[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 149 (Thursday, September 14, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H4339-H4342]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1800
                         WHEN WILL IT BE ENOUGH

  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. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas for his service 
to this great country, both in uniform and here in this body. I am 
honored to serve with him. I am honored to serve with all of the great 
Members of Congress that wore the uniform. I appreciate his remarks 
just now honoring many of those who have served and were properly 
awarded and recognized and many of his own constituents. It is an honor 
to serve with him, just as it is an honor to serve with the Speaker, 
also from Texas.
  I am reminded, as I listened to my friend from Texas, of the 
engagements that I had with veterans that I represent in the 21st 
Congressional District in Texas between Austin and San Antonio just 
over August. One of the great things about when you are in your work 
period is engaging with your constituents. They have a funny way of 
reminding us why they sent us here.
  I had countless veterans, civilians, asking me what is happening to 
their country, and many veterans, several men later in life, breaking 
down in tears asking questions like, what did they fight for to watch 
what is unfolding currently under this administration? What is 
happening to the country that they believe in?
  My question right now for my colleagues in this Chamber is, when will 
it be enough? When will what we are experiencing, seeing with our own 
eyes every day be enough for us to act? I am not just speaking to 
colleagues on my side of the aisle, but the whole Chamber.
  We have a responsibility under the Constitution of the United States 
to stand up in a government of separated powers and check an executive 
branch that is flouting the law on a daily basis. This is an 
administration that is engaging in utterly lawless acts on a daily 
basis, and it is resulting in the endangerment of not just individual 
American citizens but the Republic itself.
  That is not hyperbole, and I don't say it lightly. I very much share 
the optimistic tenor of my colleague from Texas who just spoke on the 
floor talking about the hope that he has for this country, given the 
strength of this country in its past and the strength of so many of our 
American people.
  As a friend of mine and a good, mutual friend of the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Ellzey) former Governor Rick Perry, wrote in the first 
chapter of a book about a decade ago: ``America is great, Washington is 
broken.'' Unfortunately, it remains broken, badly broken. No longer 
following the constitutional guidelines set forth, no longer serving 
the American people, and as the Constitution calls for, carrying out 
the general welfare of the people and securing the blessings of 
liberty. That is literally what our call is as servants in Washington.
  My question, again, is when will it be enough?
  There is a long laundry list of things that should be giving us great 
pause. Actual existential crises.
  Spending. We will spend $2 trillion more this year than we take in. 
We are $32 trillion in debt, barreling toward $33, $34 trillion. We 
just passed a debt ceiling increase of $4 trillion, frankly, probably 
more than that; and, oh, by the way, our interest payments are now more 
than we spend on national defense.
  Inflation is rampant. Are we going to do anything about it? The 
resounding answer currently from this body is ``No.'' We continue to 
fund appropriations bills that spend more than last year. It is just 
going up.
  Are we going to do anything about spending? When will it be enough?
  How about our Defense Department? This Defense Department is 
undermining our national defense by turning our military into what I 
describe as a social engineering experiment in a uniform. President 
Biden's Pentagon is outright ignoring the law by funding abortion 
tourism with taxpayer funding, in blatant violation of the traditional 
bipartisan agreement under the Hyde amendment to not do that. Let 
States decide, that is what the Court just said. We continue to fund it 
with Federal dollars.
  President Biden's Pentagon is using millions of taxpayer dollars to 
fund gender-transition procedures. The Air Force released a memo 
entitled, Department of the Air Force Observance of LGBTQ Pride Month, 
which empowered installation commanders to plan and conduct activities 
in honor of Pride Month.
  Color me crazy and reactionary that I think that every single dollar 
we fund to the Department of Defense ought to go to planes, boats, 
bullets, bombs, missiles, and training soldiers to use them.
  Our military is paying chief diversity officers and inclusion 
officials upwards of $183,000 a year. The United States Marine Corps 
University has a year-long program that is dedicated to exploring 
gender insecurity issues. According to the official syllabus, which we 
found because we saw it on Twitter when they were trying to defend 
their position, they discuss program themes like ``gendering war'' with 
questions like, what is gender and how is it different from biological 
sex or how war narratives are constructed through gender discourse?
  Again, we are $2 trillion in debt. Our recruiting levels are in the 
toilet at the Pentagon, China is building their military, and this is 
what we are funding. It is not like we have a $2 trillion surplus.
  What are we doing? Do you really think having marines discuss how 
``war

