[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 89 (Thursday, May 25, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H2628-H2631]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          DEBT CEILING CRISIS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Chavez-DeRemer). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Roy) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I always appreciate hearing from the 
gentleman from Texas. Don't always agree, but he is a friend and he is 
a gentleman, and I always enjoy seeing him down on the floor.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green).
  Mr. GREEN of Texas. Madam Speaker, I just want to say that people 
don't know the relationships that people have. They don't know. We can 
respect people that we don't agree with. That is the greatness of 
America, respecting people that we have antithetical views with, but we 
can respect them. If we work with them long enough, we will find common 
ground. Thank you.
  Mr. ROY. Amen. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the words from my brother, 
my friend from Texas. He is exactly right.
  Just last night, I was on an interview on Fox with my friend Byron 
Donalds, and we have staked out two different positions in the primary 
fight for the Republican nomination for President, and we were talking 
about how we will be, you know, coming together in a

[[Page H2629]]

year one way or the other carrying forward in the general election, but 
at some point we have got to remember that we can agree to disagree, 
that we can actually have a vigorous debate, vigorous disagreements, 
and engage in--I just wish we would have more of us down here on the 
floor engaging in actual debate.
  I would ask any of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, we 
want to start turning some of our Special Orders into special debates. 
I think that would be a better use of our time, and actually go back 
and forth in 2 minute intervals and actually engage in debate on the 
body of the people's House.
  Madam Speaker, I do have to take some issue with some of the 1-minute 
speeches that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were 
engaging in about an hour ago. I saw that the Democrat majority leader 
was on the floor with a chart and that chart said, ``House Republicans 
are running out of town to cause an economic meltdown.''
  Sounds ominous. Sounds terrible and threatening and all sorts of 
calamities are going ensue. Where are Senate Democrats? Where is Chuck 
Schumer? They have been MIA this entire week, not even in town, but, 
hell, they have been MIA all year not doing a thing in the Senate 
except for being the personnel office for the administration. That is 
all they do, run through nominations, and, heck, they are not even that 
good at that.
  What do they do? They run out of town. Where was the President last 
week? Japan.
  You see this ominous threat of a looming debt ceiling date, an X-date 
as it is being referred to of June 1, is all manufactured crisis and 
theater. We know that. Americans know that.
  Secretary Yellen wants to figure out how we need to deal with 
whatever interest payments need to be paid in June, she can prioritize 
those payments. She can make decisions to figure out how to carry this 
country forward. She can walk on down here, brief us, meet with us long 
before the June 7 date she is currently planning to come down to talk 
to us and have a conversation about taking those COVID dollars back 
that are sitting in there unobligated to the tune of $50 billion.
  How about taking the IRS dollars back that are there to expand the 
Internal Revenue Service, an IRS which, by the way, targets the poor 
and minorities three to five times more than the nonpoor and 
nonminorities. That is the truth.
  Why don't they take that $80 billion, combine it with the COVID 
money, turn it into dollars right now that you can go pay loans with? 
No problem.
  See, my Democratic colleagues won't do that because my Democratic 
colleagues prefer the fear created with a manufactured crisis. They 
prefer to use that crisis as Rahm Emanuel said: ``Never let a crisis go 
to waste.'' They prefer to manufacture a crisis to jack up more debt on 
our children and grandchildren to the tune of $4 trillion.
  That is what they want more than anything on Earth is to spend more 
money, to increase the power of government, to undermine our freedoms, 
to destroy the American way of life, and they are doing it right now. 
That is what is happening.
  The fact is, while some of my Democratic colleagues were on the 
floor, one individual said: ``Make no mistake, they,'' meaning 
Republicans, ``have no plan.''
  Well, I am sorry. We passed a bill in April. We actually passed a 
bill off of the floor of the House that raises the debt ceiling $1.5 
trillion, provides an actual path to fiscal responsibility, and we did 
that in April.

