[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 197 (Thursday, November 30, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H6032-H6037]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE AMERICAN DREAM
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 9, 2023, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) is recognized for
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
General Leave
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may
have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and
include extraneous material on the topic of this Special Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Texas?
There was no objection.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, we are sitting here on the precipice of
entering December, a month in which those of us who profess the
Christian faith and belief in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior,
celebrate his birth into this world to give the world, and each and
every one of us in it, hope for eternal life and eternal salvation.
We are immeasurably blessed to live in a country where we can carry
out our faith and exercise our beliefs.
It is critically important that we just came out of the weekend of
Thanksgiving. At Thanksgiving, of course, we are thankful to live in a
country in which we have In God We Trust emblazoned over the dais on
which the Speaker sits in front of the American flag.
The Wall Street Journal eloquently prints every Wednesday before
Thanksgiving ``The Desolate Wilderness'' editorial that has run in that
paper for--I don't know--probably some 60 years.
It eloquently lays out all of the hardships that faced those
Europeans who came to the North American Continent, and what it was
like, and what they experienced going out into the desolate wilderness,
and what that meant for mankind throughout the world.
I am always struck at how often we, as Americans in this generation
and in this day and age, are too often either actually apologetic or
forced to be apologetic or taught to be apologetic for being American,
for our existence as Americans because of both actual and, frankly,
perceived or taught past wrongs.
I started this talking about my Christian faith. My colleagues and
constituents and people across this country who share that faith know
that we are taught in Romans that we all fall short of the glory of God
for we are all sinners.
That is inherently true. It is true in the United States. It is true
in Great Britain. It is true in Russia and China and throughout the
world. We are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God.
The thing that is unique about this country is that we have set up a
system that is designed to protect us against the worst impulses of man
in terms of the centralization of power in the hands of a few to be
used tyrannically against the many.
That is the great gift that we have inherited from our forefathers
who bled, died, and fought so that we could live here and live free, so
that we could exercise our conscience, so that we could live according
to the dictates of our conscience.
That is why I am thankful. That is what I was thankful for over
Thanksgiving because that is what it is supposed to be about.
It is not just about the football game. It is not just about the
turkey. It is not just about Friendsgiving or whatever people talk
about these days.
It is a specific holiday about our thankfulness as Americans and why
that is so critically important to the ethos of being an American
because you aren't an American simply because of DNA or blood.
You are an American because of the idea that is embodied in this
Chamber, in the people's House. It is for that reason that I came to
the House floor on the Thursday before we adjourned for Thanksgiving
week, after this body had passed by a suspension of the rules--that is,
without the normal debate process, without the regular order that was
such a central part of the debates last year in this body--we passed
through suspension of the rules some $400 billion to $500 billion of
additional spending up and through late January and early February of
2024.
I found that then, and I continue to find it to be repulsive, that
that is how we would conduct business, that that is how we would carry
out the business of the people's House.
I made clear then that I thought that it was destructive and that it
was carrying on the continued policies of the previous regime passed
last December over the loud objections of my colleagues on this side of
the aisle to pass a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill chock full of
leftist priorities that are destroying the American Dream--nothing
short of that.
A Wall Street Journal poll from this month found that only 36 percent
of voters said the American Dream still holds true.
The American Dream is dying because Americans' government is failing
them. It is actively working against them, and our people feel it.
Our country, our society, our culture, our people, the people we
represent, are in deep despair. $11,400. According to ``CBS News,'' the
typical American household must spend an additional $11,434 annually
just to maintain the same standard of living they enjoyed in January of
2021.
That is a problem. The average American family in this country is
hurting. I watched the Democrat White House press secretary walk up to
the microphone and just dismiss it and just pretend that the average
American family is totally fine and can walk right out and go buy their
Thanksgiving dinner, and there is no harm, no foul. They are all good.
The Biden administration policies and the Democrat policies, they are
having no negative effect. Ignore these numbers. Ignore the cost of
goods and buying food. Ignore the cost of housing. Ignore the cost of
car ownership. That is what this administration wants the American
people to do.
Our constituents are literally being priced out of the American Dream
of owning a home. My staff, making decent money relative to some people
in the world, come to me and say, I don't know how to buy a house. I
don't know how I can possibly ever buy a house, certainly not in the
Nation's Capitol.
