[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 30 (Thursday, February 15, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H666-H671]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       ACCESS TO RELIABLE ENERGY

  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.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I first recognize and commend someone who has 
been working in my office most recently as director of operations, 
Corinne Schillizzi, who is unfortunately going to be leaving us after 
tomorrow, her last day here in the office, but she has been a wonderful 
part of our office. She is heading over to work with the former Vice 
President and do some work with his organization.
  We will all miss her. I know the scheduling operation is always 
complex. I know the floor staff will miss working with her because she 
has been fantastic.
  She will be joining another staffer of mine, Jonah Wendt, who was 
with me from the time I first ran for office in the summer of 2018, all 
the way until December. Jonah also left to work with the Vice 
President's organization. It means I need to have a word with the Vice 
President about taking my staff.
  I am very delighted that they have this opportunity, and I thank them 
for their service.
  I have the benefit of Corinne for the next 24 hours. I thank her, 
Jonah, and all of my staff, all of the great staff on the Hill--maybe 
almost all of the staff; it depends on the day.
  I joke as a former staffer, but we can't do this without our staff. 
We can't do it without the floor staff, all the great employees here 
that keep this place operating. They tolerate us when we are holding 
the floor open late, forcing votes, and--I don't know--maybe giving a 
long speech on the floor of the House, which occasionally I might 
shorten just to make sure they can get home in time to have a 
reasonable night. I am ever thankful for their support and work.
  I would note that my colleague from Texas was just complaining about 
the alleged weakness of the Texas grid.
  Well, the only reason that there is any weakness to the grid is 
because we have had radical leftists embracing power schemes that have 
been funding our enemies in China and trying to promote a radical 
leftist agenda with unreliable energy--that is the truth; promoting 
windmill power in Texas, which on a windless day, oddly enough--hard to 
predict this, I know--doesn't produce a whole lot of power; or solar 
power, which, on a cloudy day--I know, again, hard to predict--doesn't 
produce a whole lot of power.
  Therefore, if you have a deep freeze in the State of Texas that shuts 
down the windmill capacity and you have some other events going on, 
like some frozen gas lines, you end up having some difficulties. When 
you have had a war on reliable power, as my radical leftist colleagues 
have been doing for as long as I can remember, you end up with problems 
with the grid.
  It is not just in Texas, it is nationwide. We have had rolling 
blackouts in California. Texas has been able to stave off those kinds 
of blackouts because we are trying to fight through the Federal 
mandates and the laws that come out of this body and the regulations 
that come out of the Federal Government that prevent us from being able 
to provide the power we need for the people of Texas.
  Just last year, my colleague from Texas joined with my radical 
leftist colleagues on the other side of the aisle to advance the so-
called Inflation Reduction Act, which has done none of

[[Page H667]]

that, and which, by the way, is empowering China.
  By the way, my colleague talked about enriching corporations. Well, 
guess what the Inflation Reduction Act does by subsidizing massive 
companies? Ninety percent of the subsidies go to billion-dollar 
corporations. That is the truth.

  My colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to pretend they are 
doing something green when what they are doing is enriching fat cats 
and big corporations, sending money to China to build solar panels 
rather than burning clean-burning natural gas.
  We voted today to advance a bill so that we could have liquefied 
natural gas being exported out of Texas. My colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle don't want to do that. They want to make us weaker. 
They want to hurt our economy. They want to make Russia more powerful.
  They want to undermine Ukraine, even as they complain that we are not 
taking more borrowed money or more taxpayer money to give it to Ukraine 
to fund a war that doesn't have a mission. They want to undermine our 
ability to help Ukraine with liquefied natural gas. That is the truth.
  Those are the actual facts of what is going on right now because my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle are trying to advance a 
radical notion of unicorn energy, where we can have endless unreliable 
energy and then wonder why the grid might have a problem.
  Why aren't we building nuclear power?
  Why aren't we building more natural gas, of which we have an 
abundance in this country?
  Why aren't we exporting more liquefied natural gas?
  Around the world, half the world doesn't have access to reliable 
energy. Three billion people live in what we would call energy poverty. 
Why don't we export our energy so we can lift people out of poverty?
  The fact is that China has 1,100 coal-fired plants, probably more 
than that now; they are building two a week. They are producing the 
vast majority of the CO2 going into the atmosphere. 
Meanwhile, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to declare 
war on the internal combustion engine here in the United States. If you 
get rid of every car in America and replaced it with an electric 
vehicle, you would impact CO2 by about, I don't know, 2 
percent, maybe, worldwide, if you got rid of every single car in 
America.
  Meanwhile, the average EV costs $16,000 more than an internal 
combustion engine automobile. The price of used cars is going up. We 
now have a mandate by this administration that the EVs are going to 
need to be two-thirds of the fleet by 2032, which means every American 
out there watching this, you are going to spend more for automobiles.
  If you live in the cold, your battery is going to take longer to 
charge. If you plug it in at your house, your electricity bill is going 
to double or triple, because it uses as much electricity as your air 
conditioner.

