[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 158 (Thursday, September 29, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H8305-H8308]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Carter of Louisiana). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas (Mr. Arrington), 
he is a good friend and he represents--I will tell him, the second best 
part of the State, given that I represent the Hill Country in central 
Texas, and my dad grew up in west Texas and went to Texas Tech 
University.
  I have a soft spot in my heart for my friend. He is consistent in 
bringing to this floor of the House the need for all of us to work 
together to deal with the spending problem. And it is a problem that we 
face in this country.
  I was just thinking when I started running for office 5 years ago 
this fall, the national debt of the United States was $21 trillion. 
Today, 5 years later, our national debt is $31 trillion dollars.
  Just think for a minute. We never know how big that number is--nobody 
understands. $31 trillion. Well, let me just tell you this. If you set 
out to count to 31 trillion--we would just say, let's go, one 
Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, it would take you 
almost a million years to get to 31 trillion. That is absurd.
  We are spending money we don't have. This body believes itself to be 
the United States House of free stuff. We just write blank checks. We 
dole it out. Spending money we don't have, obliterating our children's 
future, devastating the future financial security and stability of the 
United States.
  All for what?
  So that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle can walk outside 
and give a fancy speech about free stuff they are doling out.
  And with all due respect, colleagues on my side of the aisle can go 
say, well, I wrote a bunch of checks to fund our defense, so I got to 
vote for another big spending bill.
  Every day. Just today, we had a whole bunch of votes on suspensions. 
There was $10 billion in there for global food security. We have men 
and women in uniform on food stamps, and this body writes another blank 
check to dole it out to global food security.
  When are we going to stop.
  But here is the problem. These blank checks, this spending that we 
engage in, it isn't just about debt, it isn't just about weakening our 
dollar, it isn't just about deficit spending, it is that we are funding 
the very government that is at war with its own people every day.
  We have a Department of Homeland Security that refuses to secure the 
homeland with wide open borders and fentanyl pouring in killing 
Americans and empowering cartels, with migrants dying in the meantime.
  We have an FBI that is targeting parents for domestic terrorism. We 
have an FBI that is targeting a father of seven in Pennsylvania for 
daring to have gone to speak out and exercise his free speech rights to 
defend the unborn.
  We have an IRS targeting Americans--85,000 new IRS agents and 
personnel. We are funding an entire energy--I should say anti-energy 
agenda--that is destroying our energy independence, driving up the 
price of goods, driving up the price of gas, driving up the price of 
electricity, weakening the grid of the United States, decreasing the 
reliability of our energy sector, and decreasing the freedom of the 
American people.
  All of that for what?
  So that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and the 
President and the climate czar, or whatever the heck his title is, John 
Kerry, can go fly around the world in jets, spewing all sorts of 
garbage out of their jets to go hang out in Davos and pat themselves on 
the back that they are doing some sort of benefit for the world with 
respect to carbon dioxide, while China

[[Page H8306]]

has 1,100 coal-fired plants and they are adding one new coal-fired 
plant a day. And my colleagues on the other side of the aisle just walk 
around like butterflies and hummingbirds, saying, aren't we great for 
the world?