Housing prices have nearly doubled since 2010. In the second quarter
of 2023, the median home price was $416,100. In 2010, it was $219,500.
In May of 2023, median mortgage payments hit an all-time high of
$2,165 a month. According to The Wall Street Journal, the buyer of a
typical home faces a monthly principal and interest payment of nearly
$2,200, more than double the level of early 2021. Goldman Sachs'
Housing Affordability Index hit a new record low in August.
That is just homes. What about cars, kind of the second biggest
expense? Americans can't even afford to purchase a car because of the
efforts of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and this
administration to ban the internal combustion engine in pursuit of
unicorn energy policies that are going to do nothing to actually reduce
CO2, and they are driving the American people into
bankruptcy with an inability to afford an automobile to go about their
lives and their jobs.
A new car costs $50,000, nearly double the cost just 10 years ago.
Electric vehicles are piling up on the lots of dealers across this
country because the American people know they can't work for them. They
can't afford them. They can't stop to charge like the Secretary of
Energy did when she showed up and made a pregnant woman and her family
get out of the way for a photo op while she charged her EV driving
across the country.
That is the truth. The truth of this administration and my Democratic
colleagues is they are perfectly content, as they have admitted to me
in the Rules Committee and on this floor, to drive the American family
into bankruptcy so they can pursue climate change reform.
[[Page H6033]]
That is absolutely a dereliction of duty on the part of the
leadership of this country. When we have 250 coal-fired plants in this
country and China has 1,100, and they are building two a week and we
are building none, and we think we are going to dent CO2 by
forcing American families into expensive electric vehicles, the
batteries for which are produced by our enemies in China with elements
that are mined by child labor across the world, that is what this
Democratic Party stands for.
They are bankrupting American families, empowering our enemies,
undermining our national security, and exploiting child labor, all in
pursuit of things cooked up by radical leftists and universities, all
enriching, by the way, through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act
massive billion-dollar corporations with subsidies from taxpayers. That
is the truth.
We are destroying the American Dream through the policies
specifically chosen by my Democratic colleagues in the White House, in
this body, and in the Senate.
This administration's EPA has issued a rule to make two-thirds of new
vehicles electric by 2032. That is in a mere 8 years.
This body didn't vote on that. The administration could do it by
fiat. That is not how this is supposed to work.
That was my point in the opening of this speech. This country is
designed to protect against power resting in the hands of a few being
exploited against the many.
There are 330 million people in this country whose lives are getting
decimated and destroyed while this administration tyrannically uses its
power in the bureaucratic and executive branch to level the American
Dream.
{time} 1745
The average EV costs $16,000 more than an internal combustion engine
equivalent.
When I asked my colleagues on the other side of the aisle in the
Rules Committee: Well, do you think that is worth it? They say yes.
They say yes.
They want every American family to have to cough up another $16,000
for an imperceptible, ineffective, alleged reduction in CO2
production. Meanwhile, we haven't done anything to produce nuclear
power, which is actually reliable.
The American people fully recognize that their lives have been
upended. They are not 100 percent sure why, although I think they are
starting to figure it out as they watch the President of the United
States dawdling along, completely unaware of what is going on, while
the bureaucrats in the administration are cooking up all these schemes
to use their bureaucratic powers to undermine the American Dream and
drive up the price of cars; drive up the price of oil; vehicles; drive
up the goods and services; drive up the price of houses; spend money we
don't have; rising interest rates.
The Federal Government spent $2 trillion more than it took in in
fiscal year 2023. We spent a total of $4.4 trillion in 2019. In 2023,
we spent over $6 trillion. Our national debt is somewhere around
$33.865 trillion, and we are doing nothing about it.
Earlier this week, my friend Jodey Arrington, the chairman of the
Budget Committee had a hearing on debt commissions. It is important and
it is good that we have those hearings and figure out what we are going
to do on a bipartisan basis. However, I have to be very honest, if we
cannot in this body figure out how to limit even just the discretionary
spending being used to fund bureaucrats and laws and regulations that
are undermining our freedom--driving up the price of cars; driving up
the price of houses; funding a Department of Justice to go target a guy
like Scott Smith, a dad in Loudon County; funding an EPA to go shut
down people's livelihoods; arrest a guy on his ranch for building a
pond; funding a DOJ to go after some of my colleagues--if we can't
reduce that spending as Republicans, then how in God's green earth are
we going to sit down and stare an elderly American in the face and tell
them that we are going to do something with their Social Security
benefits or Medicare benefits.
