[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 9 (Wednesday, January 11, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H198-H201]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE JOB OF A CONGRESSPERSON

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Roy) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments from the gentleman 
from Arizona. As he so often does, in outlining the extent to which we 
have significant fiscal challenges that could be met with the kinds of 
reforms that we don't often talk about: the need to reform healthcare 
policies, healthcare decisions, and things that get well beyond the 
rhetoric of balancing budgets, on that he and I agree enormously.
  I look forward to engaging with him on the floor of the House and 
other places on that topic again. But I do want to say one thing that 
is true about what the gentleman from Arizona was talking about with 
respect to addressing mandatory spending, reforming so-called 
entitlements with respect to Social Security and Medicare, and 
otherwise reforming those complex areas of our government. If you can't 
tackle discretionary spending, you are

[[Page H199]]

not going to tackle mandatory spending.
  And importantly, this is the critical part, you have got to have the 
political willpower to address these things. That is actually why I 
came to the floor this evening.

                              {time}  1745

  America was drawn into an engaging debate among the Members of 
Congress who represent them in the people's House last week.
  C-SPAN, not constricted by the rules of the House, was able to have 
cameras zeroing in on the Members of this body as we were debating last 
week. People were drawn into the conversations, the people on both 
sides of the aisle, on the drama of the debates and how we would choose 
the Speaker of the House and then whether we would pass the rules 
package.
  But here I am on January 11, 2023, in the new Republican majority, 
and I am alone in the Chamber again with the Speaker. That is the 
requirement, by the way. There has to be a Speaker and then a Member on 
the floor. But I am alone again.
  Now, we passed some bills today.
  But what are we going to do as a body to make good on the reforms we 
passed last week and actually extend on them and build on them?
  I would ask my colleagues why we don't have full debate right now on 
a number of the important issues of the day?
  Why we don't have full debate tomorrow, next week, and the following 
week on the crucial issues of our day?
  Today, I called a colleague on the other side of the aisle to inquire 
as to which Members of the minority party would be willing to sit down 
with me and anybody else to figure out how to deal with the debt and 
the deficit spending that is plaguing our country.
  My colleague on the other side of the aisle engaged in conversation 
about what that would take, but the fact of the matter is that I don't 
know the answer.
  What I would say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is: 
Come on down. Where are you?
  Are you going to simply take potshots at any effort by Members of my 
side of the aisle--the majority now--who dare to raise questions about 
how we might tackle $32 trillion of debt, a trillion dollar-plus 
deficits every year, and tackle the question of interest rates going up 
causing our interest payments to go up every year?
  Every 50 basis points--every half of a percentage point--that goes up 
adds about $100 billion a year in additional interest expense. I think 
in the next year interest is going to eclipse our national defense 
spending.
  Now, where are all my defense hawks?
  Where are all of my Republican colleagues who like to stand up and 
say: We have got to fund our men and women in uniform; we have to buy 
more planes and more bombers; we have to have more guns; and we have to 
make sure we have the strongest defense in the world?
  Great. I agree. Peace through strength sparingly used, non-woke, and 
trained to kill people and blow things up. That is what I want our 
military to be and to do, and I want it to continue to be the best in 
the world.
  But we are not going to be able to do that if we are spending more on 
interest to the debt than we are on our own national defense.
  As the gentleman from Arizona rightly is pointing out about the state 
of our ``mandatory spending'' and ``entitlements,'' we are not going to 
be able to maintain our country, have a strong national defense, and 
ensure a peaceful world for our children and our grandchildren. These 
are just facts.
  We used to have a lot of political back and forth between Democrats 
and Republicans. We would accuse our colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle of being tax-and-spend Democrats--and they were tax-and-spend 
Democrats. But something changed along the way. We stopped debating tax 
policy for the most part, and now everybody in this Chamber for the 
most part are spend-and-spend Members of Congress, spend-and-spend 
members of a uni-party.
  Mr. Speaker, I am all on board with the enthusiasm, the unity, and 
the energy coming out of last week that we are going to transform this 
institution. I believe it.
  I believe by offering amendments in the appropriations process on the 
floor of this body we will be better.
  I believe that by having 72 hours to read bills and not waiving that 
rule--that we actually do it--that we will be better.
  I believe that by having single-subject bills without them being 
multisubject, complicated, and thousands of pages that we will be 
better.
  I believe that by requiring amendments to be germane--that is, 
actually related to the underlying purpose of the underlying bill--that 
we will be better.
  Those are all things that will make us better.
  But they will only make us better if we are all united in the purpose 
of what we are trying to do.
  I know I have got very strong disagreements with my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle. I have significant disagreements with a lot of 
my friends on my side of the aisle. But, Mr. Speaker, you will never 
solve those disagreements if you never sit down at the table and work.
  The only way to work is to put some sort of constraint on our 
spending. So with all due respect to my friend from Arizona (Mr. 
Schweikert) with whom I agree about mandatory spending and about having 
to solve those problems in the long term, discretionary spending 
matters. Discretionary spending matters because it charts the 
priorities of a Congress that represents the American people. We have 
to make the tough choices on discretionary spending.
  Oh, by the way, that they are only 20 or 25 percent of the overall 
spending does not mean that they are not insignificant. If we do not 
balance our budget right now and chart a course to balance that budget 
over the next 10 years, we will spend an additional $10 trillion over 
the next 10 years--that we don't have.
  But what will happen is--and here is what is going to happen, this is 
important for the American people to understand--we reached an 
agreement as a party last week to ensure that we return to 2022 levels 
of spending--that is a top line level of $1.471 trillion--and that we 
operate with that cap in spending that says nothing about what the 
levels are for defense or nondefense discretionary, just that we would 
cap at 2022 levels of spending.