[[Page H4340]]

narratives are constructed through gender discourse'' helps us win a 
war?
  COVID, the hysteria and the tyranny are already on the march again. 
This week we learned that CIA whistleblowers told the Select 
Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic that the CIA bribed its 
analysts to deny the lab leak theory. The whistleblower claims that six 
of seven analysts believed that the evidence pointed toward the Wuhan 
lab leak theory. The six were then given a ``significant monetary 
incentive'' to change their position.
  Earlier this week, the FDA approved new COVID-19 boosters for 
children as young as 6 months old. Just one panel member argued that 
the new shot should initially be recommended only for older people. 
CDC's own data shows that giving 1 million teens the COVID vaccine will 
save between zero and one life and cause between 100,000 to 200,000 
side effects, all while Moderna and Pfizer make more than $1.6 billion 
on the contract. Coincidence?
  How about health? We are funding a healthcare system, broken by 
Washington and big insurance, and average Americans can no longer 
afford healthcare, no longer go to the doctors of their choice. 
ObamaCare is set to cost you 6 percent more in 2024. Some plans may 
spike 10 percent.
  When I had cancer about 11 years ago, I went to MD Anderson. To the 
best of my understanding, under the ObamaCare plan that I would have to 
use as a Member of Congress, I wouldn't be able to go to MD Anderson.
  How is that coverage? How are we doing that to the American people?
  However, don't fear, big insurance revenue reached $1.25 trillion and 
profits hit $70 billion, a 300 percent increase in revenue and a 300 
percent increase in profits from just 10 years ago. Life is good for 
big insurance.
  UnitedHealth Group, $20.6 billion up, 16 percent year over year. 
Cigna, $6.7 billion up, 24 percent year over year. CVS Health, $4.2 
billion. Humana, $2.8 billion. Meanwhile, the average American family 
spends more than $22,000 a year on premiums, which is expected to 
increase 6.4 percent this year.
  In 2023, we will spend more than $1 trillion subsidizing insurance. 
Yes, we are borrowing another trillion dollars to subsidize those 
insurance companies I was just describing.
  You like corporate cronyism? Well, you have got it.
  How about energy? Are any of these things going to be enough? 
Healthcare, COVID, Department of Defense, wokeism, energy?
  We are actively destroying our ability to have reliable energy to the 
benefit of China and a bunch of elitists who don't live in reality.
  The Inflation Reduction Act has essentially a $1.2 trillion handout 
to subsidize billion-dollar corporations. Something like 90 percent of 
the subsidies are to billion-dollar corporations. Pretty much heavily 
led by very rich, White, elitist liberals, making money hand over fist 
with your subsidized money, giving money to China to fund solar panels 
from China, battery-powered cars, batteries with cobalt mined in the 
Congo almost entirely by slave labor, heavily including children.
  Your taxpayer dollars and borrowed money at work.
  Yet, it is not even producing a good result for the American people. 
Energy prices have increased by 40 percent since Biden took office, 
gasoline is up over 50 percent, electricity is up almost 30 percent. 
While oil is at $90 a barrel, our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its 
lowest level since 1983 because the President has been dumping the 
Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to try to keep gas prices down 
while advancing a radical leftist agenda that is making it impossible 
for us to have affordable energy.
  The Inflation Reduction Act expands subsidies for electric vehicles, 
78 percent of which are claimed by Americans making over $100,000--of 