                              {time}  1400

  Oh, but see, we have no plan. We have got to have this manufactured 
crisis.
  Another quote: President Biden already lowered the deficit by $1.7 
trillion, they say. His budget would cut the deficit by another $3 
trillion by eliminating wasteful spending on Big Oil and Pharma, we are 
told. It is, in fact, our Democratic colleagues who prefer to maintain 
their massive subsidies for the elites and the wealthy in their so-
called ``Inflation Reduction Act'' just last year.
  My friend from New York, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, said: ``I ask you to 
think about the last time a person has said in this country that the 
government does too much for them. . . . When was the last time anyone 
has heard or seen that?''
  I will say it. I will say it right here. I don't want the government 
doing most of the things that the government is doing to interfere with 
the ability of the American people to carry out their lives; Federal, 
State, and local. When was the last time you had a bureaucrat show up 
and you said: ``Oh, joy. Thank you. I am really glad there is a 
bureaucrat here''?
  When was the last time you were thankful for $32 trillion in debt, 
$100,000 almost for every man, woman, and child in America? Anybody 
thankful for $32 trillion in debt? Anybody?
  Anybody thankful for a border that is wide open, being exploited by 
cartels, while fentanyl comes in and kills our children? Anybody 
thankful for that? A Department of Homeland Security that doesn't 
actually secure the homeland?
  Anybody thankful for an FBI that went after Scott Smith and labeled 
him a domestic terrorist for daring to defend his daughter in a school 
board meeting because she was assaulted in a bathroom?
  Anybody thankful for the IRS knocking on your door, auditing the 
poor, the minorities, three to five times more? People thankful for 
that?
  Are you thankful for the EPA, or the Department of the Interior, that 
sent a man to prison because he had some ponds on his ranch in Montana?
  We have a government that is weaponized against the American people 
and is undermining our liberties, and they want more of it. My 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle want more, more government. 
They want more taxes. They want more spending.
  They want more bureaucrats knocking on your door, like Mark Houck in 
Philadelphia, when he woke up to his door being knocked on by local law 
enforcement, teamed up with Federal law enforcement, to go carry out a 
warrant to arrest him because he had defended his son exercising free 
speech, because he is a pro-life activist in Philadelphia. That is your 
government at work.
  The fact is: We have a decision to make here. What are we going to 
do? Are we going to listen to the wailing and gnashing of teeth of our 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle projecting a manufactured 
crisis to exploit fear to try to raise our debt limit, a credit card 
limit, by $4 trillion? I want to be very clear, and I want to be clear 
to my colleagues on this side of the aisle. Anybody making a deal right 
now? $4 trillion? Are you out of your freaking mind?
  When I came to this town as a lawyer on the Senate Judiciary 
Committee, the entire debt was $6 trillion. What are we doing? We are 
having a conversation, blowing my mind, about raising our debt another 
$4 trillion. Why? So we can continue to fund the very bureaucrats that 
at least my colleagues on this side of the aisle campaign against.
  Guess what? You have the power of the purse for a reason. You should 
use it. Federalist 58, James Madison, what did he say? He said the 
power of the purse granted to the people's House was the most powerful 
tool you could give against the tyranny of the executive branch.
  My colleagues on this side of the aisle all too often like to go 
around and campaign against all of the things that the bureaucracy is 
doing or that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle support, but 
when it comes down to game time--and it is game time right now--when it 
comes down to game time, are we going to use the power of the purse to 
defend the American people against the onslaught of the tyranny of the 
executive branch, or are we going to tuck tail, take the first exit 
ramp off, and walk away?
  What I am hearing right now being debated, being negotiated, is 
taking the first exit ramp off to cut a deal, because that is what we 
do in this town, cut a deal. But that deal is not a deal for our kids 
and our grandkids.
  We passed a responsible bill in April. My message to my Republican 
colleagues is: Hold the line.
  My message to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle: Quit 
lying to the American people, quit advancing this fraud of a 
manufactured crisis, stop telling people that you can just continue to 
spend money we don't have. Stop lying to them that there is more tax 
revenue to go get when we are at the highest level of tax revenue