  But here is what will happen. We will have a debate about that, and 
we will pass some appropriations bills. If we do our job as 
Republicans, we will pass good, solid bills for this year's spending 
that stick within those caps and stay under the 2022 levels of 
spending.
  We will send them to the Senate, and Chuck Schumer will say--with all 
sorts of wailing and gnashing of teeth--that we are taking food out of 
the mouths of orphans and babies and that we are undermining the 
ability of people to survive and live and that we are taking away their 
medicine; we are killing people; and we are doing all sorts of horrible 
things.
  As a result, it will be September, and we won't have an agreement, 
and then there will be some brinkmanship, a bunch of politics, and a 
bunch of messaging and speeches, and then there will be a continuing 
resolution that funds government at the current levels that were passed 
in December under that $1.7 billion omnibus spending bill that was 
passed on December 23 using Christmas as a backstop.
  That is almost certainly what is going to happen if we don't stop it.
  There are two ways to stop it: Democrats and Republicans sit down and 
work honestly around a table to stop it, or brinkmanship, forcing the 
question by bringing it to the brink. Those are the two possible ways 
that we can try to stop what I just described will occur from 
occurring. This is the reality of what we have got to change in this 
body.
  What else is going to happen?
  Come summer, at some time undetermined--usually chosen by the 
executive branch as the maximum moment to be able to extract some sort 
of pain on the body--we will be told that the debt limit is going to be 
reached. That might be May or June or July or August.
  Then we will be told: You must raise the debt ceiling.
  If any of us say: Wait a minute, why are we going to raise the debt 
ceiling if we don't stop doing the things that are causing us to 
accumulate more debt?

[[Page H200]]

  If any of us dare to say that, what will happen?
  Oh, my. It is already happening. The Wall Street Journal, all of the 
bond traders and the stock traders on Wall Street, all of the 
investment bankers, all of the brilliant economists, and all of the 
opposing political party will all say:

       Don't default on the debt. You can't default on the debt, 
     so don't you dare demand that we actually change the things 
     we are doing that are causing the debt because we might 
     default on the debt.
       So let's keep spending money we don't have and keep 
     accumulating more debt increasing our interest payments and 
     making it more difficult to service that debt while we 
     undermine our own fiscal accountability and our own bonds 
     ratings in the future.
       But no, no, don't you dare, Congressman Roy, say that you 
     might use the debt ceiling as leverage to extract fiscal 
     reforms to stop the insanity.

