[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 178 (Thursday, November 17, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H8579-H8584]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE END OF AN ERA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, the House will be leaving town today, heading 
back to our States, heading back to our districts. Obviously, this will 
be a week of thanksgiving and, obviously, I wish all of my colleagues 
well and safe travel. We have much, of course, for which to be thankful 
in this great country.
  But there are great concerns that we face. Today, obviously, we had 
the speech and the news about the future of Speaker Pelosi. The 
outgoing Speaker has had a long career in this body, and I wish her 
well. I wish her the best in the next chapter of her life.
  Some are saying it is an end of an era; and I would say that it is 
only an end of an era if we choose to make it so.
  Speaker Pelosi ran this Chamber not terribly unlike her Republican 
predecessors, and I don't necessarily mean that to be the right way to 
do things; bills that are cooked up in small rooms among leadership 
staff and Members of leadership; thousands of pages of legislation 
dropped on Members at the 11th hour; key pieces of legislation that are 
shuttled through committee without significant debate and then dropped 
on the floor.
  Sometimes we have what is called suspension votes, where we suspend 
the rules and we have votes on the floor with no Members here to debate 
it or discuss it; just take the word of the committees on which I don't 
serve; amendments on the floor of this body restrained since May of 
2016, under both parties' leadership.
  Some people refer to this as a cartel. Some refer to it as the swamp. 
What it is, regardless of branding, we know that it takes power away 
from the legislators and, thereby, takes power away from the people who 
sent their legislators here to represent them.
  The only way we are going to make this the end of an era is if we 
change the way we do things, and we should. I am saying this now that 
there is a Republican majority about to take the gavel. I believe we 
have to change the way this town works. I believe we have to change the 
way this body works.
  The reason that I introduced the Article I Act in the first Congress 
that I served in this body, while President Trump was in office, to 
reclaim power from the executive branch, to say that we must have a 
voice in these ongoing emergency declarations, some of which date back 
to the 1970s. The reason that I did that was because I believed it, 
even though it would have taken power away from a Republican President.
  I am wondering now if some of my Democratic colleagues will think, 
well, maybe that is not a terrible idea if we look ahead. I don't know.
  Here, in this Chamber, I am, as a Republican, calling on a 
fundamental change in the way we do things here; how bills get to the 
floor.
  Most people might not understand that the default rules that would go 
back to the Jefferson Manual and the basic rules of parliamentary 
procedure would be that I have the right to be able to offer a bill; 
and that then you would have the right to amend the bill here on the 
floor of this body; this being the floor of the House of 
Representatives.
  But what the American people don't know is that every Congress we 
come in and we vote on new rules, and we vote on rules that, then, 
restrict the power of every Member of this body to be able to represent 
their constituents.
  We restrict the power of a Member to offer a bill, to bring that bill 
to a vote, to have debate on that bill, to amend that bill here on the 
floor of the House of Representatives. That is the way it works.
  Then we even go further. Every week, we fly in and then we have votes 
on rules, rules that are cooked up among 13 Members of the House of 
Representatives who sit up in a committee up here, behind these walls, 
and they vote a new rule, and send it down here; and then the body 
votes on the rule that then structures debate for the week.
  Then can I offer an amendment here on the floor? No. You know why? 
Because people are afraid to vote.
  Members of this body, sent to vote on legislation and to represent 
their constituents, are afraid to vote. Can you imagine, in the 
founding of this country, the establishment of this body, the people's 
House, to go get reelected every two years, to go seek re-election, 
that we are afraid to vote?
  Do you know how many times if I bring up opening the process and 
opening up the floor of the House, colleagues on my side of the aisle, 
the other side of the aisle go, well, you know, don't you know that 
means somebody could bring up a really tough vote.
  Well, if you vote ``no'' on a whole lot of tough votes, like I tend 
to do, you get kind of used to it, and you get used to what you have to 
do, which is go explain to your constituents why there ain't no free 
lunch.
  This isn't the United States House of free stuff. You can't just keep 
passing bills to spend money we don't have to buy off votes. You can't 
keep voting for bills that have a nice title so that you don't have to 
go back and explain why you voted, as I did, against burn pit 
legislation for veterans who need support and help for burn pits. But 
you vote against it because you don't need another $675 billion 
mandatory spending item.
  Yet, bipartisan support for a bill because nobody wants to go say no. 
Nobody wants to go look in a veteran's eye and explain the hard reality 
of what we need to do in this body.
  Nobody wants to say no to a bill that says ALS research. Nobody wants 
to say no to a bill that says something about helping animals or 
helping old people or helping kids. You put a nice title on there, then 
everybody has got to vote for. It doesn't matter which side of the 
aisle you are on; you have got to vote for it because there is no 
spending limit. There is no restraint. There is no responsibility.
  There is no leadership. There is no check on unrestrained power of 
the executive branch by this body because this body keeps funding the 
very tyranny of the executive branch that many campaign against. That 
is the truth.