                              {time}  1915

  Oh, isn't this great? Devastating the American economy and 
devastating the American way of life, devastating our national security 
for fake hummingbirds and fake unicorns, because they want to say they 
are doing something for the environment.
  Well, they are not doing crap for the environment, literally. You 
could ban every single combustion engine in America, and you are not 
going to dent CO2 production, while we destroy our way of 
life and destroy our economy.
  So America, welcome to the world of the Democratic Party. Plug your 
car in. Use up your entire electricity bill that you use for your air 
conditioning unit to run your battery-powered car.
  Oh, 60, $70,000, why can't you just go by a Tesla, the Secretary of 
Energy says; completely out of touch with the average hardworking 
American. But that is what we are dealing with.
  But that is not all. Today, my colleagues on my side of the aisle, 22 
of them in the United States Senate, voted for the continuing 
resolution. They voted for it, they will say, because, oh, no, the 
government funding will expire tomorrow, and we might have a government 
shutdown.
  You can hear all of the people in America crying big crocodile tears 
over the possibility that the Federal Government might not have its 
lights on on Saturday morning.
  But let's actually talk about what is really going on; that CR that 
22 Republican Members of the Senate voted for contains $17 billion in 
emergency funding, unpaid for, another blank check.
  That same CR will expire in December, on December 16, in a lame-duck 
Congress, which my colleagues on this side of the aisle know full well 
means it empowers my colleagues on that side of the aisle to continue 
to stick it to the American people with their radical leftist policies 
undermining their way of life.
  That continuing resolution has nothing in it to secure the border of 
the United States when our border is wide open and fentanyl is pouring 
in, killing Americans; 72,000 dead Americans last year, from opioid, 
fentanyl-related poisoning, directly coming in at the hands of cartels, 
coming from China. That is more than every American who died in the 
Vietnam War.
  Are we going to put a great big memorial out there for all of those 
72,000? What about the year before? What about this year?
  What about the four people in Hays County that I represent in Texas, 
the four kids who died from fentanyl poisoning because my colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle want to turn a blind eye to cartels 
exploiting our border for the endangerment of Americans. That is the 
truth.
  Americans are dead because of the policies of this administration 
failing to secure the border of the United States, and they know it. 
Migrants are dead. Migrants' bodies are piling up in south Texas, by 
the hundreds; 53 cooked in a tractor trailer in San Antonio, which I 
represent; 53 human beings cooked in the false name of compassion, 
while my colleagues on the other side of the aisle walk around going: 
Look at me, I love Brown people. I love immigrants.
  Bull. It is a lie, and my colleagues need to wake up, because I can 
promise you that the Brown people--not my terminology, by the way--in 
south Texas, are fed up, fed up with being exploited, abused, and used 
for political purposes.
  While my colleagues like to say, oh, well, Governor DeSantis and 
Governor Abbott sent some people to D.C., to Martha's Vineyard.
  Well, welcome to the party. The country is now alerted. These were 
volunteers, volunteers who said yeah, I will take a ride to D.C. Fifty 
people in Martha's Vineyard, 53 dead migrants in a tractor trailer in 
San Antonio.
  Just last night, the mayor of Uvalde, Texas--yes, that Uvalde, 
Texas--called up, there was a pickup truck with 10 immigrants in the 
truck that T-boned into a tractor trailer at an intersection; two of 
them dead, two in the hospital.
  Every stinking day this is happening, and my colleagues the other 
side of the aisle turn a blind eye. That is the reality of our border.
  But this continuing resolution that my Republican colleagues in the 
United States Senate, 22 of them, were all too happy to support, 
continues to fund that Department of Homeland Security of an annual 
budget of $57.5 billion; $8 billion for ICE. Even though it was a 70 
percent reduction in removals last year for ICE.
  Millions in grants each year, in that same continuing resolution, to 
nongovernmental organizations who are the ones actually transporting 
people around the United States, effectively subsidizing illegal 
immigration.
  This CR empowers the authoritarian bureaucrats targeting Americans. 
It is not just the Department of Homeland Security leaving our border 
wide open and exposed, but the FBI, to the tune of $10.8 billion, to go 
after former President Trump, to go after parents concerned about 
schools, to go after a pro-lifer father; and IRS, $12.6 billion. We 
just gave them another $80 billion.
  But no, no; we just funded a CR with an annual appropriation of $12 
billion.
  Oh, you think that is good enough? How about NIH, $45 billion. After 
NIH has been basically screwing the American people for the last two 
and a half years with their nonsense spewing out about COVID, resulting 
in our children being set back a generation; shunned to the corner of 
classrooms; forced to wear masks; unable to have proper speech. All so 
my colleagues on the other side of the aisle can run around wearing 
masks and scaring the bejesus out of the American people.
  $45 billion. My Republican colleagues in the Senate said, sure, let's 
keep giving them more money.
  What will my colleagues on my side of the aisle do tomorrow? I hope 
they will oppose it.
  How about Pfizer and Moderna, who faced no liability; made $93 
billion in 2022, $93 billion, Pfizer and Moderna, because the 
government was cramming shots into people's arms, and then forcing our 
men and women in uniform to lose their job and get fired if they dare 
not take a shot, which the current CDC says, you know what? It doesn't 
even help with transmission.