course--because the average EV costs $17,000 more than one with an 
internal combustion engine, which this administration wants to end. 
They don't want you to have an affordable car.
  Then Secretary Granholm decides to go on a trek across the country to 
prove how great electric vehicles are. She goes up to a charging 
station, they are running behind. Oh, oh, we have got to find a 
charging station. They take a gas-powered vehicle, put it in a slot, 
block the slot, so the Secretary can get a photo op, and a family with 
a baby with an EV was sitting there waiting for a slot and couldn't get 
one.
  That is your Biden administration at work trying to promote the 
propaganda of a leftwing radical vision for energy that is destroying 
hardworking Americans' ability to live their lives.
  Poor people across this country, working-class people across this 
country are wondering how they can afford a car because this 
administration is living in a dreamland that won't dent carbon dioxide. 
India and China are dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. You can 
get rid of every internal combustion engine in America and you will 
drop CO2 production by like 1\1/2\ percent. It is insane.
  We are unilaterally disarming our competitiveness, our security 
advantage with respect to energy, and empowering China in the process.
  Meanwhile, the Biden administration's EPA has implemented a rule that 
would enforce two-thirds of the new vehicles sold in the United States 
to be EVs by 2030. You can't make this up. That is a direct assault on 
the well-being of the American people.
  What are we in Congress doing about it?
  We passed a bill today trying to pull back on some of California's 
nonsense. We are really good at that, ladies and gentlemen, passing 
bills, knowing they will die in the Senate, going home, and campaigning 
about how crazy the administration is, and then putting all our eggs in 
the basket of one day in the future, trust us, when we have the biggest 
majority in the House and we have 60 in the Senate, and we have that 
President, one day, all at once, trust us, we will get it done.
  How is that working out for you?
  When will we use the tools we have before us right now? We have the 
power of the purse. Last time I checked, Republicans have the majority 
in this body. We should use the power of the purse to stop the radical 
abuses of this President and his administration.
  Again, spending, $2 trillion deficit. Are we going to do anything 
about it besides, oh, it is a little better than what they would have 
done?
  Are we going to do anything about energy? Oh, we passed a bill. Are 
we going to do anything about it?
  Are we going to do anything about those healthcare prices?
  Are we going to do anything about the continued advancement of COVID 
tyranny, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and importantly the subsidy 
of vaccines to be forced upon American people? Are we going to do 
anything about it?
  Anything about the Pentagon?
  The Department of Justice, instead of focusing on locking up bad 
guys--and I say this as a former Federal prosecutor who locked up a few 
bad guys--instead of doing that, this Department of Justice is 
advancing a politicized form of injustice against American citizens and 
a former President.
  My friend, Scott Smith, in Loudoun County, Governor Glenn Youngkin 
just pardoned Scott Smith. Now, remember, he was targeted as a domestic 
terrorist in conjunction with the National School Boards Association 
and the Department of Justice for going to a school board meeting to 
defend his daughter.
  Mark Houck in Philadelphia, he was targeted, had a SWAT team show up 
at his door in Philadelphia because he dared to defend his son while 
engaging in his free speech rights in front of an abortion clinic.