[[Page H8580]]

  My colleagues on this side of the aisle just went out and sought 
election, where we took the House back. My colleagues on this side of 
the aisle went out and campaigned against unrestrained Federal power in 
the Federal Bureau of Investigation; a Department of Homeland Security 
that refuses to secure the border of the United States; labeling of 
parents as domestic terrorists.
  They went out and campaigned against an energy policy of an 
administration that is destroying American energy; driving the price of 
gas up; driving the price of electricity up; destroying the grid of the 
United States; making us more dependent on China, on Venezuela, on 
Russia, on Saudi Arabia, on Iran.
  It is absurd. We ran against all that stuff, but you know what? A 
whole lot of my colleagues vote to fund all that stuff; have no problem 
writing a big old check, both sides of the aisle.
  You know why? Because they always have something they want that they 
are willing to just sign off on a monster piece of legislation, 
irrespective of the debt that is piling up around the ears of their 
kids and their grandkids, the destruction of the American Dream that is 
happening because of that, or the funding of the very bureaucrats that 
are undermining the freedoms of the United States people every day.
  Come to the floor. It has got a National Defense Authorization Act. 
You come to the floor, and you have got something you must pass. We 
have to pay for the pay raise for our troops. We must pay for some more 
planes and bombers and helicopters and missiles.
  Don't you know, Chip, that we have got to go stand up against China. 
We have got to fund Ukraine. We have got to stand up against Putin.
  Great. Let's have a debate on this floor about those things. If you 
are talking about war, maybe we should declare it. If you think that 
there is a proxy war with funding, maybe we should debate it on the 
floor of this body.
  Maybe you shouldn't just keep writing blank checks and never have a 
debate about guns and butter. But that is what we do.
  This is where I have got to have a little tough talk to my colleagues 
on this side of the aisle. What, pray tell, have you heard out of 
anybody on this side of the aisle that will change any of that?
  Yesterday, we had all sorts of conference meetings, debates about our 
internal workings. I tend to like to keep those meetings confidential 
and private, but half my dadgum colleagues are tweeting that stuff out 
in real time.
  The fact of the matter is nothing changed. The status quo remains 
because people want their power. They want their committee 
chairmanships. They want their gavel. They want the ability to control 
the power and the purse strings, but they don't want to look in the 
mirror to fundamentally change a broken town, a broken House, a broken 
body, a broken Federal Government that is stepping all over the dreams 
and the hopes and the future and the prosperity of the American people.
  There is not a remote indication that my colleagues on my side of the 
aisle understand what time it is in America; understand what we are 
facing. It is not just a campaign statement. It is not just something 
to go rile up the American people to get elected; to get elected, to 
get power, to get on a certain committee.
  You know what every conversation that has been had in this body, at 
least on my side of the aisle, since last Tuesday? Hey, what's going on 
in the Steering Committee?
  Hey, who is going to get Ways and Means?
  Hey, who is going to get on what committee?
  Hey, did the freshmen have their votes? Who is going to be the head 
of the freshman class?
  Hey, who is going to be the Speaker? Who is going to be the whip?
  I don't know. Let's figure out what we are going to do; who is going 
to have power. Who is going to have power; who is going to have power?
  The answer is, anybody but the American people. The answer is, 
anybody but the rank-and-file Members of this body.
  The answer is the status quo. That is why people ran--that is why 
President Trump, by the way, did well in 2016 running against the 
swamp.
  Say what you want about President Trump. He represented a large block 
of this country that were sick and tired of this town, of this place, 
of this body, of the people in this room, and it is high time we do 
something about it.
  Stop kissing each other's rear ends, asking and begging for some slot 
on a committee. We didn't come here to be on committees. We didn't come 
here to get a title.
  The titles around this place, who is in leadership? Leadership. Isn't 
leadership something you recognize and follow? It is not something you 
elect.
  I didn't come here for second place. I didn't come here--I don't 
leave my family, I don't say goodbye to my son and my daughter and my 
wife every Monday and fly up here and spend, 3, 4, 5 days up here and 
fly back every week, just because I want to earn Southwest points.
  I didn't fly up here because I want to sit in rooms and go have a 
steak dinner and go talk to lobbyists about what needs to be put in a 
bill.
  I didn't come up here to say, well, we have got to make sure we get--
don't call them earmarks. No, don't call them earmarks. That is already 
bad out there. So we are going to call them community-directed 
spending. Okay, we will call them community-directed spending, the 
currency of this town.
  How are you going to take care--how are you going to get a bridge 
back home? That is important. We have floods in Houston. We have floods 
in Louisiana. They need flood money, right?
  We have tornadoes in the Midwest. Well, we need some tornado money.
  Well, how do you think you get people to vote for all these 
appropriations bills that have left your country $32 trillion in debt?