                              {time}  1515

  Yet my leftist colleagues think that is okay. They have said so 
sitting in the Rules Committee. They have said so here on the floor. 
That is just the price of fighting climate change, they say. Except it 
is not going to actually fight what they claim they want to stop.
  Why? Because around the world, other countries are producing 
CO2 in mass quantities. We are producing CO2 at 
our 1990 levels because of innovation, because of clean-burning natural 
gas--yes, from Texas. I have no problem with that. However, when my 
colleagues come down and say, oh, you are enriching corporations, they 
leave out that dirty little secret that we just passed a trillion-
dollar bill that the American people have to pay for to subsidize our 
enemies, to subsidize billion-dollar corporations.
  They undermine the very hardworking American family who wants to buy 
a car. The plumber who wants to have a truck. The family who wants to 
be able to have two vehicles to get around in; however, they can't 
afford them anymore because we are regulating them out of existence.
  We are making it to where you can't even afford it, and then we are 
adding all sorts of requirements like kill switches.
  Can you believe this? If your eyes dart because you are allegedly 
under the influence of something, your car is going to shut down. What 
if it is wrong? What if it is 10 below zero? What if you are across a 
railroad track? You are going to have cars that just shut down because 
of a kill switch. You are going to have the government telling you, you 
cannot get a car that doesn't have the expensive technology built into 
it to determine whether or not you might be under the influence. That 
is what we are doing to people.
  We are going to make that car twice as expensive, and we are going to 
make it to where they might be unable to move their vehicle. This is 
unconscionable what we are doing.
  I had a friend who went to replace a windshield the other day. It was 
$1,500 because it has some technology in it so you can see the 
speedometer in the glass and some other stuff.
  I mean, who cares? What if I just want to have a windshield? It used 
to be 200 bucks. We have made everything more expensive. We are making 
everything so regulated that you can't possibly afford it.
  You want to know why families are struggling, it is because of that. 
My colleagues live in unicorn land and pretend there are no 
consequences to regulation; there are no consequences to writing checks 
that we can't afford, funding and subsidizing big corporations all the 
time to advance their radical agenda.
  They act like there are no consequences to open borders. The fact of 
the matter is, we have a problem in this town. I think I saw the 
Capitol Hill reporter Jake Sherman report today that somehow 
Republicans are in disarray and it has been the least effective 
Congress in history.
  Let me just tell you something about the people I represent. They 
don't want this body to keep passing more laws and spending more money 
for the sake of it. They want us to actually stand up and fight for 
them. Standing up and fighting for them means doing something 
different.
  I promise you that reporter and every other Capitol Hill reporter 
would judge success as continuing the status quo that has delivered us 
$34 trillion in debt, has delivered us stacks of laws that nobody can 
even count, literally.
  I looked up the Department of Justice to count all the criminal 
statutes. They tried to do a study in the eighties, but they ran out 
and just gave up because they couldn't find all the laws. Yet we keep 
passing more laws. Just today, we passed more programs. We passed more 
stuff on the floor.
  They say, Chip, why are you always voting no? Because we are $34 
trillion in debt, and we have reams of regulations and reams of laws. 
What are those things doing to make the average American family's life 
better? That is the truth.
  I will say something else. I am prone to being critical on a 
bipartisan basis or nonpartisan basis. The defense complex, the people 
that want to scare you to death that we are all going to die--yes, 
there are bad enemies in the world and we need to prepare to defend 
them. I will talk more about that in a minute, but we have a problem in 
this town that we will always spend more money because under the fear 
that people are going to say that we are going to be blown up, somebody 
is going to attack us.
  Let me quote our former General Dwight Eisenhower, former President 
Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address in 1961. He said: ``In the 
councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of 
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-
industrial complex.''
  I will remind you that this is 1961. This is 63 years ago almost to 
the day.
  ``The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, 
and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination 
endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing 
for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the 
proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense 
with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may 
prosper together.''
  That is not happening today, Mr. Speaker. We saw it on full display 
this week right here in this body. We saw it in full display, because 
we were trying, on a bipartisan basis, to pass reform of