We are not. I have to be honest, we have been profoundly unserious in
this body, on both sides of the aisle, about spending and about the
abuse of power that we fund with taxpayer dollars and borrowed dollars
to fund a bureaucracy that is at war with the American people and at
war with the American Dream. That is the truth.
In my Thursday speech just prior to adjourning for the Thanksgiving
recess, I noted fairly explicitly and pointedly that we had not
produced a significant win for the American people in this Chamber this
Congress.
I asked the question: What have we done? And all of my colleagues
that are sitting around the complex, I asked then and I ask now: Come
to the floor and come tell me what we have been able to do through this
body, the Senate, and the White House. What have we been able to do in
the last year to make the lives of the American people better, to make
them more free, to secure their border, to make their country more
secure, or to make their military more focused on its mission rather
than social engineering?
I know what we have done here on the Republican side. We have passed
a lot of good stuff through the hard work of my colleagues unifying
around passing a strong National Defense Authorization bill that undoes
the abortion tourism, the transgender surgery, the DEI, the critical
race theory that is destroying the mission and the soul and the culture
of the United States military, driving down recruiting and making us
less safe and secure.
We passed the strongest border security bill we have ever passed. We
did that here united as Republicans. We passed seven appropriations
bills. We are on the precipice of passing more appropriations bills to
take the power out of the hands of a few and return it to the body.
We have done a number of great things fighting here as Republicans,
but they don't mean a thing if we are not willing to sit down at the
negotiation table and look at our Democratic colleagues in the Senate
and look at the President of the United States and tell him: This is
how it is going to be done or you are not going to get your funding.
This is how it is going to be done or don't even think about another
dollar for Ukraine.
That is my message to my Republican colleagues who, frankly, are
getting a little too wound up at that question I asked: What have we
done?
The simplest solution to your frustration about that question being
asked is to have an answer.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry),
my friend, and wonder if he might agree.
Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I do agree. Whether it is in your personal
life, your business life, your family life--anything at all--your
family, the people, your colleagues around you, the people that you
work around demand some deliverable. Deliverable might be showing up on
time with a good attitude, but at least you delivered something.
I remember that speech from my good friend, the gentleman from Texas,
because I watched it. He started out and he said: What the hell is
wrong with this country?
Well, nothing is wrong with this country. The problem is with this
place.
There are a lot of good people on this side of the aisle, and maybe
we haven't produced a deliverable, but I would also say this: There has
been no help, no help at all from the other side of the building, the
other side of the aisle or down the street at the White House; no help
at all.
I have car manufacturers now coming to see me and they are saying:
Well, we are forced to build these electric cars; nobody wants them.
Then when they don't have anything else to buy, they buy them. And then
they don't work, so they bring them back in and they trade them in for
something else, and then they sit there and we can't sell them.
Congressman, what are you going to do for me?
My goodness, Joe Biden is the President.
The regulators, every single day another rule, another regulation,
they just keep coming and coming.
Members of Congress, I don't know that we are irrelevant, but if we
are not willing to stop funding these agencies that keep on prevailing
against the American people, well that is what we are going to be.
The Founders made each body to jealously guard its own power. Instead
of jealously guarding our power, we
[[Page H6034]]
have given it to bureaucrats; nameless, faceless people that have an
agenda that pass rules with the force of law. These rules that spend
all this money make your Thanksgiving dinner more expensive.
My mom went out to get a turkey for our family. My mom makes a turkey
for our family and we all get together. She called her son up to say
that the turkey costs $70.
Mr. Speaker, from lettuce to lumber, people can't afford in America
just to live their lives. They can't afford their bills; they can't
afford groceries; they can't afford gas in their car; they can't afford
their credit card payments while they try and just live the life that
they have lived.
As the slide or the poster over there shows, their bills have gone up
that much. They are paying, between the government and the increased
cost, an extra month of their pay; every year an extra month for things
that they didn't have to just 3 years ago.
This body is the only one that has the power of the purse. This is
the only body that can control the spending that is driving up every
single cost, every single cost. It starts here.