                              {time}  1530

  By the way, 5 percent interest rates, do you know what is going to 
happen? I am sorry, interest rates going up where they are at 5 
percent, do you know what is going to happen to the interest payments? 
It is going to be another $600 billion, $700 billion, $800 billion. You 
pretty much just bought a whole second Department of Defense, ladies 
and gentlemen, with money that you are printing.
  How does that sound? Enjoy that, do you? And nobody here has any plan 
on what to do about it except more of the same.
  We will have a lot of speeches about, ``Chip, don't you understand? 
Entitlements, mandatory spending, that is the problem. That is 70 
percent of the whole thing.''
  Well, as a technical matter, that is not incorrect, but we got here 
because we refused to deal with it. And that is not an excuse to write 
a blank check for discretionary spending.
  Hey, we don't need to be responsible on discretionary spending 
because the actual problem is the rest of the spending, even though 
discretionary spending is still $1.5 trillion, $1.6 trillion, $1.8 
trillion, $2 trillion, or is it $7 trillion? Does anybody know? Does 
anybody care?
  Hey, we shut down the whole country under COVID-19, but hell, we will 
just write a $5 trillion check. Why not? That is what we do. We just 
keep writing checks that we can't cash.
  So, what are we going to do? What are Republicans going to do to 
demonstrate that they get what time it is in America, that they get 
that there is $32 trillion in debt, that they get that our borders are 
wide open? That is not a political campaign speech; it is a reality.
  Even Democrats who refuse to acknowledge that our border is wide open 
are panicked over the title 42 ruling by a district judge because even 
Democrats who want to ignore the 230,000 or 240,000 apprehensions in 
October, the 70,000-something got-aways, the 27 dead migrants, they 
ignore all that, but that 7,000 or 8,000 a day, they can just sort of 
barely process that.
  You get rid of title 42--which, by the way, there is no pandemic 
reason for title 42 right now. It is literally a Band-Aid that 
Democrats are using as an, oh, my God. If we actually opened up the 
borders entirely, we can't deal with 17,000 a day. But that is the 
truth. That is the reality.
  What are my colleagues on this side of the aisle going to do about 
it? ``Oh,

[[Page H8581]]

