[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 79 (Tuesday, May 7, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H2928-H2931]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      MONEY DOESN'T GROW ON TREES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Roy) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, as usual, I appreciate my friend from Arizona, 
who is, if nothing else, dogged in his determination and consistent in 
making clear to the American people the problem that we face on our 
overall spending, including mandatory.
  Specifically mandatory, as we refer to it, this broad basket of 
things that we have committed to do that is consuming our budget ever 
more every single year. It is an important point and one that we don't 
discuss enough as a body on what we should do about it.
  The gentleman's point is precisely correct about the nature of the 
problem, the seriousness of the problem. When we are sitting here right 
now and we are roughly--I am going to use ballpark numbers--bringing in 
$4 trillion of revenue, but we are spending about $6 trillion, pushing 
$7 trillion--he is right--it depends on what we are talking about in 
terms of the accounting.
  Basically, what you are saying is, you are printing money to fund 
effectively all of our discretionary budget and then some.

                              {time}  1845

  What I mean by that is, you are printing money to fund defense, the 
operation of the government, the Department of Justice, the Department 
of Homeland Security, all the things that you touch and feel and see 
because the $4 trillion is going to fund Medicare, Social Security, 
food stamps, veterans benefits that are mandatory, plus interest. There 
you are. You have used up all of your revenue.
  The problem is, nobody in this town wants to do anything about it. My 
Democratic colleagues will hide behind ``you must increase taxes.'' My 
Republican colleagues will do nothing to actually limit spending in any 
meaningful way. They will just talk about ultimately needing to deal 
with mandatory spending one day and not do anything to deal with the 
spending issues now.
  Where I depart from my friend from Arizona, respectfully, who is no 
longer on the floor--maybe not depart. Where I want to be more clear is 
the questions when we have debates on the floor of the House about 
spending items in what we call discretionary. That is the stuff that we 
can touch, the accounts, the Department of Defense, some of these 
issues.
  My issue with that is less about mounting debt, although it is a part 
of it. It is that you are funding the demise of our prosperity. You are 
funding the bureaucrats who are at war with us. You are funding that 
which is undermining our ability to create economic growth and live 
freely to get out from under that financial morass.
  In other words, you are not really going to address the debt problem 
by saving $5 billion on some small item, but what you are going to do 
is you are going to stop the interference with the American people.
  Let me give you some examples. If you are a hardworking American out 
there and have a family of four, and you are a plumber in San Marcos, 
Texas, which I represent part of, you are just trying to go about doing 
your job. You need a pickup truck. You need to put all of your stuff in 
it. You need to be able to drive around. We are making that pickup 
truck impossible to afford.
  We are making it literally impossible to afford. We are putting all 
of these requirements and demands on the vehicles. We are going to make 
it where you have to have electric vehicles, with the tailpipe rules 
and mandates. They are piling up on lots. They are getting more 
expensive.
  If you want to go get your windshield replaced, it is like $1,500 
now. It used to be $200 or $300. Why? We have all sorts of mandates and 
requirements and gadgets in the windshield.
  Now, they are going to mandate vehicles that have automatic braking.
  Every time you do that, you make this stuff more expensive. The 
market should bear that out. The market should sort that out. If you 
want a vehicle that has automatic braking, great. Pay for it. The vast 
majority of Americans will say: No, I can't afford that. I just want a 
simple car.
  We are killing the ability of the average family to afford life. It 
matters. This is the problem.
  In the House of Representatives, what we have become is the house of 
perpetuating corporate cronyism and the enrichment of a handful of 
folks at the expense of hardworking American families.
  Then, I will have some of my colleagues who will throw out these 
random statements like: We should read the philosophers and 
conservatives of the past who were the traditionalists and rational in 
what they believed about limited government, not the radical populists 
of today.
  I think that misses the entire point. It is not populist to believe 
we should stop spending money we don't have, driving up inflation, 
driving down the value of the dollar, and putting a tax on the 
hardworking American family. It is not populist to say that we 
shouldn't regulate our entire lives out