[[Page H668]]

the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.
  The fact is that FISA has been abused. Section 702 of FISA is a 
particular provision designed for us to collect information abroad to 
look outward in order to try to stop a future 9/11. That is its general 
purpose.
  And it plays an important role in doing that. We have been gathering 
intelligence and been able to use it to prevent bad actors, but the 
fact is there has been enormous abuses.

  The ODNI reported that the FBI conducted an estimated 204,090 United 
States person queries. That is 559 per day in 2022. An NSA analyst 
searched for the communications of two individuals the analyst had met 
on an online dating service. The government conducted a batch query for 
over 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign.
  Mr. Speaker, that is your intelligence community and your FBI that is 
abusing laws designed to look abroad, to stop foreign enemies, and they 
are looking at you. They are using the power of government to surveil 
you, the American people.
  That is wrong. It is why we have a Fourth Amendment. It is why we 
have rules about warrants.
  When I was a former Federal prosecutor, I would have loved to have 
unfettered access to information. I had a bad guy who was sitting 
there, and I had a phone. The cop had the phone--and I had him on other 
stuff, but that guy had a phone, and he pulled the information off the 
phone and it had guns and drugs and pictures that were incriminating. 
He didn't get a warrant.
  Well, the fact that we had had him for something else didn't mean 
that he still didn't need a warrant to look at his phone.
  It matters. I couldn't use any of it. I couldn't give it to law 
enforcement to go look at the house or go try to track down what was on 
the phone. You know what? We are a better country for it because there 
were other tools to go after bad guys. I was able to put that bad guy 
in jail for a considerable number of years, but we weren't going to 
violate the Fourth Amendment to go further.
  Yet, we violate the Fourth Amendment every single dadgum day against 
the American people in the name of foreign intelligence. Why would we 
do that? We do it because it is easy.
  This week we had the opportunity to bring forward bipartisan 
legislation. When do you ever see   Jim Jordan and Jerry Nadler hugging 
each other in agreement in the Rules Committee or in the Judiciary 
Committee, but they were.
  We had bipartisan agreement, 35-2 I think was the vote out of the 
Judiciary Committee to say we are going to continue to allow the 702 
tools to be able to go after bad guys abroad, but we are going to 
protect people here at home. We are going to use the Constitution. We 
are going to require that you have warrants to be able to get 
information, search databases on American people.
  We haven't been able to bring it to the floor. You know why? Because 
the intelligence world, including some in our own Intelligence 
Committee, both sides of the aisle, the intelligence world that have 
worked over in the executive branch and the CIA, DNI, DOD, FBI, they 
all said, whoa, whoa, you can't do that or bad things will happen.
  It is always behind this cloak, this veil. They say, oh, trust us. We 
see all the classified information. We know all the truth. You will be 
in danger. We will be in danger if you pass something like a demand--
that you have a warrant to get information on an American citizen.
  Imagine that? If I walked around Washington, D.C., with a dog sniffer 
from every house going up and down the streets of Capitol Hill or 
through Georgetown or up through northwest or northeast or any part of 
this city, how many times do you think I would run across narcotics?
  I can't do that, and we are not supposed to do that. Of course, law 
enforcement wants every tool it can have to go after bad guys, it makes 
their job easier; however, the Constitution says for a reason that you 
can't do that.
  Every single one of us are mortified about September 11 and every 
other terrorist attack on our soil, but we should not give power to the 
Federal Government and the tyranny that can then be deployed upon the 
American people because we are afraid of what might happen. Freedom 
matters.
  It is why we exist. Yet here we are with an opportunity with this 
bill that is expiring to make reforms that can protect the American 
people, and we are not going to do it. We only do token fixes that will 
make modest improvements but without the full protection of the 
Constitution wrapped around the American citizens. This body, the 
people's House, should do better.
  I believe there is a full, strong majority of this body that would 
want to do that. We should bring that bill to the floor, and if my 
colleagues want to vote against it or take down the rule, make them go 
explain it to the American people. That is what we ought to do.
  I don't mind defending my votes. Just last week, I was forced to vote 
on a suspension of the rules, a vote to give clean funding to Israel. 
Well, God bless America, I support Israel and I want to stand shoulder 
to shoulder with Israel, but I cannot go back to the people of Texas 
and say I am going to send a $17.6 billion check, even to our best 
friends, when we have not secured the border of the United States.