Chip. We will pass a bill in January. I don't know if it will be H.R. 
1, H.R. 2, H.R. 5, but don't worry. We will pass a border security 
bill.''
  Well, one, I will believe that when I see it. We don't have a great 
track record.
  Two, so what? Are you going to pass that bill and walk over and 
convince that great stalwart of defense of our border Mitt Romney that 
he should vote for it? Are you going to convince any of the 12 who just 
decided to redefine marriage and stomp all over religious liberty over 
in the United States Senate? Are you going to convince any one of them 
to vote for a strong border security bill? And even if you do, do you 
think that Joe Biden is going to sign it?
  The question for Republicans is: Are you willing to use the power of 
the purse, articulated by our Founders in Federalist No. 58 and broadly 
at our founding, to stop what is happening and the destruction of our 
sovereignty with wide-open borders that are endangering migrants, 
killing Texas, having fentanyl poured into our schools, or are you just 
going to continue the fraud that is the United States House of 
Representatives?
  That is what it is. We don't represent anything at all when it comes 
to the core values of the American people. We represent power. We 
represent the quest for power.
  Are we going to use the power of the purse to secure the border? Are 
we going to deal with the National Defense Authorization Act that is 
currently being negotiated and likely passed out of the United States 
Senate and sent over to the House of Representatives?
  Now, it is hard to hear the Republican leader, Mr. McCarthy, say that 
he thinks maybe the NDAA ought to be pushed to the next Congress. I 
agree with that. But then what? Then what?
  Is the Senate going to pass the same thing right back over, an NDAA 
that is chock-full of all sorts of non-truly defense-related matters?
  Are we going to have an NDAA that is sent over to us that drafts our 
daughters without so much as a single debate here on the floor about 
what it means to actually add our daughters to Selective Service?
  Are we going to have an NDAA and are we going to support an NDAA that 
continues to advance vaccine mandates? How many of our men and women in 
uniform need to be fired? Oh, don't worry, Chip. We took care of it. It 
is not a dishonorable discharge. Oh, really. Well, thank you for that 
grand leadership, GOP, because I am sure it really makes our men and 
women in uniform feel all that much better when they are forced to 
leave their service in the United States military with discharge--not 
honorable, discharge.
  I am sure that makes them feel great. I am sure they are sitting 
around the table this coming Thursday after they got fired because they 
refused to take a jab in the arm of a vaccine that Moderna and Pfizer 
made over $100 billion on with all sorts of questions by legitimate, 
mainline doctors about the efficacy of the vaccine.
  In a hearing that we held just last week off the Hill, because my 
Democratic colleagues won't hold a hearing on COVID on the Hill, where 
all three doctors sat on the panel, we asked them: Is there any basis, 
any reason, for our men and women in uniform to be required to take a 
vaccine for COVID? The answer was no, no, no. Unequivocal no.
  This doesn't do anything significant for transmission. This doesn't 
do anything to truly help and protect young, healthy men and women who 
are in the military. They are precisely the population who are the 
least impacted by COVID.
  Yet, here we are today, sitting here in real time while we adjourn 
for Thanksgiving, and an NDAA is getting debated in the Senate to be 
sent over here. What will Republicans do about that? I don't know. I 
don't know.
  Are we going to have hearings in this body on COVID itself, the 
reaction and response to it, the power of government being used against 
the American people? Are we going to have hearings about its origins, 
hearings about NIH funding, hearings about mask policy, hearings about 
what Fauci and Birx knew and when they knew it, hearings about the 
efficacy of the vaccine, hearings about the side effects of the 
vaccine, hearings about why only now some of our leadership of this 
country is going out and saying: Oh, sorry. My bad.
  I think it really was just kind of something bad for old people and 
maybe we really didn't see that maybe we didn't need to freak out and 
lock down our economy and kill our economy and send our kids to the 
corners and mask them and shut down our schools and set them back a 
generation in education. Our bad.
  These are real people's lives. This is the greatest economy in the 
history of the world, and you just shut it down. What in the world? Is 
anybody on our side of the aisle going to do anything about that?
  I haven't heard anything yet. I haven't seen anything yet. All I saw 
today was a hearing, a press conference talking about Hunter Biden.
  Well, that is great. But what are we going to do about Scott Smith, 
who was targeted by the Department of Justice, the National School 
Board Association?
  What are we going to do about Anthony Fauci? What are we going to do 
to make sure the American people know and fully understand the 
collective power of the Federal Government being pointed at and used 
against the American people?
  Because it is happening--COVID tyranny, nurses and doctors forced out 
of the workforce, the effort under OSHA to try to force employers to 
mandate vaccines, the CDC regularly pushing Twitter, Google, and 
Facebook to flag any dissenters who dared question the orthodoxy and 
all that the powers that be said that they thought we must know.
  How about the CDC purchasing $420,000 worth of Americans' location 
data to monitor compliance with lockdowns? Is anybody bothered by that? 
Is anybody bothered by the government looking at our information, 
looking at phone records?
  How about guns? The FBI secretly coerced Americans to sign forms to 
voluntarily relinquish their rights to own, buy, or use firearms and 
permanently register them in the NICS system.
  In Delaware, the ATF showed up unannounced to a man's home without a 
warrant for a surprise inspection. Under Biden, the ATF has revoked 500 
percent more Federal firearms licenses.
  How about DHS? Documents reveal DHS plans to target inaccurate 
information on ``the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy 
of the COVID-19 vaccines.'' Facebook created a special portal for DHS 
and government partners to report disinformation directly.
  How about the environment? A 77-year-old veteran was sentenced to 18 
months in Federal prison and $130,000 in fines for digging ponds on his 
Montana property in violation of the Clean Water Act.
  The power of government is being used against the American people and 
our citizens every day. I have heard lots of talk by my Republican 
colleagues about oversight. Oversight doesn't do any good if you have a 
handful of hearings and nobody in America knows what is going on.
  That is why we should have a coordinated Church Committee-style 
direct effort to bring together the entirety of the Federal 
Government's assault on the well-being of the American people and bring 
that to light to the American people and then specific changes to deal 
with it.
  But I am not sure how much confidence a lot of the American people 
have that we are going to change anything because you have to actually 
change something.
  We have, immediately following the election, the recoronation of 
Mitch McConnell in the Senate and the adoption of essentially the exact 
same leadership team on this side of the aisle.
  What is the first thing that happens in the votes? What do 
Republicans do? In the Senate, 12 Senate Republicans voted for cloture 
just yesterday to codify other than marriage between a man and a woman 
and trample on the religious liberty rights of Americans to disagree. 
That happened yesterday.
  Mitt Romney, Utah, Trump won 58 percent of that vote in Utah; Cynthia 
Lummis, Wyoming, a 70 percent Republican State; Shelley Moore Capito, a 
69 percent Republican State; Todd

[[Page H8582]]

Young, a 57 percent Republican State; Roy Blunt, a 57 percent 
Republican State; Joni Ernst, a 53 percent Republican State; Rob 
Portman; Dan Sullivan; Lisa Murkowski; Richard Burr; Thom Tillis; Susan 
Collins--Republicans walking away from religious liberty, walking away 
from the definition of marriage. What better way to signal to the 
American people and your Republican supporters and voters that you got 
your personal thing pulled together and you are going to represent them 
and change what we are doing in this town? Hard to believe the American 
people are cynical. Hard to believe that.