[[Page H2929]]

of existence with expensive vehicles and all sorts of demands on what 
you can and can't do, which makes things more expensive, or all of the 
green climate agenda that is empowering China, undermining our ability 
to have affordable energy.
  That is not populism. It is not populism to say that maybe, just 
maybe, if you are going to send $95 billion overseas to fund war, maybe 
you should have to pay for that. That is not populist. It is rational. 
You can question the war. You could say that we should be focusing on 
America first, securing our borders first.
  Maybe you could say that is populist. I think it is rational. It is 
sovereignty. The Founders, and importantly the conservative thought 
leaders of the 20th century, like Russell Kirk, believe that you 
actually do have to have institutions, but you believe in sovereignty 
and the rule of law. You believe that there are supposed to be limits, 
limits to what you do in feeding your appetite.
  What are our limits? I am sitting here in an empty Chamber, but to my 
friend who is serving as the Speaker at the moment, what are our 
limits? What limits are we placing on this place?
  To my friends who voted for continuing wars around the world, $95 
billion, who paid for it? Your grandkids, your kids, you. You paid for 
it by printing money. We did not pay for it. We printed money to give 
it away--the same thing with the first $113 billion for Ukraine, the 
same thing for virtually everything we are doing.
  I have had some supporters, particularly ones of financial means, who 
have called and said: Chip, why did you abandon the people of Ukraine? 
We must stop Putin.
  I said: Great. Are you interested in having a 70 percent marginal tax 
rate next year to pay for it?
  There were crickets on the other end of the phone.
  We have lost perspective on what we are supposed to do here 
responsibly in this Chamber. That is the truth.
  While we sit here and move a few bills across the floor, and while we 
just passed a massive, unpaid-for foreign aid package that funds both 
sides of the war in Israel--it gives $9 billion used by Hamas, used to 
have Palestinian refugees moving to the United States, funding both 
sides of that conflict, while we fund Ukraine, where we have no clear 
mission, no evidence that we can produce enough ammo fast enough to be 
able to help them when they are getting out-shelled no matter what and 
they are running out of men, even if you accept that all of that might 
result in some improvement, we are funding all of that.

  We just voted on all of that. We just voted on an anti-Semitism 
resolution, which codifies thought-speech, so we can pat ourselves on 
the back and say: Look at what we did. Look what we did.
  People feel good about it, but you didn't do a damn thing. In fact, 
you made things worse because you just empowered the Federal Government 
to go after thought-speech.
  We do all of that. Right after, what did we do? We passed a massive 
omnibus spending bill, $1.7 trillion in two omnibus packages. We funded 
$200 billion for a new FBI headquarters, an FBI that is out of control.
  We do all of these things, and what is happening in the meantime? 
What is happening right now? What is happening right now is that our 
borders are wide open.
  The people in Texas are still feeling it every single day. We are 
dealing with the reality of roughly 1,000 to 1,600 people a day being 
paroled into the United States.
  Nobody out there in the real world knows what that means. It means 
that there is a provision in the law supposedly there for a case-by-
case basis to help a few people. The Biden administration is blatantly, 
unlawfully, illegally using that provision to expand it and dump 
literally 1,000 to 1,600 people a day. We believe 400,000 over the last 
year, according to the reports that we have, were dumped into the 
United States under what is called parole.
  Guess what? How did Laken Riley's killer get into the United States? 
Parole.
  There have been dozens of examples of individuals who were paroled 
into the United States under the Biden administration's policies who 
have gone on to kill, assault, and harm and undermine the security of 