  What the hell kind of a country are we living in? This isn't freedom; 
and we are funding it. Republicans are complicit.
  NIAID, $6.3 billion, run by the COVID tyrant in chief, Dr. Fauci.
  CDC, $8.5 billion, colluded with the teachers' unions to impose the 
lockdowns.
  The World Health Organization, $122 million in this annual funding 
just approved; already got $280 million under the Democrats' COVID 
relief bill. They pushed a completely unfounded COVID narrative and 
partnered with the Chinese Communists to cover up their role in the 
COVID origin. This we know.
  The Department of Defense and all of their glory--and no, don't say 
that over here on my side of the aisle because we have got to rush in 
and we have got to give the money for the Department of Defense, 
without any accountability, by the way, for how about forcing troops 
out with their tyrannical COVID-19 vaccine mandates; set to discharge 
over 75,000 Active servicemembers for daring to say no to a vaccine 
that doesn't even help with transmissibility.
  How about a woke military informed policy? The DOD won't admit China 
is a greater threat than climate change, according to the leadership. 
They are preoccupied with diversity training; constructing training 
centers with mixed-sex restrooms and locker rooms and showers. The Air 
Force is going to spend $66 million for one in San Antonio, which I 
represent.
  $56 billion for the Department of State and Foreign Operations 
budget, for U.S. embassies to fly pride and BLM flags; add unspecified 
X-gender designations to passports. $15 million for the State 
Department's Global Equality Fund sending tax dollars to LGBTQI 
whatever, whatever, persons around the world.
  Empowers Biden's administration's anti-American, anti-biology 
ideology; $39 million for HHS Office of Civil Rights promoting gender 
transition surgeries for kids.
  $76 billion obviously goes to the Department of Education, where we 
subsidize schools failing our kids; shoving

[[Page H8307]]

them into the corners of classrooms; making them wear masks; and 
rewarding teachers filling their minds with anti-American teachings 
under critical race theory. Even in my own city that I represent in San 
Antonio, Northside ISD forced a radical equity exercise dividing people 
by their hair color.
  $2 billion for the Student Aid Administration carrying out the 
Biden's $400 billion student loan giveaway.
  $525 million for the public broadcasting. HHS, $94 million for 
diversity training; $64 million for the Office of Minority Health; $1.1 
million for the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity in HHS.
  Energy, $100 million for environmental justice. The EPA used this to 
create a new Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights 
in the Department of the EPA.
  $20 million for the Department of Energy's Office of Impact and 
Diversity; $885 million for the Department of Education programs that 
fund colleges based solely on students' race and ethnicity.
  $235 million for Federal apprenticeship programs that includes grants 
to equity intermediaries to hire CRT indoctrination consultants.
  How about the United Nation's population funds, praising China's 
abusive population control program.
  How about U.N. women, which can't even define women? What is a woman? 
Promotes trans and intersex athletes.
  Climate, $15 million for the U.N. Climate Agency; $149 million for 
the global environment facility.
  $125 million for the World Bank's Clean Technology Fund.
  And my Republican colleagues in the Senate, 22, voted for it and, of 
course all the Democrats, for the most part, passed this through to get 
it to a lame duck in December, to then allow for even more. That is 
what we are funding.
  At some point you would think that we would wake up on a bipartisan 
basis or, Lord willing, at least my side of the aisle, that we actually 
have the power of the purse; and we are actually supposed to use it, 
instead of giving massive blank checks to an administration that is at 
war with the American people on a daily basis.
  When the Founders gave us this government, they knew that they didn't 
want to empower an executive with unfettered power, yet that is what we 
do every day in this Chamber. That is what the so-called people's House 
of the United States does every single day.
  Federalist 58, James Madison, ``The House of Representatives cannot 
only refuse, but they alone can propose, the supplies requisite for the 
support of government. They, in a word, hold the purse. . . . `'