                              {time}  1545

  Yesterday, we had a bunch of votes on rules and procedures in the 
Republican Conference. It was a private meeting, despite the fact that 
my colleagues love to leak it out. I don't like to get into what 
specifically was done behind halfway closed doors, but I will just say 
this: There wasn't an overall warm and fuzzy feeling about change.
  Very little changed. In fact, one of the things that did change was 
to just pull away from a 200-year-old precedent, dating back to 
Jefferson's Manual, about vacating the chair. It is my belief that 
sitting in the Speaker's chair, you would want to make very clear that 
you are confident that vacating the chair would never be a problem.
  Yet, Republicans circled the wagons yesterday. You know why? It is 
about power. It is about the fear of losing power. It is about the fear 
of change. It is about the fear of empowering the body to do its thing. 
It is about the fear of open debate. It is about the fear of regular 
order. It is about the fear of votes. It is about the fear of taking 
tough votes.
  I don't fear tough votes. But I will say something to my Republican 
colleagues. Don't talk to me about change or what you think is changing 
until you tell me about the process you are going to use to bring bills 
to this floor. Because if I don't have the right to amend it, if I 
don't have the right to represent my constituents, if I don't have the 
right to have a voice and you are going to come down and whip me and 
whip my colleagues to support a bill crammed down my throat by a Rules 
Committee that I didn't vote for or select, if you are going to tell me 
I have got to eat that vote, then that is not representative government 
and that is not the way we should do things.
  When you bring a bill to the floor of the House of Representatives 
through the Rules Committee and it is told to us to be must passed--
National Defense Authorization Act, which by the way is not must pass, 
but is always considered such. Appropriations bills--how many of my 
colleagues went to the microphone yesterday saying continuing 
resolutions are destroying our military; we need actual appropriations? 
You know what? I do not disagree. But when you offer a rule change to 
say, I tell you what, if our Senate colleagues will work with us to get 
the defense bill passed, then maybe we can consider the other things. 
They are saying: No, no, no, we don't want to bind our hands to the 
Senate. But that sounds nice, doesn't it?
  The truth is, what they don't want to do is give up the ability to do 
what they always do, which is trying to jam through an omnibus spending 
bill, with backroom deals cut in order to try to drive up defense 
spending. I support our defense, I want them to be properly funded, but 
I don't want them to get more blank checks.
  When are we going to have a debate about guns and butter? When are we 
going to stop spending money we don't have? When are we going to have 
an honest conversation in this body?
  Is it when we turn off those dadgum cameras? Is it when we decide to 
actually offer amendments on the floor again?
  You are not going to change anything if you keep doing the same 
stuff. That is the truth.
  Two days ago, I stood up and nominated my friend   Andy Biggs for 
Speaker of the House as the nominee for the Republican Party. Andy did 
not win that vote. He is my friend. My friend Kevin McCarthy won that 
vote and earned over a majority of the Republican Conference. That news 
has been reported.
  Virtually everything that we did in that meeting or said in that 
meeting was literally verbatim tweeted out in real time or leaked to 
the press in real time. That is the truth.
  I have a rule when reporters talk to me about what happened in a 
meeting, that I tell them it is a private meeting, and I don't think I 
should talk about it. But when things leak out in real time about what 
is being said and what is being done, you at some point have to go 
explain to the people you represent, to your supporters, and people 
broadly, what you were doing. Because if you can't have a private 
debate and a private conversation among family and it is going to be 
made public, then you have got to go explain it.
  So allow me to read the speech that I gave in the Republican 
Conference meeting nominating my friend,   Andy Biggs. It went like 
this:
  I rise in support of my friend and colleague from Arizona to serve as 
Speaker of the House.   Andy Biggs is a proven leader who has 
demonstrated leadership here in D.C., as well as serving as president 
of the Arizona State Senate in a slim two-seat majority. He is a 
committed conservative and a good man.
  Andy's candidacy is not an attack on Kevin, with whom a number of us 
have been engaging and will continue to engage in good faith.
  Andy's candidacy is about his courage to stand here today willing to 
take arrows, the courage to offer a debate rather than a coronation; 
the courage to say perhaps, just perhaps, we should consider changing 
the way we do things in this broken Congress, in this broken town. A 
town to which our constituents sent us specifically to change it.
  While there are many factors impacting last Tuesday's elections, the 
outcome is not so much murky as convicting.
  Our voters, Republican voters, expected a reckoning, and in so doing, 
they gave us nearly 5 million more Republican votes in congressional 
elections than my Democratic colleagues.
  Yes, redistricting can explain why we gained perhaps a smaller margin 
than anticipated, but it is not enough. What did we run on?
  In the 1990s, we ran specifically on crime and a bold agenda to 
transform Congress. In 2010 and 2012, we ran specifically on cutting 
spending.
  Meanwhile, this year, bold conservative leadership outside of this 
city was affirmed enthusiastically by voters. No one better represents 
that than Governor Ron DeSantis' overwhelming dominance in Florida. But 
we also saw Governor Lee in Tennessee, Governor Kemp in Georgia, 
Governor Reynolds in Iowa, and Governor Abbott in Texas, and we saw our 
old colleague Lee Zeldin's powerful run for Governor in New York where 
he fell short but helped flip four seats, because Lee ran on something, 
crime and the rule of law in New York.