Americans.
  Think about that. That is what is happening right now, allegedly, on 
our watch. The fact is, we could have done something about it. A year 
ago this Saturday, Republicans passed what we call H.R. 2, which is the 
bill number for border security. It was a strong bill that would have 
closed the ability of the Biden administration to abuse parole. It 
would have closed their ability to abuse asylum. It would have ended 
the abuse of the unaccompanied alien children, using them as 
essentially a hall pass to get into the United States.
  It would have fundamentally ended the Biden administration's abuse of 
law to dump people into the United States to the tune of something like 
4\1/2\ million people who have been released into the United States 
under the Biden administration.
  We did that. Republicans did that, and we did that after 
conservatives worked hard and worked with the Speaker to force this 
body of Republicans to walk away from the amnesty-driven, Chamber of 
Commerce-driven failure of the last two decades and pass a strong 
border security measure.
  That bill is sitting over in the Senate, where Senate Democrats 
refuse to move it while they hide behind a sham piece of legislation, 
which would not secure the border of the United States, so they can try 
to blame Republicans in an election year.
  What Republicans have failed to do is use the leverage of the power 
of the purse to force our Democratic colleagues in the Senate and the 
Biden administration to come to the table and deal with the border 
crisis, despite the rhetoric of our own leadership saying that we would 
do that.
  We have fully funded the government at debt-increasing levels, 
busting the caps that were put into law. We are funding the government 
that is abusing our borders and dumping people into the United States 
unlawfully, paying off student loans unlawfully to the tune of $700 
billion to $1.4 trillion. Meanwhile, we are racking up $34\1/2\ 
trillion in debt, barreling toward $35 trillion, with a trillion 
dollars every 3 months, with more interest than we pay for national 
defense, almost a trillion dollars in interest, barreling toward $2 
trillion to $3 trillion of interest. Meanwhile, the number of retirees 
is growing, demands on Medicare are growing, and costs--the prices--of 
healthcare are going up.
  That is all happening right now in real time. What are we doing about 
it?
  This is a question that I want to ask my Republican colleagues: If 
the American people look at our Democratic colleagues and say: Man, 
that is insanity. We can't do that. That is crazy stuff. They want to 
have all sorts of woke policies and DEI. They want to let criminals 
out. They want wide-open borders. They want to keep spending gobs of 
money. They want to undermine our Western civilization, our way of 
life. Man, that is crazy. I don't want that.
  They say: Well, we have to turn to Republicans. Let's vote for 
Republicans.
  Let's say that happens. Let's say we are fortunate enough for that to 
happen with large enough numbers that we win the majority of the House, 
the majority of the Senate, and the White House, what are we going to 
do? I will bet you a significant amount that you will hear excuses out 
of this Chamber by Republicans in January, with a newly minted majority 
here, in the Senate, and in the White House, saying the following: 
Chip, we don't have 60 votes in the Senate. What you want can't be 
done. Chip, we have divisions in our own Conference, our own Republican 
majority. We can't pass everything you want to pass and then get it to 
the Senate and send it to the President. We are going to have to send 
over this compromise.
  It has been happening for decades. The reason our borders are wide 
open--it didn't just materialize one day that Joe Biden just woke up 
and decided to open them up. It has been decades in the making with 
support from Republicans because they were too much in the pocket of 
the Chamber of Commerce. They were sitting down in the Rio Grande with 
a ``No Trespassing'' sign, and then over here with a sign saying: 
``Help Wanted.'' Wink, wink, come on in. We don't care about the 
border.