  By the way, we are not paying for it. We cannot continue to write 
checks with borrowed money. We will not have a United States of America 
remaining to stand next to Israel. It won't exist. We won't have a 
dollar that is strong enough.
  It is not just FISA. It is what we saw unfold in the Senate when they 
passed, cynically, taking out border security, sending $60 billion over 
to Ukraine, additional funding for Israel, a total package of almost 
$90 billion.
  By the way, that is $60 billion for Ukraine. Do you know how much our 
entire budget is for the United States Marine Corps? $53 billion. Was 
one penny of that $60 billion paid for? No. It is just printed money.
  We are printing money every year to the tune of $2 trillion just to 
keep the lights on, and we are going to write another $60 billion check 
to Ukraine?
  God bless the people of Ukraine. I want them to push back. I want 
them to win. I want them to hold the line and preserve their country, 
but coming to us to write them blank checks is not a strategy. The 
Senate sent us over a $90 billion bill with $60 billion for Ukraine, 
billions for Taiwan, billions for Israel, and they do so without any 
mission defined.
  We have gotten multiple different missions told to us by the 
administration. They have no clarity of what we are trying to achieve 
there.
  Are we funding something that might result in victory for NATO, for 
Ukraine, for the United States or are we funding, yet again, a never-
ending conflict in a proxy war that none of the people voting for this 
are going to go put themselves in danger for after we have already 
spent $113 billion, by the way, unpaid for?

                              {time}  1530

  Are you noticing a common theme here? Almost everything we do around 
here is unpaid for. Hell, if you look at our annual tax revenues--which 
in 2022, by the way, were as high as they have ever been--those tax 
revenues only pay for mandatory spending. That is D.C. swamp-speak for 
Social Security, Medicare, increasing amounts of veteran spending, all 
of the things that are on autopilot. All of that basically adds up to 
the revenues we bring into the Treasury, which I think is somewhere 
around $4 trillion.
  All the other stuff--the Department of Defense, the Department of 
Education, the Department of Justice, HHS, this building, Congress, 
Senate, the White House, the FAA--is borrowed money. Every penny of it 
is borrowed money.
  How can we look our kids and grandkids straight in the face and say: 
We are not killing the country that was given to us? Because we are.
  My colleagues on the other side of the aisle always blame it on tax 
policy. As I said in the Budget Committee, I will absolutely have any 
conversation about tax policy my friends on the other side of the aisle 
want to have, but what I will not allow my colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle to do is blame deficits on tax policy.
  In 2022, 19.6 percent of the American GDP was sent back to 
Washington, D.C. That is the highest level in history. It ain't a 
revenue problem. It is not. We have always, since we have had

[[Page H669]]

