American 
citizens whose lives are threatened every single day by cartel 
violence, by people coming across the border, and by what is going on 
in Iran and by China.
  The bottom line is the American people hire all of us to do a job, 
and we are failing them, which brings me to my point, in my view, about 
2021.
  The Framers created this branch, Congress, to debate and deliberate, 
to represent the people. But we pass pre-made bills cooked up behind 
closed doors by committee, in rules committees, and by a handful of 
committee cardinals, and we never debate them or amend them here on the 
floor of the House of Representatives, and we are increasingly passing 
by proxy vote.
  For the American people back home, proxy vote means a Member of this 
body whom you hired to do a job under the Constitution--you gave them 
your vote under the Constitution--and that Member comes to a Member of 
this body and says: ``I want you to vote for me.''
  So your vote, citizen, that you entrusted into your elected Member of 
Congress is being given to another Member here in the body.
  We have been in session for fewer than 40 days since March, I am 
told. Mr. Speaker, you can fact-check that, and you can go double-check 
it, but I can tell you we have been here precious few days.
  Think about that: While in the middle of a pandemic, while running 
$28 trillion in debt, while mounting up trillion-dollar deficits, 
multitrillion-dollar deficits, while China is right at our heels, while 
we are dealing with men and women in uniform in Afghanistan and the 
Middle East, while we have healthcare costs going up and crippling 
people, and while small businesses are struggling, the Speaker is 
playing games not bringing small businesses relief to the floor.

                              {time}  1915

  Mr. Speaker, we have been here for fewer than 40 days. The Speaker 
broke with over 230 years of precedent to authorize the 
unconstitutional proxy voting scheme.
  Last week, ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in the history of 
the United States, the House of Representatives used proxy votes--those 
are votes for Representatives who are not present in the Chamber to 
achieve a quorum, as the Constitution requires. Because the 
Constitution contemplates our being here, doing our job, I say 
ironically, with my voice echoing in the Chamber.
  Mr. Speaker, not a single floor amendment, not a single open rule--
the most closed rules since 1993. Now, that is boring for the people 
back home.
  What does a closed rule mean? It is what I am saying. It means that 
Congressman Roy cannot offer an amendment on the floor of the House of 
Representatives. That is what a closed rule is, and that is what we 
operate under. We never have debate and deliberation. We are ruled by a 
handful.
  As I said before, I am under the understanding that we have not had a 
single debate of an amendment open on the floor of the House of 
Representatives since May of 2016 where a Member could just come down, 
a bill is put on the floor, a Member says, ``I would like to amend 
it.'' No body functions that way--not the people's House.
  Do we think things would be better or worse if we were actually down 
here offering amendments, offering debate, debating and discussing?
  When the NDAA was on the floor yesterday--and there was a provision 
in the NDAA to place massive burdens on small businesses, but it was 
jammed in there to get it across the line--if we could have had an 
amendment on the floor, I could offer an amendment to strike it, and we 
would know where everybody in this body stands on adding those 
regulations to small businesses. But I was denied the ability to do 
that because we operate under a closed rule.
  Mr. Speaker, what kind of a people's House is that?
  You want to know why we are pushing $28 trillion in debt, and we are 
about to blow past $30 trillion? You want to know why we never get 
really good legislation?
  Because I am never able to work with the Speaker or with any of my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle because we can't come down 
here and offer amendments and have rigorous debate to force the 
conversations.
  We are ruled by a handful on both sides of the aisle who tell us what 
we are voting on. They come in and they say, Here is your 2,000-page 
bill. Figure out how you are going to vote on it. Figure out how you 
are going to message it back home.
  Mr. Speaker, for the first time in history, we opened an impeachment 
inquiry without a vote in the House. Now, I am not trying to open up 
impeachment. That has long since kind of come and gone from the minds 
of Americans, it seems like, but that is a big deal.
  In 2021, for the House to work, the following, in my opinion, should 
be nonnegotiable:
  Members should have 72 hours to review the legislation in the form to 
be voted on before they are required to vote. That is not a very big 
ask, ladies and gentlemen. We should have time to look at 2,000-page 
bills in the form that we are voting on it to see what is in it.
  We should have an open amendment process, giving all Members an 
opportunity to amend bills on the floor. Bills should cover single 
subjects and not be subject to division of the test under rule XVI we 
are applying. We should have single-subject bills, like the bill--by 
the way--that Dean Phillips, my Democrat colleague from Minnesota, and 
I offered on the floor.
  There was a PPP Flexibility Act, and it was 7 pages long. We should 
have that bill, put it on the floor, debate it, amend it, vote.
  And proxy voting should be prohibited on the floor of the House of 
Representatives. It is unconstitutional. I look forward to the U.S. 
Supreme Court taking that up, and I believe and