If we don't have the courage--we can have the conviction--people vote
for their Member saying: Well, this guy said when he goes to
Washington, he is going to fight the swamp. He is going to fight the
bureaucracy. He is going to fight the spending. However, when the bill
shows up on the floor and we see the amendment up there, oh, my
goodness, every single time you get 100 votes, 150 votes.
Mr. Speaker, it takes 217 to pass these amendments to cut spending.
If you said you are going to cut spending at home, then your
opportunity happens right here on the floor. If you are not going to do
it here, if you are not going to vote that way, don't go home to your
constituents and say, I am sorry you can't afford lettuce and a holiday
turkey. I am sorry you can't afford your bills: your car payment, your
home payment, your insurance payment, your heating bill. I am sorry you
can't afford it--because I didn't do anything to help you. Your
opportunity, the leverage, the moment is here. It is now.
We have been working on spending bills for months, and the reason
that we can't pass them here is because we are spending too much.
Oh, by the way, that is a fight among this side of the aisle that
actually some of us want to do something to save our constituents from
this overbearing weight of the Federal Government and the regulatory
agencies--and I have to say this to my good friend from Texas--with no
help whatsoever from the other side of the aisle. No help.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, my friend from Pennsylvania is 100 percent
correct. This was a point that I made in the remarks I made right
before Thanksgiving, which is what are we going to say that we have
accomplished, other than to say that we are less bad than Democrats.
That is my question here for my Republican colleagues. When we are
getting zero help from our Democrat colleagues, who are intent on
spending money we don't have to fund bureaucrats; to undermine our
freedom; our way of life; our ability to afford our lives; our ability
to have jobs; our ability to have a secure border; our ability to have
secure streets; our ability to have education that is controlled by
parents and not by leftist bureaucrats; our ability to have a military
that can defend our country rather than being woke and socially
engineered, we get zero help from our colleagues on the other side of
the aisle.
Which means what? It means that this Republican majority has to unite
and ensure that we are going to force Senate Democrats and the
President to come to the table using the leverage that we have for the
things that they want.
The Senate majority leader has professed a desire that we continue to
fund a proxy war in Ukraine. It is very well documented. The President
of the United States, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, our
colleagues on the other side of the aisle in this Chamber, want us to
continue to fund a proxy war in Ukraine.
Now, we can have that debate on the floor of the House. We can debate
the merits of it. We can debate how much it should be lethal aid versus
not. We can debate how to make it more transparent; debate how to make
it more focused, or whether to do it at all, but a fundamental and core
question that ought to be asked: Why would we ever debate giving
another dollar to Ukraine when our borders are wide open, Americans are
being killed and endangered by cartels and fentanyl and violence and
terrorists and gang members that come across our border, and this
administration refuses to do a thing about it?
Why, to my friend from Pennsylvania, would we even utter the word
Ukraine on the floor of the House ever again until we have H.R. 2, the
strong border security bill that we passed, signed into law by the
President of the United States, metrics guaranteeing and demonstrating
that we do not have continued flow and automatic entry and releases
into the United States?
Why would we do that?
Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, there is no reason that we should do it.
There is not a person in this Chamber on that side of the aisle or this
side of the aisle that agrees with Vladimir Putin, the Russian
Federation, the invasion of Ukraine, the atrocities that have been
committed there. There is not one person that agrees with it.
At the same time, our country is under assault, our country is being
invaded, and our country can't afford its bills.
Before we have the audacity, the temerity to demand, under force of
law, that our citizens get up in the morning, go to work, and pay their
taxes to pay for the pensions and the salaries of government workers in
Ukraine--my goodness, are we tone deaf to the fact that the people in
this country, the people in the gentleman from Texas' communities, and
the people that I represent, can't afford to pay their bills? They
can't afford to pay their bills.
None of us agree with what is happening overseas in regard to
Ukraine, but we have a duty. We were not elected by Ukrainian citizens.
We were elected by United States citizens, American citizens that are
paying their taxes under penalty of law.
They will be thrown in jail if they don't pay their taxes. It is the
height of insult and injury to tell them you have to pay your taxes and
you can't afford a holiday meal, but you can rest assured that that
money is going to go over to Ukraine to pay for their salaries and
their pensions.