                              {time}  1815

  The FBI is weaponizing the so-called FACE Act to target pro-life 
Americans, overwhelmingly targeting only pro-life Americans when they 
go engage in their free speech rights. Of course, they are targeting 
former President Trump; doing all they can to target the former 
President while also doing all they can to ensure that Hunter Biden and 
President Biden do not face justice.
  Under the Department of Justice, we have the Bureau of Alcohol, 
Tobacco, and Firearms. Earlier this year, the ATF issued a rule banning 
pistol stabilizing braces that are intended for recruiting shooters 
with physical disabilities and disabled veterans. That rule potentially 
makes felons out of up to 40 million Americans. It wasn't made in 
Congress, wasn't codified here. It was made by bureaucrats.

[[Page H4341]]

  Now they are targeting private sales, trying to promote a universal 
background check, despite the fact Congress has rejected it.
  How about your food? Will we do anything about food? We are ceding 
control of our food supplies to foreign nations because our government 
is making it really difficult, if not impossible, to farm in this 
country. The USDA projected the U.S. will become a net importer of food 
for the first time in its entire history in 2023.
  Foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land doubled from 2009 to 
2019. China's agriculture investment in other nations has grown by more 
than tenfold since 2009, and Chinese companies are purchasing land near 
key defensive installations.
  What are we doing about it?
  What is this Republican majority and this Congress doing about it?
  The IRS. We are still fully funding an IRS, and it just received a 
massive expansion. Yet, this IRS targets political opponents.
  In 2021, the IRS targeted the nonprofit status of my friend Bunni 
Pounds' group, Christian Engaged, for simply being an organization that 
encourages Christians to vote.
  It is not the first time. Remember, Lois Lerner?
  The IRS has a history of this.
  What are we doing about it?
  We keep writing the checks to fund the bureaucrats that are at war 
with the American people. We do it every day, and everybody just 
shrugs. They just walk around and they say, Chip, don't you understand? 
The Democrats control the Senate. Joe Biden is in the White House. We 
just got a position to win an election next year, and then, then we 
will fight.
  Do you know how many times I have heard that? When I was Senator 
Cruz's chief of staff 10 years ago, when I was a lawyer on the Senate 
Judiciary Committee 15 years ago, it is all I have ever heard.
  Trust us. One day. One day we will use the power that we have in this 
body to change the trajectory of this country and to stop this 
weaponization of the Federal Government against the American people. 
You can't ignore that that is what it is.
  When the Department of Justice is not blind and it is targeting 
people based on their political beliefs and targeting a former 
President instead of the current President because of its political 
beliefs, that destroys the rule of law in this country.
  When the Department of Defense is more concerned about being woke 
than actually be weaponized against our enemies, that destroys morale 
and recruiting.
  When the IRS is targeting people for their political beliefs, you 
don't have faith in your system of government. When your Department of 
Energy is more concerned about advancing a radical leftist agenda than 
ensuring our own national security and our own ability to power our 
people, our jobs, our ability to travel, you are funding the very 
mechanisms in government that are undermining the liberty and the 
freedom of people's right to go have a job, a right to go provide for 
their family.
  Perhaps worst of all, the southern border.
  In July alone, Border Patrol encountered across this country 240-
something-thousand individuals. Reports today indicate that preliminary 
CBP data show migrant encounters for August are on track to surpass 
230,000, making it the sixth month in 2023 above 200,000.
  On Tuesday, a report surfaced that CBP apprehended more than 7,300 
individuals across the southern border; I believe maybe 9,000 
nationally.
  Three of the four busiest Border Patrol sectors were in Texas:
  The El Paso Sector had 1,100 illegal crossings.
  The RGV Sector, 1,400.
  The Del Rio Sector, 1,800.
  We have had 10,000 criminals caught at the border in FY23.
  Here is the thing. With over a million got-aways, who are we not 
catching? What do we do about the story we just saw unfold in 
Pennsylvania where a guy was charged with crimes in Brazil; he came to 
our country, brutally stabbed to death his girlfriend, then he's on a 
jailbreak in Pennsylvania? Illegal. Not legally present.
  How about the 11-year-old boy in Ohio who just died because someone 
released by the President ran into a schoolbus on the first day of 
school. An 11-year-old boy, dead by someone here illegally released by 
this President.
  According to the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland 
Security, DHS has the wrong addresses for 177,000 of the nearly 1 
million people released into the United States between the spring of 
`21 and the summer of `22. Think about that.
  Many of those addresses were used more than 50 times each. A car 
dealership, a bus station, a restaurant in Maryland, a church in 
Illinois were the addresses used.
  Who are they and where are they?
  If 99 percent of them are great people looking for a better way of 
life, God bless them. What about the other 1 percent?
  You feel good about that? You feel secure in the United States, do 
you? Because as you drive around your suburban enclaves and you feel 
safe and secure, this is going to catch up to you, just like the New 
Yorkers who are starting to wake up and say, oh, this is kind of a 
problem.