[[Page H2630]]

ever in our history, matched only two other times, World War II and in 
2000 at the end of the dot-com explosion. Almost 20 percent of our GDP 
is taken in by taxes.
  My colleagues on the other side of the aisle hide behind that, and 
they refuse to acknowledge that this government is too big, too 
burdensome, and too weaponized against the American people.
  So we passed a bill that would pull back discretionary spending $131 
billion to 2022 spending levels. Now, that is what we were spending a 
mere 6 months ago. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle would 
tell you: Oh, my God, you are going to completely dismantle everybody's 
life and well-being. It is literally what we were spending 6 months 
ago.
  More than that, you can maintain defense levels at 2023 levels, 
current levels, and you can return your bureaucratic state, your 
nondefense spending, to merely what we were spending right before 
COVID, recognizing, by the way, that our government is now 40 percent 
bigger since the beginning of COVID. We can return it to pre-COVID 
levels, which, by the way, polls at 76 percent. Most Americans say: 
Yeah, I think I can deal with that great efficiency of the bureaucracy, 
pre-COVID.

  We can do that. That is what we passed. That is what Republicans 
stood up and passed and put into the Senate's hands.
  By the way, if we did that, we could fund NDD--that is, nondefense 
discretionary--at the exact same level as that great MAGA extremist 
Barack Obama proposed for fiscal 2024 in his last budget.
  Secondly, we passed measures that would repeal the grid-destroying 
tax credits passed in the name of--my colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle say ``green;'' I say ``unreliable''--energy in this so-called 
Inflation Reduction Act that will enrich leftists, enrich corporations, 
and enrich the Chinese Communist Party.
  Last year, through reconciliation, which is not the way we should do 
business--that is how ObamaCare was passed--with a mere majority vote 
in the House and the Senate, with 158 proxy votes, people in this 
Chamber who were not physically present. During the August recess, on a 
party-line vote, Democrats jammed through a giant giveaway to the 
wealthiest Americans. Goldman Sachs estimates it at $1.2 trillion, over 
three times the original estimate.
  If we do not carry through as Republicans, if we do not carry through 
with the measure we passed in April to reduce those subsidies, then the 
EIA, the Energy Information Agency, I think it is, estimates that the 
IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act--we use too many acronyms in this 
town--could make wind and solar account for nearly 60 percent of the 
U.S. electricity generation by 2050.
  Now, everybody is jumping up and down in joy in all the schools 
across America because they have been told that wind and solar is the 
magic unicorn energy. Don't you understand? Everything is great; it is 
clean; it is wonderful.
  They don't ever talk about the side effects. They don't ever talk 
about the children, who are mining all of the minerals to be used in 
the solar panels, being abused around the world. They never talk about 
the environmental impact of the wind turbines in West Texas, or what 
happens to birds. They never talk about what it means to national 
security and empowering China. They never talk about the fact that you 
can't have a grid that stays up and powers your homes and your 
hospitals and your lives because you don't have gas-fired plants, you 
don't have coal-fired plants, and you don't have nuclear plants backing 
up the grid.
  I can tell you, on a cloudy, windless day in Texas: We are in 
trouble. It is true.
  Everybody is going to go around on the other side of the aisle--and I 
have seen them--they go give speeches to kids on the steps of the 
Capitol and they say: Oh, we are doing all of these great things for 
you. Don't you know? We care about the environment. We care about our 
planet. You now have all of this great, clean energy.
  Well, enjoy being in third-world status with brownouts, like we are 
seeing in Europe and like we are seeing in other parts of the world, 
where they are retreating from the full embrace of so-called ``green,'' 
i.e., ``unreliable energy resources,'' because you create energy 
poverty. You undermine human flourishing. You undermine the well-being 
and the prosperity of the poorest of the poor in this world when you 
take away the ability for us to have energy. That is exactly what my 
Democrat colleagues did and in the process are enriching their fat cat 
friends. Ninety percent of the subsidies go to corporations of a 
billion dollars and up.
  Oh, but I thought this was all of the good stuff, the unicorn energy 
stuff. No, rich people, financiers, making tons of money on the back of 
grift, of corporate cronyism, the worst kind of corporate cronyism you 
have ever seen on display happening right here.
  What are Republicans doing? Running away, saying: Well, they will 
never give up their signature Inflation Reduction Act bill.
  Bull. They will give it up if we take it to them and hold the line 
for the American people. Stand up and hold the line, to my Republican 
colleagues, against the worst form of corporate cronyism I have ever 
seen on the floor of this body.
  How about 80 percent of the electric vehicle subsidies that go to 
people who make $100,000 or $300,000 as a couple? Yeah. So the poor guy 
out there who is a plumber, trying to drive his pickup around, is going 
to be told: You have got to go subsidize the little suburbanite family 
running around in their EV feeling good about themselves, patting 
themselves on the back, while they go plug their EV in to charge it 
using as much power as you use for your air-conditioning unit, which 
has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere ain't nuclear, ain't 
gas, and ain't coal anymore because they are destroying our ability to 
produce the reliable power that we need for the very EVs they want to 
subsidize.
  Let's not even talk about how much that is empowering China directly. 
Chinese companies are eligible for these climate credits. A recent 
analysis found Chinese companies could end up with $125 billion in IRA 
subsidies.
  You are giving them all the power, the Chinese Communist Party. You 
are subsidizing them with direct taxpayer money. You are allowing the 
Chinese to then sell us back the panels made with the minerals that 
they mined. How in the world is this good for our national security or 
our energy security? It is not.
  Democrats should be ashamed. Republicans should be ashamed if we walk 
away, which is what they are about to do, cutting a deal that 
undermines the American people, taking the very first off-ramp, the 
very first exit ramp.
  How about the third issue, overturning Biden's unfair deficit-
increasing and tuition-increasing student loan bailout, which will cut 
the deficit by $400 to $500 billion dollars this year? We passed that. 
Yay, Republicans. They were all cheering down here.