  That was happening. I know because I saw it. I saw it as a Texan. I 
saw it as

[[Page H2930]]

an American. I saw it as a staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee, 
as a chief of staff for Ted Cruz. I saw the amnesty bills. I saw the 
desire to have cheap labor at the expense of sovereignty.

                              {time}  1900

  Let's talk for a minute about that cheap labor. I keep hearing from 
all of my colleagues--on both sides of the aisle, frankly--how 
important it is for us to continue to have a flow of people across our 
border, legal or illegal, because, quote, we need the workers.
  Have you looked at what is happening to jobs? The jobs for Americans, 
American-born workers, post-COVID is flat or down. The actual 
engagement in the workforce is flat or down. Yes, there is growth from 
migrants to try to catch up on the number, but what we are doing is we 
are paying people not to work. We are paying kids to sit in their room, 
basement, whatever, playing Fortnite, kids in their twenties. We have 
low workforce participation from American citizens and workers while we 
try to then bring people in who, by the way, then use the social 
welfare state, who then have massive demands on the education system. 
How do I know that? I live in Texas. I see the schools. I see the 
rolls.
  Tomorrow in the Budget Committee we are going to have a hearing on 
the cost and the impact of illegal immigration. Kinney County, Texas, 
just a little bit southwest of San Antonio, which I represent, we will 
have a witness here tomorrow from Kinney County walking us through 
roughly these numbers: The crime that they were dealing with in 2021, 
pre-Biden, was about 140 something crimes a year that they had to deal 
with. They are now at 15,000. Now, that is a lot of criminal trespass 
that Operation Lone Star and the State Department of Public Safety are 
trying to work to manage, but that is what they are dealing with. That 
is what they are dealing with in their court systems.
  I can sit here and walk you through--we will have a hearing tomorrow; 
I won't do it here--the impact on the schools, the hospitals, all of 
the social services. Anybody who does a legitimate analysis of all of 
those costs compared to the taxes, sales taxes, which so many of my 
colleagues hang their hat on and say this is causing economic activity 
and they are paying taxes.
  Yes, there is some of that, but we have created the welfare state 
which Milton Friedman famously said: I am all for open borders if you 
get rid of the welfare state. Now, that was pre-9/11. Let's say you 
have security, you vet everybody, you know who is coming here, do they 
want to harm us, or they are just hardworking people, they want to 
achieve the American Dream?
  If you have a zero welfare state, I would say: Come on. I don't care 
where you are from, I don't care what you look like, come on. If you 
are coming to America and you are making your way and you are going to 
work hard, then you are going to follow our values and our principles, 
regardless of your background, regardless of your religion, because you 
are going to believe in the rule of law, you are going to believe in 
economic prosperity, you are going to believe in free enterprise and 
capitalism, you are most likely going to believe in God and everything 
that made this country great because you are coming here seeking the 
American Dream.
  However, we are turning the American Dream upside-down. We are 
destroying that which migrants come to this country to achieve when 
they come here, they believe in this country, believe in the rule of 
law because that is what the American Dream is built around, and we are 
completely destroying it. That is the truth.
  It is happening right now while we sit here and fiddle while America 
burns. I am going to say it over and over and over again until at least 
my Republican colleagues, who try to pretend to give a crap about the 
border, actually do something about it.
  How many campaign ads, how many speeches are going to be given by my 
Republican colleagues between now and November about what they will do 
to secure the border? What are they doing right now? Shrugging. Sorry; 
can't do anything. It is Biden. What are we going to do?
  How many more Americans are going to die while we shrug? Well, thank 
God the Founders didn't shrug. Thank God the men at Lexington and 
Concord didn't just shrug and say: Oh, well, I guess there is a tyrant. 
Thank God the boys at Normandy didn't shrug, and say: Why the hell are 
we across the ocean and we have to go take out this crazy guy Hitler? 
Thank God they didn't. Thank God the boys at the Alamo didn't shrug. We 
are shrugging it off, though. We are pretending it is not happening.
  Is anybody paying attention to what is happening in London? Am I 
going to say it here on the floor of the House and get the scorn of 
people when I say: You have got a massive Muslim takeover of the United 
Kingdom going on right before our eyes? They would say: Well, Chip, 
what is wrong with that? Well, I have got some pretty strong concerns 
about Sharia law and whether that will be forced upon the American 
people. In this case the people of the United Kingdom. I have got 
pretty strong concerns about people who want to see Israel's 
destruction, who were happy about October 7, who were elected in the 
United Kingdom. Some might say that we have seen that here in the 
United States.
  What are we going to do about that? We have 51\1/2\ million people 
who are foreign born in the United States. They have about 20 to 25 
million kids. That puts it at well over 20-some percent of our 
population. It is the highest such number in the history of our 
country.
  People say: Well, isn't that great?
  Is it? Are we teaching people about Western civilization? Are we 
teaching people about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the rule of 
law? Are we teaching them Western values? Are we teaching them God 
exists? Are we teaching them the importance of freedom or are we 
teaching an entire generation--or two or three--to run around 
complaining about what is wrong and why the entire world is against 
them because of their skin color, their sex, their supposed gender 
identity, whatever the hell category we create to make people have an 
excuse for not just stepping up and achieving the American Dream?
  That is what we are doing. Our borders are wide open. People go: 
Well, I know it is bad. It is bad, Chip, but what do we do about it?
  Stop it. Like actually stop it. We literally just gave away every 
ounce of leverage we had. Why? To fund Ukraine. Unpaid for, with no 
clear mission. We said: Who cares about America's borders? Sorry, Chip, 
we couldn't get it done. I have got to go back to the people of Texas, 
and say: Well, sorry, we will get `em next time.