  ``This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most 
complete and effectual weapon with which any Constitution can arm the 
immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of 
every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary 
measure.''
  In other words, we are supposed to have the power. We are supposed to 
be the ones who can stop the funding of the tyranny against the people.
  Oh, Chip, it is not tyranny. I am sure my friend from Pennsylvania 
has thoughts on that. Of course it is tyranny.
  An FBI targeting parents for being domestic terrorists? An FBI 
targeting a father of seven, showing up with 25 to 30 armed SWAT team 
members to arrest him in front of his family? All true.
  How is that freedom? How is that not tyranny?
  How is it not tyranny to steal money from a plumber who worked his 
whole life, didn't borrow money to go to some fancy university, and go 
give it to somebody else to pay off their loan?
  How is it not tyranny to steal money from a person who worked their 
whole life to do it right and pay their loans back after going to 
college, and give it to someone else who got a ridiculous degree from 
some ridiculous college and is sitting in their parents' basement on 
social media trying to be a social media influencer? That is what 
happening.
  We are just going to take money from somebody else and go give it to 
another person. That is tyranny. It is theft, and we are doing it 
through executive fiat.
  We didn't vote on it here. None of these people are going to go 
answer to their constituents for stealing money from them to go give it 
to someone else. The President just decided it by decree. That is 
tyranny.
  It is tyranny to stick a needle in somebody's arm or tell them that 
you are going to get fired from your career in the military.
  Well, I have had it. But I have not just had it with the tyrannical 
policies of a President. I have had with it with a United States House 
of Representatives that does not represent the people; and I have had 
it with a Republican Party who refuses to stop funding the very things 
they campaign against every single day.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry).

                              {time}  1930

  Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the good gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Roy).
  He is spot on. It is tyranny.
  We use euphemisms around this town. We call it loan forgiveness. You 
took out the loan, and we are going to forgive you paying it back using 
someone else's money. That is not loan forgiveness. That is socialism.
  Socialism is tyranny. Taking it, like you said, from some hardworking 
individual--maybe they wanted to go to college and didn't have the 
opportunity. Maybe they didn't have the opportunity because they didn't 
have the money, maybe because of their family situation. It doesn't 
matter. Maybe they chose not to go to college. They chose not to buy 
something they didn't want to pay for.
  Now, the President says we are going to use the Heroes Act. This is a 
fascinating example. I told my colleagues around here who want to keep 
on helping, we have to establish comity here--comity, not comedy. It is 
a comedy, unfortunately. But we have to work together.
  What will it take for them to understand that every step in good 
faith that we take is abused by the folks who hate this country and 
hate us? I hate to use that terminology, but that is where it is.
  They use the Heroes Act, enacted after 9/11, for those who were sent, 
who went to fight, who had to give up some of their time to pay for 
their student loans, pay for their education, use that to forgive these 
loans for other people who made the decision but apparently didn't 
intend to pay. That is the definition of tyranny.
  The good gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy), my friend, mentioned the 
arrest in Bucks County. I just remind everybody that, today, this place 
voted on sending hundreds of millions of dollars to the Department of 
Justice, like they don't have enough, right?
  The Department of Justice raided this pastor's house--not just a 
father of seven but a pastor--at 7 o'clock in the morning, beating on 
the door. When you don't answer fast enough because maybe you are 
upstairs in bed and it takes you awhile to figure out what is going on 
and get your clothes on and get down the stairs because you don't want 
to be standing out on the front lawn in your skivvies in front of the 
neighborhood--that is what the FBI does. If you don't get there fast 
enough, they are going to break down your door.
  These agents all rush in, arms drawn, pointed at this poor 
individual. Kids are up on the stairs crying. I don't know how many. 
Mr. Roy says 25, 24, something. Maybe it was that.
  Whatever it was, here is what I know it wasn't. It wasn't a phone 
call to the magistrate. Understand that the court, the State court, 
already threw this thing out. This gentleman, this individual, was 
exercising his First Amendment rights. Somebody made a claim. The State 
court and the police said there is nothing here. The Federal Government 
said: Look, you people are all domestic terrorists who disagree. You 
disagree with us, so now you are domestic terrorists.
  Instead of calling the guy up and saying: Look, the Federal 
Government wants to arrest you for this. You have never had a record. 
You are nonviolent. You are going to have to show up at the 
magistrate's office to be arrested, or we can do it the other way. 
Which way would you like?
  Offer the opportunity. The guy is not a convicted drug felon, not a 
murderer.