                              {time}  1415

  The Republicans were all cheering down here. We should cheer it, but 
guess what we are doing? We are walking away from it. Do you know why, 
Madam Speaker? It is because my Republican colleagues say: Don't worry. 
The Supreme Court will strike it down as unconstitutional.
  Guess what? One, don't count on it. Don't put all your eggs in the 
Supreme Court basket. Number two, there is this thing called the 
Constitution, which we are supposed to enforce and support. You don't 
walk away from your own view of the constitutionality of an 
unconstitutional act by a President. It is our job.
  I don't want to hear one member of the Republican Party in this House 
use the term ``power of the purse'' and walk away from forcing 
Democrats to end this unlawful and unconstitutional act by the 
President of the United States to unilaterally choose to make 
individuals in this country pay off the loans of other individuals in 
this country.
  How is that standing up for the people? How is that holding the line?
  Eighty-seven percent of the American people don't have student loans, 
and of the people who do have student loans, 56 percent of them have 
graduate degrees. Yet, you are going to ask that same plumber who has 
to get in his pickup--and he is now subsidizing that suburbanite who is 
driving their little electronic vehicle, their little EV,

[[Page H2631]]

going around saying look at how great they are--subsidizing that and 
also subsidizing that idiot's gender studies degree.
  The plumber who started a business didn't take out a loan. He works 
hard and wants what is best for his kid, and he is now subsidizing the 
gender studies-degree kid sitting in a basement tweeting and sitting on 
their parent's healthcare plan that allows them to stay on it until 
they are 26. Then you wonder why we are $32 trillion in debt.
  But what we are going to do, in all of our infinite wisdom, is cut a 
deal. Cut a deal to get what? More about that later, whenever we figure 
out what that is.
  I would remind everybody that Speaker Pelosi herself said: ``People 
think that the President of the United States has the power for debt 
forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does 
not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.''
  There was no act of Congress, yet we are funding it. We defunded it 
as Republicans, but now we are walking away from defunding that to cut 
a deal. We should not do that.
  Number four, rescinding the $80 billion Democrats gave to the IRS to 
hire 87,000 agents that will target working- and middle-class taxpayers 
the most.
  My colleagues on the other side of the aisle say that Republicans 
just want to protect rich tax cheats. According to CBS, that great 
purveyor of rightwing conspiracy news, the IRS audits the poor at five 
times the rate of everyone else.
  According to The New York Times, also a great purveyor of radical 
rightwing news, ``Black taxpayers are at least three times as likely to 
be audited by the Internal Revenue Service as other taxpayers.''
  Rich people have lawyers. Rich people get subsidies from the very 
people who go out and campaign and say they are doing everything for 
the American people while they enrich their fat-cat buddies, as my 
Democratic colleagues did with the Inflation Reduction Act and which my 
Republican colleagues voted to end and now are walking away from 
eliminating.
  Reform No. 5, implement the REINS Act to end the abuse of executive 
power by empowering Congress to approve major regulations that cost 
Americans billions of dollars.
  President Biden's regulatory delusion in his first 2 years has 
saddled the American people with at least $318 billion in total costs 
and more than 218 million hours of paperwork.
  More than that, there are massive regulations being carried out by 
this administration through executive fiat and order that have a 
massive economic impact and, more importantly, a massive liberty impact 
on the American people, turning millions of Americans into felons for 
daring to have a piece of plastic that attaches to a constitutionally 