  Look, nobody I know--Conservative, moderate, Democrat--nobody comes 
here expecting to get everything they want. It is a body of 
Representatives. It is the worst form of government except for all the 
others. I get it, but I am sick and tired of watching this play play 
out the same way every single time. The American people get screwed and 
get left holding the bag. That is the truth.
  Every single hardworking family across this country right now who 
can't afford groceries, can't afford electricity, can't afford to buy a 
car, can't send their kid to a school that they can believe will teach 
them the right thing, teach them God exists, teach them their country 
is great, even just teach them that there is man and woman. No, none of 
that.
  We are funding this radical climate agenda that is destroying our 
ability to have energy right now. You are not going to have an internal 
combustion engine in 10 years because these radical nuts are killing 
your ability to do it. Republicans are sitting back and shrugging, 
patting ourselves on the back for increasing mining for rare earth 
minerals in Minnesota or around this country rather than fully opening 
up American oil and gas, building American nuclear power. It is absurd. 
It is ridiculous.
  The average American right now is wondering whether or not they can 
actually achieve the American Dream. I want to know whether my 
colleagues in this Chamber, Democrat or Republican, would come to the 
microphone and give a rip-roaring speech right now about why every 
American should believe they are going to be able to achieve the 
American Dream, because I will tell you right now, unless we lead, 
unless we take this moment to reverse

[[Page H2931]]

the direction we are headed, change trajectory, massively shift the 
direction of our country, then our kids and our grandkids will not be 
able to achieve the American Dream. They won't.
  Well, Chip, how does that sell? What I am selling is a duty to fight. 
What I am selling is a duty to go fight to make sure those American 
kids and grandkids can achieve the American Dream. Fight for 
sovereignty, fight for citizenship, introduce legislation to demand 
that citizens only vote, to stand up and fight for the opportunity to 
go carry out your life because you can afford to do it because you have 
gotten rid of all the regulations that are constraining the hardworking 
American.
  Go get rid of the corporate cronyism enriching the insurance 
companies, enriching all the big corporations across this country, 
hospitals and pharma, and strip it away. Get rid of the middlemen and 
empower doctors and patients and get all that crap out of the way so 
people can actually go get healthcare. Do that.
  Cut the government bureaucracy. Get rid of the bureaucrats. Get rid 
of DEI. Get rid of critical race theory. Go to war with the 
bureaucrats, metaphorically, to stop destroying the American Dream. 
Don't just sit here and come here and give speeches about some 
basketball team that won the national championship, then go home and 
say: Look at me, I gave a speech about the basketball championship. Who 
cares? Their parents can't afford to live.
  We have a duty in the people's House to do something. The iceberg is 
right in front us. My friend, Mr. Schweikert, just explained it. We are 
massively upside-down. We are bleeding out of every pore of our body in 
terms of money and debt. Our borders are wide open. We are increasingly 
unchurched. Our schools are indoctrinating our kids. Our universities 
are indoctrination camps. They are essentially daycares for elitists, 
and we just forgave their debts, their student loans.
  Every hardworking American out there deserves a Representative who 
represents them. Democrat or Republican, Conservative, moderate, 
Liberal, why are you here? What is the point? Why get elected? Why get 
an election certificate?
  The point is, stand up in defense of the rule of law and the 
Constitution. If you say you believe in limited government, limit it. 
If you say you believe in cutting spending, cut it. If you say you 
believe in securing the border, secure it. If you say you believe in 
peace through strength, then stop sending our military and our money 
into endless conflict and instead build a strong military here, 
sparingly used, make sure our men and women have the care they need 
when they get home, and send a message around the world that when we 
use force, it will be used quickly and massively.
  This is what the people I represent want. They don't want any more of 
these feel-good bills because some organization declares ``a week.'' It 
happens all the time. Teacher week, got to do a teacher bill; cop week, 
got to do a cop bill. None of that is going to make this country freer 
or stronger or more secure.
  We took an oath to the Constitution. I don't want any more excuses 
about well, Chip, this only offends the Commerce Clause a little bit. 
This one is better than that other version. Stop doing it. Go the other 
direction.
  Stop selling watered-down Democrat-light, and go inspire the American 
people with something better so that the kids of this generation can 
get their lives out of these phones and get their lives out of the 
despair of wondering whether they are going to be able to have the 
American Dream and give them hope that if they go out and they work and 
work hard and they save money, they are going to be able to buy a 
house, have a family, they are going to get healthcare because they 
worked hard and they were able to do it. That is why migrants come 
here.
  Stop paying people not to work. Stop the endless nonsense and drivel 
that comes out of this body in the name of doing something and, 
instead, stand up and fight for the American people. Don't give lip 
service on June 6 because it is the 80th anniversary of what those boys 
did when they walked into a wall of bullets. Stand up and do a fraction 
of what they did by having the nerve to vote ``no'' on something, even 
though somebody might tweet something mean about it.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________