  Let me just be clear. I think it is critical that we change the way 
we are doing business, and I intend to use the debt ceiling to ensure 
that we get fiscal and structural reforms. I am not going to bow down 
just because a few of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and 
a few pundits on TV write nasty editorials and some of my donors, some 
of the people out there in the world and activists text you and say: 
Oh, my Gosh, what are you doing? You are going to risk default on the 
debt.
  Do you know why I am not going to do that?
  Because it is my job not to back down when people are afraid of what 
we are supposed to do here. What we are supposed to do is bring things 
to a decision in this body responsibly.
  All last week while we were debating the Speaker, a whole bunch of my 
friends and supporters--financial supporters--were blowing up my phone 
with text messages. A whole lot of them were saying:

       Attaboy, stand up, fight for the American people, change 
     the institution, and let us actually try to make that place 
     work rather than continuing down this road of destruction.

  But a whole bunch of them were also texting me saying:

       What are you doing? What are you doing?
       We are not going to have a Republican Speaker. We are going 
     to get a Democrat Speaker. You guys look like clowns.
       What are you doing?
       You look ridiculous. You are making the Republican Party 
     look ridiculous, Chip. Stop doing it.

  Come Friday after 15 votes, we came to a conclusion. Nobody died, and 
nothing went crazy. We got a Speaker of the House, and we got some 
agreements among all of us about how the body should proceed, about 
ensuring we open it up, have transparency, offer more amendments, and 
give greater ideological diversity among the committees.
  Let's have a real debate on these things, and let's get a really 
strong committee on the Judiciary Committee--a Church-style committee--
to look at how government is acting.
  That is what we got by standing up and fighting and ignoring all of 
the handwringers who can't stand the heat. Or to state it differently, 
all of the handwringers out there in the chamber of commerce crowd and 
the donor class who basically want us to do their bidding so they can 
get richer.
  That is the truth.
  Don't default on the debt. That might hurt my financial bottom line, 
Chip. Don't you dare rattle and have debates on the House floor that 
might rock the boat, because my boat is pretty good, Chip. I am doing 
quite well.
  Mr. Speaker, there are a whole hell of a lot of people in this 
country who are not doing well, and I am not here to represent the 
donor class. I am not here to represent the talking heads. I am here to 
represent every hardworking American across this country and 
particularly in my district who are sick of the direction of this 
country.

  So I am glad that we had the debate that we had last week. I am glad 
that we captivated the American people's attention. I am glad that C-
SPAN was free to show the conversation and the debate. I am glad that 
we did something we hadn't done in 100 years because it is the two-
party system entrenched that has broken down the ability of Members of 
this body to actually be Members.
  That is actually our job.
  Putting politics and partisan politics aside, it is our job as 
individual Members of this body to come here and do our job. It is not 
our job, for example, to get on a committee and say and do whatever the 
chairman of the committee says which, by the way, is one of the things 
that happens in this town.
  Our job is to get on the committee and work, debate, put good bills 
on the floor, amend those bills, debate those bills, and pass some of 
those bills.