tax policy, been somewhere around 17\1/2\ percent of American GDP--that 
is everything we earn--comes back here to Washington. Last year, I 
think it was about 17\1/2\ percent. It peaked in 2022, and then came 
back down. You have all that money, yet we can't fund all the stuff we 
have promised or that we decide to do.
  I had friends, people back home, constituents, say: Why did you vote 
``no'' on a bill for ALS? Why did you vote ``no'' on a bill for cancer?
  I am a cancer survivor. I have friends with ALS. I voted ``no'' 
because we don't have any money. I voted ``no'' because we are lying to 
the American people--both sides of the aisle, but, with all due 
respect, particularly my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who 
just blame it on tax policy and then ignore spending like drunken 
sailors.
  It is all on our watch. The footnote in history for my tenure in the 
House of Representatives is going to be that I destroyed the country. I 
mean, I am proud that I voted ``no'' for most of this garbage, but for 
this moment in time, the legacy of every Member of this body, their 
tombstone, is going to be that they destroyed the United States of 
America, the greatest country in the history of the world. That is 
going to be the legacy of this House of Representatives, of the next 
House of Representatives, of last Congress' House of Representatives 
because we utterly refuse to responsibly do our job.
  We are $34 trillion in debt. When I ran for office in 2018, it was 
$21 trillion. I have been here for 5 years, and it has gone up $13 
trillion. I voted against virtually every penny of it, but that doesn't 
make me feel any good because we are still up $13 trillion.
  I will say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle: What are we 
going to do about it? Will we have another study? Are we going to put 
together another working group? Or what if, maybe, we actually did our 
damn job, set a cap, and spent under that? Novel concept, I know, that 
every business, every nonprofit, every family in America largely has to 
contemplate.
  We are going to have legislation that is going to come before us in 2 
weeks. Do you know why? Because the government funding is going to 
expire in 2 weeks.
  Again, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have been driving 
an agenda through the administration, the Senate, and my colleagues 
here in this Chamber that spends more money, regulates the heck out of 
the entire country, shutting down the internal combustion engine, 
leaving us with wide open borders, letting immigrants out without bail, 
making our streets unsafe, perpetuating endless wars, driving up 
inflation.
  My Senate Republican colleagues, unfortunately, too often want to 
join with them. On the Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel funding bill, there 
is no border security. It is unpaid for, has no mission, but 22 
Republicans decided that would be a good bill to join. With friends 
like these, as they say.
  We will get a bill in 2 weeks to keep the lights on and keep funding 
government, something most of my constituents question. Most of my 
constituents come up to me and say: Shut down the border or shut down 
the government. They are sick of open borders. They are sick of 
fentanyl deaths. They are sick of their livestock getting out. They are 
sick of having people break into their homes. They are sick of their 
schools getting filled, their hospitals getting filled, their jails 
getting filled. They are sick of what is happening to their country.
  However, here is the thing: My Republican colleagues rightly, 
properly, impeached Alejandro Mayorkas for a total failure to carry out 
his duty, a total failure to faithfully execute the laws of the United 
States, lying to me under oath at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, 
lying to the American people about whipping Haitian migrants. The House 
of Representatives, led by Republicans, impeached, for the second time 
in history, a sitting Cabinet Secretary.
  That is not a bright moment for our country, but it was the right 
thing to do. It will go over to the Senate. They will hold a trial. He 
almost certainly will not be convicted. I don't know if it will be a 
party-line vote. It takes 67 votes to do it.
  However, here is the thing. That is not enough. It is not enough for 
Republicans to send over an impeachment and then walk away, say we did 
what we could. It is not enough to pass H.R. 2, the strongest border 
security bill I have ever seen move off of this floor or any Chamber on 
Capitol Hill. It is not enough to do that. The American people want 
results.
  Here is the question: When we have a funding bill that comes before 
us in 2 weeks, there will be two versions of it, probably--a big 
omnibus spending bill, multiple minibus bills, a continuing resolution. 
Are my Republican colleagues going to agree to continue to fund the 
government that is at war with them? Are they going to fund the salary 
of Alejandro Mayorkas when Alejandro Mayorkas was just impeached, has 
been lying to them, and is endangering the American people with wide 
open borders?