  DeSantis ran on something: Fighting COVID tyranny directly and 
fighting woke-ism directly. Governor Abbott ran on something: Securing 
the border ravaging Texas.
  Meanwhile, in a midterm election against the most radical, leftist, 
and dangerous White House in American history, we left the Senate in 
Democrat hands, and we are looking at a three- to five-seat majority in 
the House of Representatives.
  So what do we do? I hear a lot about unity. Amen. But it has to be 
real unity. If we just say we are unified, it will not do a thing if 
the Rules Committee jams a disastrous immigration and border security 
bill, like happened in July of 2018.
  Or consider that, to the best of my knowledge, the House Freedom 
Caucus, which represents about 20 percent of the body, has one member 
of the Steering Committee, which has 30 people, one member of the 20 
standing committee chairs, or respectfully, how about all the PAC money 
that was spent around this town in favor of leadership-tapped 
candidates, for example, Rodney Davis over Mary Miller, two incumbents. 
That is why I give you that example.
  But it is not about any one person or group. It is about empowerment 
of the whole Republican Conference, not just a select few.
  We say we are for limited government, we Republicans, but how do you 
expect to decentralize the power of

[[Page H8583]]

Washington if we can't even decentralize our own leadership structure?
  Our Republic is on the edge. Americans and their families are being 
crushed by a weaponized government, radical wokeness, vaccine mandates, 
open borders, crime, inflation. Yet voters don't understand how 
Democrats, who have championed such destruction, still hold so much 
power and largely avoided the reckoning that we talked about.
  We talk a lot about accountability. I ask everyone in this room, how 
can we hold them accountable if we cannot hold ourselves accountable 
when we come up short?
  Today's voting date--this being two days ago--is an arbitrary date, 
rushed in an environment where many of our voters believe the system is 
rigged against them.
  A vote for Andy is a vote to shout ``stop'' and to stand to thwart 
the status quo. It is a vote to pause and debate. It is a vote to 
empower every one of us to have a say and to have the ability to use 
our election certificate to its fullest. It is not a vote against 
Kevin, but a vote to force us all to the table to figure out how--not 
if--how we will come together as a party to reshape the Conference 
rules; rethink the makeup of steering and the very structure and 
operation of the Rules Committee; and most of all, to lay out a 
specific agreed-to agenda and battle plan to which we can unite and to 
inspire and win the minds and hearts of the American people.
  Now, that is an internal debate among Republicans. I think it is 
healthy. I think it is good. The question will be: Will Republicans 
stand for change, or will Republicans stand up for the continuation of 
the status quo?
  The status quo ain't working. It is not. That is an indictment of 
both parties. That is an indictment of this institution. It is an 
indictment of this town.
  We come here called to represent the American people. We come here 
called to engage in debate and discourse.
  As I have said before on this floor, how often have you seen a 
legitimate and robust debate on this floor?
  I would ask all the staff who sit in the room to answer, but that is 
not appropriate. They are the ones sitting here all the time, along 
with a handful of C-SPAN viewers.
  Everybody knows, most of the time, we are preaching to an empty 
Chamber. Most of the time, if there are a lot of people on the floor, 
it is only for votes and a lot of back slapping and a lot of ``Hey, 
when is our dinner tonight?'' and a lot of ``Hey, what are we going to 
do tomorrow? When are you leaving town? How fast can we leave town? How 
quickly can we get to the airport? Chip, don't demand another vote, 
dang it. I have got to get to my tee time back home.''
  Yeah, but when was the last time you saw a rigorous debate? Yeah, 
okay, I know we sometimes have the majority leader and the whip go back 
and forth on a Thursday afternoon or a Friday for an hour. But it is 
all talking points, it is all posturing, it is all back and forth to 
say, let's go out on the steps and give our speeches.
  When was the last time you had--let's sit here for 3 hours and let's 
debate Ukraine. All of us, let's carve out time, how about 5 days? 
Let's debate Ukraine. We have given them $70 billion, and now the 
administration is asking for $37 billion more.
  Any of y'all got $107 billion sitting around? Well, guess what, 
neither do we. We are just going to print more money. We are just going 
to print more money, send it to Ukraine, allegedly for a helpful goal 
of trying to help Zelenskyy stand up against Putin.
  Where is all that money going? Is any of that money going into the 
hands of certain companies who are then turning around and sending it 
to certain politicians here? Certain stories seem to indicate so.
  Any of that money going to oligarchs in Ukraine? Any of that money 
getting into the hands of China? A lot of stories about all of that.
  I am not even talking about accountability yet. I am just saying that 
if we are going to vote on another $37 billion for Ukraine, shouldn't 
we debate it? Are we at war, or aren't we? Do we have advisers there or 
not? Is it in our national security or not? Is it helping stability 
around the globe or not? Is it actually good for the people of Ukraine, 
bad for Putin's power?