The American people are sick of it. They sent us here to do something
about it, and every time we have an opportunity, every single time we
have an opportunity, we need to seize that opportunity.
Quite honestly, it just comes down to this, Mr. Roy, when the Senate
demands this, when the President demands it, the Speaker of House, this
Republican majority, respectfully, just says no.
{time} 1800
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I agree with my friend from Pennsylvania.
While he is still on the floor, I will close with a couple of
questions.
I assume that the gentleman from Pennsylvania, my friend, when he ran
for Congress, and when he has run every term since, he ran under a
promise to fight to reduce and cut Federal spending. I assume that is
correct.
Mr. PERRY. That is correct.
Mr. ROY. To my friend from Pennsylvania, do you think that it is a
fulfillment of your promise and pledge to work here to try to cut
spending to pass continuing resolutions that fund government at the
preceding year's astronomically high spending levels, particularly that
of Nancy Pelosi's $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill? Does my friend
think that gets it done?
Mr. PERRY. Of course not. My constituents, my bosses, just like your
bosses, were vehemently opposed to that last December's cram-down of
all this money to all kinds of things, omnibus spending, everything in
there. They didn't want it, and as a signal to what we would do if we
governed, Republicans, every single one, voted against it.
Now, 9 or 10 months later, we are supposed to act like, well, we
didn't get our work done so we are just going to continue that, but
don't worry about it. Forget about what happened 9 or 10 months ago.
The American people have not forgotten. Do you know how I know they
[[Page H6035]]
have not forgotten? Because I was at the grocery store on Monday before
I came here, and a woman came up to me with her grocery cart. She
recognized me and said: Don't the people that you work with grocery
shop? Don't they know how much this costs?
She knows, and she demands that we do better and that I be
accountable and not vote for things I voted against 9 months ago and
just act like they are okay. They are not okay 9 months later.
Mr. ROY. That woman, your constituent, recognizes the impact from the
policies of this current administration and, frankly, I must say, the
policies that are perpetuated by this body, including some on both
sides of the aisle that have resulted in families having to spend
$11,400 more just to break even to where they were at the beginning of
this administration.
The question is, what are we going to do about it? I mean, I think
that is the fundamental question. Did your constituents send you here
to file bills, to file amendments, to simply vote, and then say: Oh,
isn't it so great that we voted and passed something out of committee?
Do your constituents know when we pass something out of committee, as a
general matter? Do they know how many bills you have filed? Do they
know whether or not you got some amendment inserted in whatever unless
you tell them? Or are they looking for results? Do they want the border
to actually be secure? Do they want spending to actually go down so
there is less inflation and they can afford to live?
Do they want us to have a military that is focused rather than woke?
Do they want us to deliver results, or do they just want us to sit up
here and pound our chest about how we got certain bills introduced and
I got some vote on some measure on the floor of the House?
Mr. PERRY. I imagine my district is just like yours.
I visited a local construction company with 400 hardworking
Americans. Men and women come in. They have steel-toed boots on, jeans,
jackets with stains on them. They come in out of the cold. They don't
have time to worry about what amendment or bill you got passed through
the House but there was no signature.
Here is what they worry about, to my friend from Texas, and I think
your bosses feel the same way: We sent you to Washington to make our
lives better. My prices are going up. My selections are going down, and
my choices are going down. The government is imposing itself on me
about whether I want to install a gas stove in my home or whether I
want to speak out about my political views and not end up on some list,
or if I want to go deer hunting today and worry that I got the wrong
ammunition or that my gun isn't configured so that the Federal
Government doesn't come arrest me.
They say: We are counting on you to do this, so don't come home and
talk to us about amendments and bills and ``I had a meeting with,''
because it doesn't affect my life. All the things that are happening to
me every day from this administration are affecting my life. I am sick
of it, and I am sending you down there to stop it.
Mr. ROY. I assume your constituents, like mine, totally understand
that we don't have both Chambers and the White House. They know that we
can't move all the mountains. Nevertheless, they want us not to just
shrug and give up and send a bill over to the Senate and say, ``Sorry,
we don't have the Senate. Blame Chuck Schumer,'' and then go campaign.
Even when we had the majority in the House, had a majority in the
Senate, and had the White House, how many times did you hear the
excuse: ``Oh, I am sorry, Congressman Perry. We don't have 60 votes in
the Senate.'' Did you ever hear that one?