  That is the power of the purse that James Madison eloquently stated 
in Federalist No. 58 is our power to check the executive branch. That 
is why we have it. Are we going to defund any of that? Are we going to 
withhold that funding for a Secretary run rogue? Are we going to keep 
allowing funding to be used for the education of illegal aliens 
flooding our country, for the $53 million that was funded in New York?
  I don't know if it is all State money, local money, Federal money, 
whatever. All I know is $53 million, with cards going out to illegal 
aliens--illegal aliens in schools, illegal aliens in hospitals, illegal 
aliens in emergency rooms. We are the ones left holding the bag, in 
Texas, in particular, but also New York, also Chicago.
  Are we going to keep funding it? Every Republican should have to 
answer that question if you are going to go campaign on saying that you 
are trying to secure the border. Why are you funding this?
  We know our Democratic colleagues don't give a rip, and they want 
borders to be wide open to flood the zone with people from all over the 
world. There is no other reason for it. There is no other defense for 
it. It is a total abuse of asylum laws, a total abuse of parole laws, a 
total abuse of exceptions to the rule that you are supposed to have 
operational control of the border. We all know that. Anyone who can 
read knows that.
  However, our Democratic colleagues are totally fine with wide open 
borders, endangering the American people, endangering migrants, 
empowering cartels, empowering China.
  What will Republicans do about it? Pass an impeachment bill? Good. 
Pass H.R. 2? Good. Funding the very mechanisms that are at war with the 
people of Texas and the American people? Bad.
  Stop doing it. Stop allowing those funds to be abused. Stop funding 
the NGOs that are working in consort with the cartels and the people in 
Mexico to move people up all the way from the Darien Gap, all the way 
up through the Northern Triangle, through Mexico, into the United 
States. Stop funding them.
  It is a fact. We see it. Reporters have embedded with them. We know 
it is true, and we are funding the United Nations $12.5 billion a year. 
$12.5 billion to the United Nations, this body, including Republicans, 
is voting to fund.
  Why? That same United Nations is working with NGOs to move people up 
from the Darien Gap all the way through Mexico to here. That same 
United Nations is funding Hamas.
  Everybody says, Chip, you must give $17 billion to Israel. Well, why 
would I vote for $17 billion for Israel while we are funding our 
enemies, their enemies? That is what we are doing. Stop doing that. 
Stop funding our own enemies.
  We are funding the mechanisms of the Inflation Reduction Act. We are 
funding billions going to China. We are funding billions going to China 
through Iran and the sale of oil. We are funding all of those 
operations. We are empowering all of those operations that are acting 
in direct opposition to our well-being.
  We are funding the implementation of the liquefied natural gas ban on 
exports. We are funding the implementation of the rule that is going to 
require that EVs be two-thirds of our fleet by 2032, which will kill 
the American family with higher priced cars, cars that

[[Page H670]]

are less functional. We are funding that.
  We are funding the FBI, which is out of control. We are funding all 
of the intelligence bureaucracy that is using the FISA laws designed to 
target our enemies to spy on the American people. We are funding that.
  We are funding the EPA's natural gas tax and methane rule, destroying 
access to reliable energy. We are funding the EPA's power plant rules 
aimed at knocking off coal and natural gas power plants, making us 
wholly dependent on wind and sun for energy when you don't always have 
wind and sun.
  We are funding the Internal Revenue Service, doling out billions in 
those IRA tax credits to the corporations I described before.
  We are funding the World Health Organization, which is continuing to 
advance policies in direct conflict to our own well-being.
  We are funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for 
Palestinian Refugees, which I described before as funding Hamas and 
funding our enemies. Totally fine. Don't worry about it. We will go 
campaign against Hamas and go campaign that Israel is great, but we are 
going to fund them.
  That might be the one we don't fund because now everybody's head is 
exploding because even though some of us introduced legislation 3 years 
ago to stop it, and everybody ignored it, now they find out, lo and 
behold, those people were actually there. They are actually employed by 
the United Nations. They were actually working with Hamas to attack 
Israel.
  October 7 exposed what we already knew but were too stupid, lazy, and 
unprincipled to actually do something about it instead of funding it.
  We are funding a pro-China, anti-Israel United Nations Human Rights 
Council. Why? We are $34 trillion in debt, yet we are going to write 
that check. I literally don't understand it. It just makes no sense.
  Oh, Chip, bipartisanship. You have to understand. You don't have the 
Senate. You don't have the White House. Just say no and go explain it 
to the American people. Hi, America. Do you think that we should borrow 
money that we don't have, indebting your children in the future, 
weakening the dollar, increasing inflation so we can fund our enemies 
and Israel's enemies while also wanting you to borrow more money to 
fund Israel to fight the enemies that you are funding?
  That is what we do. That is what Republicans do. That is what 
Democrats do. Republicans at least try. That is the difference.