                              {time}  1800

  It is also not a race to introduce bills. It is not a race to pass 
bills. What would be wrong if we only passed about 30 bills this whole 
Congress? Would that be a bad thing? What if we only passed the 12 
Appropriations bills, did our job, sent them to the Senate, passed a 
handful of bills that would actually make our country better, and then 
just sat back and worked a little bit and talked a little bit rather 
than running down to the desk to file another bill to introduce another 
statement to do another press conference to then run around and say: 
Oh, we have to pass a messaging bill. Oh, this is such-and-such week. 
This is the week for police officers, or this is the week for breast 
cancer awareness, or this is the week for whatever somebody in the 
Hallmark industry decided the week was for. Oh, well, we have to pass a 
bill.
  Why? Do you think we lack laws? Do you think we lack regulations? Do 
you think we need to spend more money that we don't have? Why don't we 
just stop, pause?
  My message to my Republican colleagues is the best thing we could do 
for our country is to stop doing all the things that this body has been 
doing for as long as I can remember. Whatever this body has been doing, 
let's do the opposite. How about that?
  How about we actually have this Chamber full, like it was last week? 
Why don't we have hundreds of people on the floor and debate issues in 
front of each other? Why don't we pick a day like Tuesday and have 50 
Members from one side and 50 Members from the other side and call that 
debate day?
  Let's debate Ukraine in full view of the American people. Maybe the 
next week we can debate spending restraint, how we are going to tackle 
spending. I would like to listen to my colleagues tell me how you plan 
on tackling spending because, right now, my basic understanding of how 
my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would tackle spending is 
tax people or keep spending money or both.
  My view on this side of the aisle is that we don't want to tax 
people, but we want to keep spending money in the name of defense. 
Anybody want to come challenge me on that assertion? I am happy to 
debate them. Either side of the aisle, come on down. Let's debate it. I 
don't think anybody will take that debate on because they know I am 
right.
  Why don't we change that? Where are my colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle when it comes to spending? I would like to know. I think 
the American people deserve to know.
  Do you believe in modern monetary theory, just keep spending money 
and it doesn't matter? I don't. I think that is foolish. I think it is 
reckless. I think it undermines our dollar. I think it undermines our 
financial stability.
  More importantly, I think it makes it impossible for us to make good 
decisions about how to make policy and execute policy. How can you make 
a tough decision about whether or not you need to buy a bomber or 
whether or not you need to fund a particular grant program or fund a 
particular entitlement that is way oversubscribed and out of money? How 
can you make a decision about that if the answer is just to keep 
printing money?
  I mean, that is my question. I suggest there is no more important 
question for us to answer because if we don't, then we are never going 
to come to agreement on the policies, ever.
  If I go home and talk to my wife and say, ``Look, we are going to cap 
our spending at our 2022 levels of spending,'' then we have to make 
choices. We have to decide, well, are we going to just not make our 
mortgage payment? No, we have to do that. Are we going to not feed our 
kids? Well, no, we have to feed our kids. Are we going to have 
electricity and heat? Well, we would like to have that.
  Then comes the discretionary questions: Do you take a vacation? Do 
you get a new car rather than patching together your 15-year-old car? 
Do you

[[Page H201]]

send your kids to a certain school? Do you save a certain amount of 
money for college? Maybe you forgo college because you look at college 
and say, ``Why am I going to spend $300,000 to send them to college 
where they will teach my kids that America is evil?'' I will save that 
for another rant.
  That is my point. We have to do that as families, but this body never 
does it, ever. We pretend to do it.
  The point of the agreement reached last week was to open this body 
up, empower rank-and-file, but also, importantly, establish some 
parameters for how we fund the Federal Government. Those parameters 
should be that we set limits. If you set limits, now you have to sit 
down and figure it out.
  Here is the problem. I don't believe that Chuck Schumer and Senate 
Democrats want to sit down at the table and figure out how to limit 
spending. I don't believe that the President of the United States or 
his current Director of Office of Management and Budget or any of his 
team wants to sit down at the table with us and figure out how to limit 
spending.
  I have not even heard them come down and say, ``Well, fine. You are 
right, Chip. We are spending more money than we have, and we are 
racking up more debt, so we believe we need to increase taxes.'' Okay. 
Come make your offer. We will raise taxes. Show me how raising those 
taxes is going to eliminate the deficit. He whispers, ``It is not.''
  Show me how raising those taxes is not going to undermine economic 
growth, make it more difficult for American people to get jobs, 
undermine the prosperity of the American people. Show me that. Come 
demonstrate that. He whispers, ``That is not really that easy to do.''
  But our job is to responsibly represent the American people. It is 
not to govern. We often use that word. That is crazy. We don't govern. 
We represent. Our job is to represent our constituents. I don't know 
any constituents--frankly, even my most left-leaning constituents, to 
be honest--saying, ``Oh, yes, please go up there and spend more money 
we don't have.''
  I would just suggest that, according to the CBO, we are going to see 
another $15.7 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years. That is the 
truth. The truth is that, in fiscal year 2022, we collected a record 
$4.9 trillion in taxes, nearly a trillion more than the previous year.