                              {time}  1600

  And there is a lot of good debates around all that. The answer might 
be ``yes'' to some of those, ``no'' to some of those. I will just throw 
it out there. Has anybody seen a debate like that on the floor of the 
United States House of Representatives? I have not. And I am here. A 
few people have come down and given speeches. That is not the same 
thing. That is not the same thing as an actual debate.
  The American people expect us to do our job. I expect and believe 
that Republicans will end the absurdity of a closed-down Capitol; the 
absurdity of magnetometers to go onto the floor of the House; the 
absurdity of proxy voting, proxy voting extended by the current Speaker 
until December 25th, when Santa Claus is going to bring home the magic 
day when COVID disappears. Obviously absurd.
  Our goal and our intent is to open up this body and to restore the 
people's House. That has to be our goal. That has to be our mission. 
Our mission as Republicans cannot be power for the sake of it. I would 
ask or suggest to my Democratic colleagues that their mission should 
not be opposition just for the sake of it.
  I am proud that I have one of the higher voting records against my 
own party than most of the people in my party. I believe that is 
attached to some amount of consistency and not attached to the whip or 
attached to the party power structure. It doesn't mean I am right. I 
mean, I think I am. But what it means is that I have got some guiding 
principles that I think ought to guide how I vote. And it shouldn't be 
just because we are in shirts and skins or, you know, red shirts-green 
shirts, blue shirts-red shirts. It shouldn't be that way.
  We should be able to be united on taking power back from the 
executive branch and restoring it to Congress.
  We should be united on sovereignty of our Nation and defense of our 
borders to ensure that cartels don't exploit them for human tragedy, 
sex trafficking, fentanyl pouring in and killing American people.
  We should be united on a strong national defense used sparingly but 
forcefully, not entangled in never-ending battles, and not blank checks 
to countries representing proxy wars.
  We should be united in trying to figure out how to solve our fiscal 
crisis that is killing our country.
  Every one of us should wake up, we should literally not be going home 
right now. We shouldn't even go home for Thanksgiving. It is so bad and 
such a crisis; we should not leave here until we have a plan to stop 
spending money we don't have.
  I will go ahead and say it right here, everything should be on the 
table. But we won't do that because if somebody brings up mandatory 
spending, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will run ads 
like they did against Paul Ryan saying, you are pushing granny off the 
cliff if you dare say something about Social Security or Medicare. You 
mean to say there is not a single dollar that we can save out of that 
without it being pushing granny off the cliff?
  On my side of the aisle, they will not touch defense spending. If you 
do, it is sacrilegious. You cannot touch defense spending. Chip, we 
need more. It doesn't matter what we are going to do with that. We need 
more. You mean, there is not a single dollar we can't save at the 
Department of Defense? There is not a single dollar we can't repurpose? 
There is no way to make that run more efficiently, more effectively to 
have a strong military force that will kill bad guys and blow things up 
when necessary? I think we can do that. We should be united in that.
  You can't keep spending money you don't have. You can't have open 
borders and a lack of sovereignty. You can't. If we can't unite on 
that, what in the world are we going to unite on?
  This body is supposed to, even in our disagreement, stand athwart the 
executive branch extending beyond the powers given it in the 
Constitution. It is supposed to. Yet we routinely give the executive 
branch open-ended, long runways of power. And we both do it. And we 
know we do it. Why shouldn't we unite to restrain the executive branch 
if you actually believe in separation of powers?
  I will say right here and stipulate, I don't care who is in the White 
House. I