[[Page H7107]]

hope that they will find it to be unconstitutional as it is.
  Mr. Speaker, finally, a note about the coronavirus. Many Americans 
have been impacted by the virus. I have friends and family that have 
been impacted by it. I have had staff who have been impacted by it. I 
missed Thanksgiving with my 78-year-old father and 72-year-old mother 
because I had been around someone who had been positive. I wanted to 
protect them. We are all doing these things. We are all making 
sacrifices, figuring out how to adjust to make sure we protect the 
vulnerable.
  Mr. Speaker, our Nation should be open. Our businesses should be 
open. Our schools should be open. Our restaurants should be open. Our 
baseball and football and basketball stadiums should be open. Our 
churches should never, ever close again. And we should use our own 
judgment to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas without local, petty 
tyrants attempting to tell us what to do. But here we are, as I hear 
Joe Biden and others talk about national mask mandates in 2021, and I 
continue to hear about restrictions and social distancing, even if we 
get a vaccine.
  Have any of you been to the restaurants that are shutting down? In 
Arlington, Virginia, they run over and grab your beer or Diet Coke at 
10 p.m. right on the dot. They can't make money. They can't survive.
  Are any of the local, petty tyrants shutting them down going to pay 
their bills or are they going to come here to this Chamber and expect 
us to pass another trillion-dollar bill to fund them because the local 
governments are shutting them down?
  Because that is what is happening. The big businesses are doing fine. 
But the small restaurants, the local dry cleaners, the small hotels, 
the local music venues, the artists--the backbone of this country is 
getting decimated because we are shutting down. America doesn't shut 
down.
  Leftists run around bleeding about how we should be locked down, but 
expecting workers to bring them their lattes or take-home Chinese or 
tacos, expecting workers to clean the streets and pick up the garbage 
and serve them while they pat themselves on the back for being 
enlightened.

  Mayors like Mayor Adler in Austin, who I already said went to Cabo 
and recorded a video telling us we should stay home.
  Mayors like the mayors in L.A. turning off utilities while policing 
people's home.
  Oh, my gosh, how many cars do you have in front of your house?
  The mayor in Denver saying everybody has got to stay home, but what 
does he do?
  He flies home. Rules for thee, but not for me.
  My fellow Americans, these local tyrants, tell them a simple word; 
tell them ``no.'' You local businessowners that are opening up, God be 
with you. I am with you. Open up. We are Americans. We don't close 
down.
  Mr. Speaker, our Nation is a large and vibrant economy and large and 
vibrant country that thrives on free enterprise, freedom of religion, 
freedom to interact and engage as a society. It is who we are as 
Americans. We will remain the economic engine of the world.
  And I, frankly, don't really care to listen to countries around the 
world lecture us about their alleged lockdown successes and results--
much of which are easily disputable--when the world lives off the very 
sacrifices we make.
  We fund the world's defense, ladies and gentlemen. We fund, through 
our economic engine, a good deal of this world. We feed a large chunk 
of this world. We provide energy for an enormous part of this world. So 
forgive me if I don't want to be lectured to by Australia or anybody 
else about how their success in their lockdown worked out for them. 
Because these things are all interacting.
  When we make decisions, it impacts real lives. You read reports about 
140 million people that may be starving because we are not distributing 
the same number of products because of the virus. And then you come 
talk to me about a few thousand that are impacted by the virus. We have 
got decisions to make that impact people's lives, and we do it by 
staying open.
  Our own lockdowns that we have chosen to do, predominantly by local 
governments have been devastating. We have seen devastation in our 
schools, devastation in small businesses. We have seen people forced to 
die alone. We have seen increased suicides, people that have died from 
diseases, cancer, heart disease, and more, all because of virus 
policies. And to all of that, I say, simply, ``enough.''
  Mr. Speaker, this body, this House of Representatives should no 
longer be operating in fear. We are leaders. We should be here. We 
should be debating. We should be present. We should be in this Chamber, 
and we should not be wearing masks. We should be looking each other in 
the face and in the eye, and we should be doing our job. Take tests, 
take our temperature, whatever it takes, but lead.
  We are running around in fear, and it is embarrassing. We have these 
fake cleaning exercises between votes as a threat because of precious 
time if we dare congregate for 5-minutes and debate some issue that is 
on the floor of the House of Representatives.
  This is no way for the House of Representatives to function while we 
are leading a Nation. We should reject fear and favor of our faith, 
reject fear and favor of our family, our friends, and the thriving 
society Americans deserve.
  And simply put, America must never again shut down. America must 
always be open for business. And more importantly, America must always 
be open for life.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________