  We don't have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. We have 
an overpromise problem.
  I had a reporter come up to me in the hallway a minute ago and say: 
Mr. Roy, are there any circumstances in which you are going to support 
providing more aid to Ukraine?
  How on Earth are we having that conversation on January 11 after, on 
December 23, we just added another $45 billion for Ukraine?
  The reporter responded and said: They say that it is really important 
to get more money to beat Russia.
  Oh, really? What do our experts say? What is our responsibility to 
pay for that? Do we just write a check anytime a world leader comes and 
says, ``But it is really important for my people that you write me a 
check''?
  I want someone to write me a check, minus all the ethics stuff. Don't 
go write all that.
  Look, the truth is, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert) is 
100 percent correct that mandatory spending--Social Security, Medicare, 
all the related expenditures that go along with that--are driving the 
vast majority of the debt that we are accumulating every year. That is 
correct. If you are not willing to take on discretionary spending, how 
are you going to take on Social Security, Medicare, and reforming those 
to work when the first ad that is going to be run is going to be 
pushing granny off the cliff, if you dare even have a conversation 
about the issue?
  I will make an invitation to any colleague in the Chamber, but 
particularly my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, come down 
here and talk about Social Security and Medicare and all of our 
mandatory spending.
  I will issue the same request that my colleagues on this side of the 
aisle acknowledge, that you cannot hide behind Social Security, 
Medicare, and mandatory spending to say that we shouldn't limit 
discretionary spending, defense spending because that is an 
insignificant part of the budget.
  It is significant, and it is significant not just because of the 
trillions of dollars of debt that those spending accounts for Defense, 
Education, Department of Justice, Commerce, and every other agency, 
Homeland Security--it is not just because we are spending too much 
money there, and it is adding up to deficits and debts. It is because 
we are funding the very agencies that are undermining us.
  We are funding the bureaucrats who are undermining the current 
individual in America who is out there as an entrepreneur trying to get 
a job started. It is undermining my friend Scott Smith in Loudoun 
County because we label him a domestic terrorist because the FBI was 
brought in along with the National School Board Association. They all 
coordinated and said: Okay, let's label him a domestic terrorist.
  We are funding a Department of Homeland Security that wants to 
continue to create or execute policies that invite more people to come 
to our border, endangering them and us.
  The reason you care about discretionary spending is because it funds 
the policies of government, of the bureaucracy, of the administrative 
state that undermines our well-being, undermines our prosperity.
  We have the opportunity now, right now, as Republicans to lead the 
House of Representatives forward to change. We should, in fact, change.
  Last week was a monumental step forward to changing this institution, 
to opening it up, to allowing rank-and-file Members to have a say, to 
putting more diversity on our committees, to having more debate in 
committees, coming down to the floor, and fighting for the people that 
we represent. All of that will be for naught if we don't embrace 
wholeheartedly the mission, the hard mission, of limiting the spending 
that is destroying our country and demanding that our colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle come sit down at the table so that we can 
actually do our jobs for the people we represent.
  Then, finally, send a message to the United States Senate, to the 
Democrat-led United States Senate, to the Democrat President of the 
United States at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue that it is not 
enough to give speeches. It is not enough to oppose what we produce out 
of the people's House.
  The American people spoke in November. They want us to be 
responsible. They want us to limit spending. They want us to secure the 
United States. They want us to have a secure and sovereign border. They 
want us to get out of their business. They want us to stop being at 
each other's throats. If you want to do that, then embrace fiscal 
responsibility and stop spending money you don't have to fund the 
bureaucrats who are undermining our liberties.
  Stand up in defense of liberties, civil liberties and the freedoms of 
the American people, by calling out the bureaucrats in our committees 
and exposing it through oversight.
  Stand up for a strong military that is nonwoke, that is sparingly 
used but ready to go fight when needed.
  Secure the border of the United States with the policies that are 
necessary to do so and embrace radical federalism where we return power 
to the States so we can agree to disagree and stop being at each 
other's throats.
  Do you want to do those things? Then there is one key thing you have 
to do. You have to fight the swamp. You have to take on the 
bureaucracy. You have to take on the powers that be.
  That started last week. We have some of the tools that we need, but 
that battle is just beginning. We are going to take this town on for 
the American people.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________