                              {time}  1545

  We are going to fund an ATF rule banning up to 40 million pistol 
braces. We complain about it, we talk about how bad it is, but we are 
going to fund it. We are going to fund the ATF rule massively expanding 
background checks.
  We are going to fund the Department of Education's student loan 
cancellation scheme. Despite the Supreme Court ruling against them, we 
are going to keep funding it. We will keep writing the check.
  We are going to fund the public health agencies like the CDC and the 
NIH and the FDA, all still unaccountable for shutting down the greatest 
economy in the history of the world, foisting $8 trillion of debt on 
us, sticking our kids in the corner of the classrooms, undermining our 
economic prosperity, destroying healthcare freedom. We are going to 
keep funding them. Hold a couple of hearings, walk away.
  We are going to keep funding the Department of Veterans Affairs' 
vaccine mandate. I have a bill, but who cares if I have a bill? So 
what? Pass a bill. What, so I can go campaign that I had a bill? Who 
cares?
  We should ban the ability to introduce legislation until we actually 
stop funding all this stuff, so people can't hide behind passing a 
bill, saying I did something when you didn't.
  I passed a bill to fund a new position at the State Department that 
will go after and stop bad things from happening. No, you didn't. You 
funded another bureaucrat who hates you. You funded another bureaucrat 
who wants to undermine your way of life. That is what you just funded, 
and it costs more money.
  When we vote in 2 weeks to fund the government--because people will 
say you have got to fund the government, can't shut the government 
down, all the usual stuff.
  We are going to fund chief diversity officers at the Department of 
Defense and throughout government. We are going to fund abortion 
tourism. We are going to fund transgender surgeries.
  Yeah. Your tax dollars. I am sorry. We have already established your 
borrowed dollars are going to go to fund all those things that you 
don't even want.
  The vast majority of Americans don't want that stuff. We are going to 
do it. We are going to fund endless arrays of bureaucrats who are at 
odds with your way of life.
  The Democratic Party wants to end as much as humanly possible western 
civilization as we know it. They want to undermine our way of life.
  They are totally good with wide-open borders. They are totally good 
with endangering the American people, totally good with indebting our 
children and grandchildren with trillions of dollars of debt, totally 
good with advancing radical energy policies that will result in energy 
poverty and the destruction of human life as we know it, totally fine 
with unreliable power, totally fine empowering China and our enemies in 
the name of unicorn energy. They are totally fine with an empowered 
government being used against the American people, all of that stuff.
  I will say this in response to the chattering class here on the Hill 
that are attacking Speaker Johnson, or for that matter, were attacking 
Speaker McCarthy for the dysfunction of the House.
  This Republican-led House is the only institution in the world right 
now standing up and yelling stop, to quote William F. Buckley. We are 
the only institution in the world right now standing against a radical 
leftist agenda.
  Yes, I gave a speech saying name one thing because I want to get 
victories. I want to stand up and stop the radical left.
  Well, we did something. We impeached Alejandro Mayorkas, and that is 
good. We did something last year in passing H.R. 2, but we ought to 
hold the Senate accountable and make them come to the table with us and 
stop what this administration is doing with tyrannical executive 
overreach, endangering the American people with wide-open borders.
  We ought to use the power of the purse to stop funding 1, 2, 10, 50 
of the things that I just described. We should use that power of the 
purse in 2 weeks. We shouldn't run scared.
  We should embrace the caps that were passed last year in the so-
called Fiscal Responsibility Act. It wasn't as good as I wanted, but 
there are caps.
  Why are we running away from the caps?
  Why would we honor side deals that were done behind closed doors, 
which even the Democrat appropriations chairwoman acknowledged in the 
Rules Committee were literally not in the text of the FRA. In fact, she 
voted against the FRA because those side deals were not in the text.
  Why would we walk away from that?
  We have the ability to constrain spending by about $100 billion less 
than what the powers that be want to try to negotiate over in the 
Senate.
  If we passed a continuing resolution for the rest of this year 
funding government, it would be at $1.564 trillion.
  If we advance the minibus using the side deals that the Senate wants 
us to do, it will be $1.66 trillion. That is $100 billion we could 
save; $100 billion you take away from the bureaucracy that is at war 
with your way of life.
  That is what Republicans should do, but the reason we won't, most 
likely--we will keep trying. The reason we won't is because of what I 
started this conversation with: the defense industrial complex.
  Everybody in this town says we are going to die if we don't fund 
defense and if we don't have FISA out there or an abused FISA because 
the intel community is out there wanting to collect all the information 
under the Sun, including against American citizens.
  It will be as Dwight Eisenhower said: ``In the councils of 
government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted 
influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial 
complex.'' That was 1961. That was 63 years ago. He was correct.