Mr. PERRY. There is always some excuse. When we have the House or the
Senate, or we have both and the Presidency, there is always some excuse
for why it can't be done.
I will tell you this. There is no excuse for the radical march of the
left creeping into everybody's life, into every decision that you make,
into everything you do. It just keeps happening.
Our bosses are not down here in Washington, D.C. They don't
understand committee rules and the process here on the floor. What they
understand is that they are getting up in the morning when it is dark
outside, packing their lunch, and kissing their kids good-bye before
they get on the schoolbus, and they don't know why this is happening to
them, but they sure know it is happening.
They think about the extra costs every single week when they are
trying to manage their budget. They are like: ``We are making more
money, but we still can't afford to live the way we did. We can't
afford our food. We can't afford, heaven forbid, if the car breaks
down.'' No, they don't understand why.
What they demand, to the good gentleman from Texas, is results, is
some product. They don't care about why it can't be done. They are not
asking for everything to change overnight. They know we didn't get here
overnight, but they want something, some win, to show them some light
at the end of this tunnel, but there isn't any. I haven't seen one yet.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the good gentleman from Pennsylvania.
He is a good friend, and I am honored to serve with him. I agree with
him.
I will say that our constituents don't send us to Washington to
campaign. They don't send us to Washington to run around trying to
figure out how we are going to score some political victory and set up
votes so we can run against our colleagues.
Our constituents recognize that our colleagues on the other side of
the aisle are continuing to leave them behind and ignore them in
pursuit of fantasy energy policies, woke ideology, and radical leftist
views of open borders that empower our enemies and endanger Americans.
They fully get that.
They expect us to stand up and fight for them. They expect us to do
the right thing and then let the voters decide.
I would submit that it is a critical juncture in this country, that
we are facing existential threats, that it is critical that the 200 and
however many Republicans we have right now unite together and go over
to the Senate to tell the Senate that we have to solve problems for the
American people, secure borders, strengthen our military, reduce
spending, get inflation down, make the American people believe that the
American Dream exists again.
Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, before I go, I will say that the gentleman
from Texas is right. We have to unite so that we can be effective
against these forces of evil that are destroying the American Dream. It
is not uniting for the sake of uniting. It is uniting around a purpose.
Our bosses are very forgiving. They are very gracious. They
understand if you fight the good fight and you lose. What they will not
accept, what they cannot accept, and what they should not accept is not
fighting at all or surrendering before the fight even begins.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that. I know my colleague is about
to leave. I know that he appreciates and we share our faith in the good
Lord and our faith in Jesus Christ. He will appreciate the words of
Paul in 2 Timothy: I have fought the good fight. I have finished my
course. I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the
crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award
to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved
him appearing.
That is obviously a spiritual reference and speaking in spiritual
terms, but they are the kind of words that I think my friend agrees
with me should be inspiring us as Members of this body, regardless of
party, that we advance, that we move forward, that we defend this
country.
Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, that is our job. Our job is to defend this
Constitution. My constituents, my bosses, know I carry one with me
every day.
It is a piece of paper, Mr. Speaker. It cannot defend itself. It
relies on the integrity, fortitude, courage, and conviction of good
people willing to come here to serve and fight on its behalf, like the
good gentleman from Texas.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Pennsylvania. When I
started this speech, I talked about The Wall Street Journal poll from
this month finding that only 36 percent of voters said the American
Dream still holds true and that our country, our society, is in deep
despair and needs help. I talked about the $11,400, according to CBS,
that the typical American
[[Page H6036]]
household must spend additionally every year just to maintain the same
standard of living that they enjoyed in January 2021.
The fact of the matter is, the American people are suffering. We in
this body know it, yet we are doing nothing about it. All we are doing
is making it worse by spending more money we don't have, indebting our
children and grandchildren.
We are now $34 trillion in debt, and all I get from my colleagues on
the other side of the aisle is lip service about taxes when we have
been bringing in revenue to the Treasury at the top level we have ever
done in the history of this country, 19.2 percent. We have plenty of
revenue. What we refuse to do is deal with our spending problem,
promises that we have made but cannot honestly deliver on without
printing money.