protected weapon.
  The student loan fiasco I just described, regulation after regulation 
by this administration, and all we want to do is pass the REINS Act, 
which we just passed out of the Judiciary Committee, by the way--are we 
going to make that a part of our deal? I am not reading about it in all 
the leaked reports I am seeing.
  Let's kick that one aside. Let's allow the administration to continue 
to run roughshod over the American people through executive fiat 
because we want a deal.
  Reform No. 6, strengthen and establish work requirements for able-
bodied Americans who are receiving government assistance, just like 
President Biden supported.
  I have gotten to one where I think there may be at least a little 
fight on this side of the aisle to try to get one of the things that we 
passed. I don't know how much. I don't know whether it will apply to 
Medicaid. I don't know what it will apply to.
  However, I can tell you, Madam Speaker, that my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle don't want people to have to work. President 
Biden voted for it 11 times, and President Clinton signed it, but your 
modern Democratic Party in 2023 wants to pay people not to work.
  There is no other explanation for it. If they say otherwise, it is 
not true.
  We want people to work. We want to give the benefit of getting people 
off the welfare roll. There is, in fact, dignity to work. Our country 
depends on it. Our society depends on it. Our children depend on seeing 
their parents work. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't 
want that.
  Apparently, we do, and I, at least, think it is apparently part of 
whatever deal is being discussed. It ought to be, and it ought to be 
fully a part of it because we passed it already. We passed a deal.
  Finally, reclaiming billions in unobligated COVID funds, that is just 
the peanuts left on the floor, the mere $40 billion or $50 billion of 
unobligated COVID funds left of the $5 trillion or whatever we blew 
through in the last 3 years decimating our economy and driving up 
inflation.
  The fact of the matter is we have an obligation in this body, in the 
people's House, on both sides of the aisle, to do our job, to stop 
spending money recklessly, to stop printing money, to stop driving up 
inflation, and to stop denying our children their inheritance.
  When everybody goes around on Memorial Day this weekend to stand up 
with veterans and salute the fallen, they go to Arlington National 
Cemetery, the cemetery at Fort Sam Houston, or any one of our other 
national cemeteries around this country--what did they fight for? Did 
they fight for us to cut a deal?
  I ask because I am pretty sure the boys in Bastogne sitting in the 
foxhole freezing to death weren't interested in moving that line back 
to Normandy. They had gone from Normandy to Bastogne.
  Hold the damn line. Don't back off, Republicans. Stand up for the 
country that you go out and campaign for. Hold the line for the 
American people because the bill we passed in April, I am going to be 
honest with you, is a downpayment on what we have to do. It is not 
everything we have to do. It is the beginning.
  If we walk away from that, if we walk away from that because the 
people get weak-kneed about, ``My God,'' they are crying, ``My God, we 
are not going to make our debt payment,'' yes, we are. The President of 
the United States knows what you know. We can't walk away from our debt 
payments. We have to make those payments.
  Secretary Yellen and the President know it. They will make the 
payment. We will not default, but we are defaulting on the American 
Dream every single day that goes by where we continue to spend money we 
don't have to fund the bureaucrats at war with the American Dream. If 
the Republicans walk away from this, then they don't deserve to stay in 
the majority any more than the Democrats do.
  We should hold the line for the American people, and we should hold 
the line for the future of this country.
  Madam 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.

                          ____________________