[[Page H8584]]

don't want the President and the executive branch to have unlimited 
power. I introduced a bill under Trump. I will introduce that bill, and 
I have reintroduced it under Biden. I will introduce it again in 
January of 2025 if I am here, no matter who the President is.
  We have got the American people right now trying to figure out what 
they are going to pass down to their kids and grandkids. I have got 
staff, 25, 27, 28, 30 years old saying, am I going to be able to buy a 
house? Literally. Look around the country. Pulling it up on maps, 
saying, how am I going to afford this? How do I afford a half million 
dollar house with 7, 8 percent interest rates? All the families across 
the country are trying to figure that out.
  They are trying to figure out why they are increasingly concerned 
about their safety and well-being.
  They are trying to figure out why kids in their schools are dying 
from fentanyl.
  They are trying to figure out why we can't just agree that there are 
men and there are women, and we can acknowledge that we can build our 
society around that without that being hate.
  These are fundamental truths, fundamental elements of our society and 
how we organize ourselves. We have got to find a way as a body, on both 
sides of the aisle, to bring back common sense, normalcy, and in this 
Chamber regular order. Or nothing will ever change.
  I am strongly of the belief that we must change. I have tried to work 
with colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I have introduced 
legislation on a bipartisan basis. I have passed legislation on a 
bipartisan basis despite being, I think by any objective measure, on 
the more conservative end of the spectrum of this body.
  I don't care whether there's a D or an R after your name, I am going 
to tell you what I think, and that is directed at my colleagues on my 
side of the aisle, running around back-slapping about getting the 
majority. The majority and having the majority is absolutely useless if 
we are unwilling to change. We have to change the way we do things 
around here.

  We have to empower Members of this body to have a say in what is 
brought to the floor, to have a say to amend the legislation, a say in 
open and real and true debate that is driven by a desire to lead this 
country forward on the most basic of terms.
  Open up the Constitution. Look at the powers granted in Article I, 
Section 8. Ask yourself whether what we are doing is connected to those 
powers, and then ask yourself if we are not a stronger, freer, better 
society if we can agree to disagree and push decisionmaking as close to 
the people and families and communities and local and State leaders so 
that we can actually have a Republic united around ideals and not at 
each other's throats because that is what we are, because we are trying 
to make decisions in this town for everybody. And that is both sides of 
the aisle.
  Federalism is not just some quaint word you talk about. It is 
actually central to the health of this Republic. We cannot function if 
we can't agree to disagree, and you can only agree to disagree if you 
are not trying to solve every problem for every person and every family 
in every walk of life in this Chamber doing everything and actually 
accomplishing nothing.
  The beauty and the structure of this Republic and its founding is in 
the diffusion of power away from any one person, any one entity, the 
diffusion of power across three branches of government, the diffusion 
of power among Federal, State, and local government. That is the 
greatness of this country.
  It is the essence of the great American experiment, that we trust the 
people, that we allow the people to prosper according to their own 
work, that we help each other, that civil society matters.
  But we fundamentally broke not just this institution, we are breaking 
our country because we believe that an unlimited checkbook gives us the 
right to buy votes with it. And by doing it, you are breaking the 
spirit of the country. You are taking away the value of work. You are 
taking away the value of responsibility.
  It is not just a campaign effort to buy student votes by paying off 
student loans so you can be nice. You just destroyed the entire ethic 
of responsibility of a woman like my wife, the daughter of a single mom 
who went to college, made decisions about what college she would go to 
based on the cost of that tuition, who took on loans, who then took 
every step to pay them back, who drove a crappy little car in order to 
pay her loans off. What do you say to her and every other American like 
her who did it the right way? You just say, Here you go, we are going 
to pay off your student loans.
  That is just one example of thousands, and my side of the aisle is 
just as guilty. Another blank check to solve something, a disease or an 
illness, another blank check because Ukraine, another blank check 
because you don't dare look a farmer in the eye when the farm bill 
comes up and say, look, man, I am sorry, but farm plus SNAP equals a 
whole lot of debt, and we can't keep writing a blank check.
  How about another blank check for subsidies for unreliable energy? 
Here you go. Here is another check to buy off another company to 
destroy our grid, destroy our way of life, destroy American energy 
through a blank check.
  We are literally destroying the soul of the country every day we walk 
into this Chamber, and that is not a good legacy. Everybody just walks 
around acting like, well, one day the think tanks and the world will 
come together, we will solve all the mandatory spending problems. That 
is the real deal. Stop writing blank checks. Actually have the 
responsibility to do your job.
  I am optimistic about the American people and always have been, and 
there is a large bloc of the American people who are not going to just 
walk away from the Republic that they inherited from their parents and 
grandparents and those that fought, bled, and died for this country. 
They are not going to walk away from the American Dream for their kids 
and grandkids. But this body, every day that we meet, we make it harder 
for them.
  Why don't we stop that? Why don't we agree together to sit down and 
do the hard work that is required of us to do it the right way? To 
spend within our means? To follow the constitutional order? To limit 
our affairs to the consequential things that unite our Republic rather 
than meddling in the affairs of every American and every State and 
every local government? Why can we not sit down and agree to disagree 
and push decisions of disagreement down to the people, where they 
belong, and do our basic duty step by step. That is our calling. That 
is our opportunity. When you have a change of power and a change of 
leadership, it is our duty to follow the constitutional order. It is 
our duty to do it the right way. It is our duty to use the powers 
granted in the people's House to stand up in defense of the people who 
send us here to represent them.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________