I talked about the extent to which the average American family can no
longer afford a car. A new car costs $50,000, nearly double what it
cost 10 years ago. Why? Because of absurd regulations and mandates
coming out of this administration unilaterally, through bureaucrats,
backed up by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle passing
legislation to mandate EVs that are piling up on the lots of
dealerships that people can't afford and that don't allow them to do
their job. Debt is piling up. Interest rates are going up. Houses are
unaffordable.
With healthcare, Americans are expected to spend $6,500 for a family
policy and $1,400 for an individual. They are expecting 2024 premiums
to increase 8 percent for group rates. Healthcare is completely
unaffordable for the average American.
All this is happening as Big Healthcare gets richer, and the Federal
Government continues to flood more money into the market. Big Insurance
revenue is $1.25 trillion. The CBO estimates Federal subsidies to
health insurance for Americans under 65 will reach $1 trillion.
Nobody in America knows what these numbers mean. What they mean is
you can't afford healthcare, can't go to the doctor, and can't choose
the doctor of your choice.
We are enriching bureaucrats and healthcare companies. We are
enriching bureaucrats, pharma, hospitals, and Big Insurance. We are
doing it through crony capitalism that was inflated under ObamaCare.
I have a constituent who came up to me last week who is on ObamaCare
and can't go to MD Anderson for the cancer that is killing her, yet my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle pat themselves on the back
for coverage.
I would like to know if any of my colleagues on the other side of the
aisle want to call up my constituent and congratulate her for having
coverage she can't use. She can't use it to go get healthcare while we
enrich the insurance companies at levels they were never enriched
before, while we devastate them. She literally can't go get the care
she needs under the coverage of ObamaCare, while healthcare companies
are rolling in money.
I can't go back to MD Anderson, if my cancer comes back, on the plan
that I would have under ObamaCare as a Member of Congress. That is the
truth.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle pretend that it is not
devastating the American family that we are driving up the cost of
healthcare, making it impossible to get the doctor of your choice,
making it impossible for people to live and enjoy the American Dream.
On the southern border in Texas, my constituents text and call me
every single day--every day. I have constituents and friends in south
Texas calling me about the devastation being wrought in south Texas.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't care. They don't
care about the little girls getting sold into the sex trafficking
trade, the almost 1,000 migrants who died along the Rio Grande and
southern border last year. They don't care about the fentanyl pouring
into Texas that is killing my constituents. Last year, I had six kids
die in the school district I live in from fentanyl poisoning. It is
pouring into our communities through wide open borders, and everybody
knows it.
Mayorkas goes down to the border and won't even apologize to the
Border Patrol agents he accused of whipping people, which didn't
happen.
{time} 1815
Mr. Speaker, there have been 6.6 million illegal aliens since January
21 and 1.7 million known got-aways. That is bigger than the entire
population of San Antonio, Texas, which I represent and is the seventh
largest city. We don't know who they are.
I had members of the Texas legislature showing me videos of people
they saw over Thanksgiving weekend in south Texas, single adult males
running away from Border Patrol. If you are running away from Border
Patrol in 2023, I assure you it is because you are up to no good.
The entire world knows that if you come here and you go up to Border
Patrol and you say the word asylum, you are going to get released into
the United States.
Texas is under siege. We spent $12.5 billion of our own money to do
the job the Federal Government refuses to do, while my colleagues on
the other side of the aisle, Secretary Mayorkas, President Biden,
Senate Democrats, and Chuck Schumer ignore the crisis and pretend that
sending more money down to process more people will make a damn
difference. It won't.
Texas would be well within its rights to tell this Federal Government
to go straight to hell. Stop sending any tax receipts and do what we
need to do to secure Texas. Frankly, Governor Abbott should do that.
Shut off the flow across the border because this Federal Government
refuses to do it.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't care. The fact of
the matter is, this current Democrat administration and my Democratic
colleagues are all too fine while the American family suffers, losing
the American Dream. They have $11,000 of additional costs every year
under this administration. Kids die in their schools from fentanyl.
People pour into communities in Texas and Arizona and throughout the
country. They are piling up in New York, so bad that they had to cut a
deal to move them onto military installations and Federal properties.
All of our streets are unsafe because DAs refuse to enforce the
laws--funded by George Soros--DAs in Texas and throughout this country.