[[Page H8308]]

He has nothing violent in his record. But they break into the house as 
a show of force, as a show to make sure everybody else in the country 
knows if you have a differing opinion, don't you dare say it. Don't you 
dare.
  That is the definition of tyranny. That is exactly the definition of 
tyranny. What else can it be?
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I would just add that we are talking about, 
again, decisions we make with the money that we are taking from 
taxpayers, printing and borrowing to the tune of a trillion-dollar-plus 
deficit every year.
  I started this by saying when I ran for office 5 years ago for the 
first time, our national debt was $21 trillion. Today, it is $31 
trillion--$10 trillion in the mere 5 years since I have been here, $2 
trillion a year, my friend from Pennsylvania. But we keep funding this 
stuff.
  This is the nexus I want the American people to understand. The 
deficit spending isn't just about the deficits. The deficit spending is 
why our Nation is being torn apart.
  We are supposed to be able to agree to disagree. We are supposed to 
be able to have 50 laboratories of democracy sewn together under a 
commonality, defending ourselves and having an economy that functions. 
Instead, we are funding the bureaucrats that are ripping us apart, 
thread by thread, IRS agent after IRS agent, FBI agent after FBI agent. 
I say that as someone who worked in the U.S. Attorney's Office with 
great men and women in the FBI, whose father was an IRS agent. My 
father worked for the Internal Revenue Service as an auditor.
  I have no problem with how we try to set these things up to work. But 
hiring 85,000 new IRS personnel on the back of what we knew happened, 
targeting certain individuals with the power of the IRS, the FBI 
targeting a father, targeting Scott Smith in Loudoun County, saying he 
is a domestic terrorist, in coordination with the National School 
Boards Association, which 26 States' school board associations have now 
removed themselves from.
  That is what the American people need to understand. We are funding 
that--$10.8 billion for the FBI, $12.6 billion for IRS, $1.5 billion 
for ATF. For public health, $8.5 billion for CDC, $6.3 billion for the 
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, $45 billion for 
NIH generally, $3.3 billion for the FDA, $122 million for the WHO, $612 
million for OSHA. Remember, it was OSHA that tried to force a vax 
mandate on private businesses.
  How do you get any more tyrannical than the President saying: You, 
private entity, through OSHA, are going to require your employees to 
take a needle in the arm for a vaccine, by the way, that was unproven, 
untested, had liability protection, and enriched two pharma companies 
to the tune of $93 billion in 2 years.

  Somebody tell me that is not tyranny.
  Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I can't tell my colleague that it is not 
tyranny. It certainly is.
  This is the same OSHA that at some point required reporting of 
adverse reactions to the so-called vaccine, the jab. In the dark of 
night, in the middle of the week, when no one was paying attention, 
that requirement went away. They still tried to make private employers 
force their employees to take this jab, but they didn't want to know.
  They have to report everything else, right? They have to report every 
single slip and fall, every industrial accident. We want people to be 
safe. But we never gave them a license to tell us what to do with our 
own bodies and make those decisions.
  For goodness' sake, if they had the temerity to force us to do it, 
the least they can do is keep records on the adverse effects.
  Mr. Speaker, they didn't want to know, did they? They didn't want to 
know. They don't want you to know their tyranny.
  They are not for medical freedom. They are not for education freedom. 
They are not for economic freedom. They are not for any of our 
freedoms. That is where we are today.
  That is why Chip, the good gentleman from Texas, and I are here this 
evening, to talk about the tyranny that this place, this room, the body 
that we serve in, the body that we fought to serve in, the institution 
that we revered growing up, we are so upset with because this 
institution, this body, is aiding and abetting this tyranny.
  This is the body that is supposed to be ending the tyranny, that is 
supposed to be fighting the tyranny. Yet, here we are.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, if I might inquire about the time remaining.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Texas has 1 minute 
remaining.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from 
engaging in personalities toward the President.

                          ____________________