  Yeah, it is a problem.
  The problem is there is a human toll. These are human beings. An 
illegal immigrant in Baltimore who was being held up for ransom for 
$23,000 while his wife and little girl were in a stash house in Fort 
Worth, Texas. They called them up and said: We are going to rape your 
little girl if you don't give us $23,000.
  Is that what we are for in this country?
  Are we for perpetuating the sex trafficking trade, the human 
trafficking trade, and slave labor?
  Are we for what is happening to our Border Patrol, where we are 
losing Border Patrol because they are being lied about by this 
Department of Homeland Security?
  Are we for a million people being released into the United States in 
a year?
  Are we for the criminal activity we just saw in Pennsylvania or the 
boy in Ohio?
  Are we for all the migrants now in New York?
  Are we for the young man who came in as an unaccompanied alien child, 
a family took him into their home and he stabbed the father and killed 
them?
  Is that what we are for?
  If we are not for it, what the hell are we going to do about it? 
Besides preen, posture, campaign, and say, oh, yeah, we are going to do 
something about the border one day. Trust us. One day.
  Well, that day is now. If we don't secure the United States, we 
shouldn't fund the agencies that refuse to secure it. That is what this 
is about.
  When my Democratic colleagues complain in October if we are unable to 
find a resolution to fund the United States Government, I want them to 
look squarely in the mirror. It is you who is causing it. It is you who 
is abandoning your responsibility to secure the border of the United 
States.
  It is you that is causing little girls to get sold in the sex 
trafficking trade. It is you that is causing ranches in Texas to get 
overrun. It is you that is causing criminals to get released into the 
United States. It is you that is undermining our strength in the 
Western Hemisphere, empowering China, empowering cartels to undermine 
our national security.
  Over my dead body am I going to say that I am going to support 
funding a government that refuses to do its job to secure the border.
  That is what the House of Representatives should be saying, in 
unison, to a President flouting the law.
  That is what this is about.
  Our Founders gave us the power of the purse. James Madison wrote 
about it in the Federalist Papers. It is not just a happenstance that 
the House of Representatives has that power.
  In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote, ``When a 
long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same 
object evinces a design to reduce them''--the people--``under absolute 
despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such 
government, and to provide new guards for their future security.''
  When they created our government and gave us the Constitution, they 
gave us tools to avoid that, but let's be very clear. What happened to 
us?
  The Declaration of Independence outlined 27 grievances. I have listed 
more

[[Page H4342]]

than that just here. A complete abandonment of the job and the 
responsibility of the Federal Government, leaving the State of Texas 
$10 billion poorer while it tries to do the job the Federal Government 
is suppose to do.
  The American colonists protested because they weren't represented in 
Parliament. I would suggest right now that the American people, 
frankly, aren't being well represented in this body because this body 
is letting the executive branch run over them every bit as much as King 
George III was doing to the colonists in 1776.
  You think it is hyperbole.
  Look at our border; look at our system of justice; look at our 
energy, economy; look at our level of spending--a complete abandonment 
of our job.
  Where are we? Why even go home this weekend?
  Why were we gone in August?
  Why aren't we right here forcing the conversation, forcing Senator 
Schumer and the President to come down to the Republican-led House of 
Representatives and say enough. It is enough. Enough to open borders, 
enough to a devastating energy policy, enough to lawlessness, enough to 
targeting the American people, enough words, enough promises. It is 
time to fight.
  If we are not going to secure the United States of America, we 
shouldn't fund the government that refuses to do so. We should stand up 
and fight to defend the people that sent us here to fight for them.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________