[[Page H671]]

  The general that helped us defeat Nazi Germany, that led us to D-day 
who became President of the United States foretold 63 years ago what we 
are seeing right now--that we will hide behind defense, we will hide 
behind the intelligence community, and we will do that to indebt our 
children and our grandchildren
  In the name of security, we will undermine our security. We will not 
have the money to defend ourselves, much less the world.
  We will not be able to stand side by side with Israel because we are 
not going to have a country left to stand next to them.
  We have the opportunity as Republicans to stand and thwart a radical 
left that wants to kill our country. We should do it. We should do it 
proudly. We should run on it. We should stop dancing.
  We have caps in place. Use them.
  We have policies we know we need to achieve. Fight for them. We won't 
get them all. We may only get a few.
  For the love of everything holy, fight for them because the other 
side wants to take away your way of life and is destroying this 
country. That is what is happening.
  We have a duty to stand up for the people who sent us here. I embrace 
what Jake Sherman is saying. I embrace what the Capitol Hill reporters 
are saying. When we stand up and yell stop, to stand athwart the 
massive power and scope of government that is strangling the prosperity 
and the well-being of the American people, I am proud of it.
  On that point, I am proud of what we have been doing under both 
Speakers this Congress because we have been having the debate that 
needs to be had on this side of the aisle. We have been having the 
debate the American people want us to have.
  Unfortunately, we get no help from our colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle who are beholden to a radical left vision while they just 
allow America to slip through their fingers like sand--or our fingers--
while we watch it unfold.
  I hope that when we come back from this recess, we will take up the 
mantle, stand athwart the tyranny of the radical left, band together, 
stop spending money we don't have, stop funding the tyranny against our 
way of life, stop allowing open borders, stop allowing our streets to 
be dangerous, stop funding wars without a mission with endless 
borrowing, stop doing everything we campaigned against.
  Every single person that campaigned on this side of the aisle 
campaigned against those things. Stop continuing them. That is our 
duty. That is our calling. If we do that, we might be able to pass down 
this country to our kids and our grandkids.
  When our country turns 250 years old in just over 2 years, are we 
going to be able to look at them and say that they have inherited a 
free country?
  When those 56 men walked out of Independence Hall, signing their 
death warrant, we praise that every July Fourth. Are we going to honor 
it, or are we just going to use it as a parade symbol on July Fourth?
  Are we going to honor the lives of the men that stormed the beaches 
at Normandy that were led by Dwight Eisenhower who foretold what we are 
now doing with the defense industrial complex?
  Are we going to stand up and stop spending money we don't have and 
preserve liberty?
  Are we going to do that, or are we just going to talk about them 
every June 6; about how great it was that they stormed the beach and 
walked into a wall of bullets?
  We can't go around and help the world if this country isn't strong.
  I keep hearing Ronald Reagan being raised up. Oh, look. He went over 
and stood in front of the Berlin Wall. You bet he did.
  Yes, we had funded activities around the world in Afghanistan and 
otherwise.
  First of all, we didn't have a hundred percent debt-to-GDP which we 
do now. We weren't $34 trillion in debt.
  Second of all, and importantly, peace through strength meant peace 
through strength. Peace through strength. Not peace through endless 
wars, not peace through spying on Americans in the name of intelligence 
gathering against your enemies, not peace through unlimited borrowing, 
making our country financially insolvent. That is not what that meant.
  Too many people in this town are totally fine hiding behind defense 
and hiding behind intelligence in order to undermine our well-being as 
a country in the false name of security. We should stop that. We should 
make this country secure by actually doing our job.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time and give the floor 
to my colleague from Texas (Mr. Green).

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