Literally, the DA in San Antonio, it was just reported, has dismissed
more than 6,000 criminal cases in the first 3 months of 2023. That is a
50 percent rise in dismissed cases.
One of these dismissed cases led career criminal Michael Kirkland to
be free to shoot at police officers and motorists in San Antonio while
evading arrest, leading to an officer being injured this past August.
Those are the policies of this Democrat regime and of Democrats across
this country.
Violent crime is surging, borders are open, fentanyl is pouring into
our schools, inflation is up, interest rates are up, and life
expectancy is down.
The fact of the matter is, Republicans have a duty to check this
administration and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. It is
why I demand and implore my Republican colleagues that we answer the
question: What have we done?
I can assure you my Democratic colleagues--the answer to what they
have done is destroy the Republic by passing legislation that bankrupts
the American family, pursuing unicorn energy policies, forcing EVs to
pile up on dealership lots, driving families into bankruptcy, and now
they are unable to afford houses.
Democrats are actively doing that. Republicans basically say, well,
we got elected, we are at least stopping that. We are at least stopping
the passage of really bad bills, like the so-called Inflation Reduction
Act or the American Rescue Plan. These bills all spend money we don't
have. It is driving us into debt, funding and enriching White, elitist
liberals in their big, supposedly, green corporations.
Every time Republicans run for office we make a lot of promises about
things like cutting spending, shrinking bureaucracy, or securing the
border. That is what you do when you run for office, you make a lot of
promises. You make a lot of pledges.
We don't have the luxury of grading ourselves on our intentions. The
road to hell is paved with good intentions. The American people, the
history books, and the good Lord are going to
[[Page H6037]]
judge based on the actions we take and the results we deliver and
whether or not we deliver for the American people.
To deliver for the American people, Republicans must force the Senate
Democratic leadership, Majority Leader Schumer, and President Biden, to
understand a handful of very key truths. Under no circumstances should
we give another dollar to Ukraine. No bills should come to the House
floor until H.R. 2 is signed by the President and the flow stops across
our southern border.
That ought to be the very clear message that is sent to the President
and Majority Leader Schumer. If my colleagues on the other side of the
aisle and the Senate want to choose to refuse to secure the border,
then they can call up Mr. Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine and
explain why.
They can explain that it is more important to keep open borders in
America and undermine our sovereignty and our security and our well-
being. They can call up Israel and explain to Israel that they refuse
to actually fund support for Israel because they are more interested in
funding Internal Revenue Service bureaucrats to go after the American
people.
That is what our Democratic colleagues in the Senate have chosen to
do, and they know it. They know it. We pass a bipartisan bill that
chooses to move dollars that were allocated to expand the IRS to go
after the American people, take those dollars and give it to our
friends from Israel. Our Democratic colleagues in the Senate, on a
party-line vote, voted no.
They refused to fund our friends in Israel because they were more
committed to the leftist makeover of this country. They are more
committed to open borders than they are to securing the communities of
the American people and allowing us to have a full and open debate
about Ukraine and how we can proceed to fund our government.
Mr. Speaker, the American people are sick of excuses. They want us to
do our job. I understand the difficulty of dealing with a razor-thin
majority with colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have no
interest in doing the things that we want to do to secure the United
States, secure our border, reduce spending, reduce inflation, focus the
military on what it needs to be focused on, and to do our job under the
Constitution in our limited powers. I understand the difficulty of
that.
We have done a great job and we have been united as a Republican
Party to send good bills over to the Senate. Now we should hold the
Senate accountable to doing the work of the American people to follow
up on what we have already done. To send a border security bill, H.R.
2, that would do the job of securing the border. Sending a National
Defense Authorization bill that would restore our military to its
mission rather than social engineering.
There are seven appropriations bills, and others that are ready to go
if our Democratic colleagues on the other side of the Capitol in the
Senate will sit down with us to actually reduce spending year over year
from 2023 to 2024. We can constrain spending. We can constrain
inflation. We can constrain the bureaucrats that are interfering with
the lives of the American people and undermining their freedom and
their ability to produce and prosper according to their God-given
talents.
Voters are watching what we are doing. They are watching whether we
are going to stand up and actually do our job, and whether or not we
are going to deliver for them rather than engaging in lip service. I
think we need to do our job.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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