[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 100 (Thursday, June 13, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H4053-H4056]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    REMEMBER WHY WE SERVE THE PEOPLE

  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, I thank the gentlemen who were just speaking on 
the floor, my friend, Mr. Wenstrup, and my friend, Mr. Palmer, for what 
they were doing in reminding the American people what happened 7 years 
ago.
  It too easily gets glossed over for the politically motivated attack 
on Members of Congress that it was. A lot of statements are made about 
January 6, about things that have occurred, but not enough is made 
about what happened that day when someone was targeting our friends, 
our colleagues, for political reasons. It gets, frankly, ignored, with 
all due respect, by some of our colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle.
    Steve Scalise and everybody who was a part of it stand as, I think, 
a stark reminder of what is great and good about those who serve here 
who are willing to move forward for the good of the country.
  The country shouldn't forget about what happened and forget what 
those gentlemen on that field went through and why that is so 
critically important. I thank them for that, and I certainly thank them 
for their continued service.
  I do think it is really important that we remember, as a body, in 
that vein, why we are here. Why do we convene as a Congress? Why do we 
come here and engage from all over the country, from 50 States, and fly 
in here each week and conduct business?
  Too often, it turns into a clock-punching exercise where people come 
in, fly in, do their votes, go to some meeting, go to some fundraiser, 
go to some event, go to a quick hearing, do their thing, go back, vote, 
and go home.
  Yet, what we have to remember when we come here is that we are 
supposed to be stopping for a moment and remembering that we are 
representing 750,000-odd Americans each and that we have an obligation 
to fight for them and do what we said we would do when we ran for 
office to represent them in the first place.
  When I go all over the country, doing campaign events or even a bunch 
of personal business, I am reminded that a lot of American people do 
watch what we say here. A lot of people do watch videos that get 
circulated around on social media.
  From time to time, frankly, quite often, people bring up to me a 
speech that I gave about 6 months ago in which I asked rhetorically, 
but importantly and emphatically, to name one thing that we have done, 
name one thing that we accomplished. I was talking to Republican 
colleagues, in particular.
  I stand behind that question. It is an important question to ask. Of 
course, it is often clipped to leave out the important part, which was 
to name one thing we have accomplished besides doing something that is 
equivalent to Democrat-lite or something that is the soft version of 
what our Democratic colleagues want to do.

                              {time}  1915

  I will remind people, because it is important, what we have been able 
to accomplish as a united Republican Party, under now the leadership of 
two Speakers over the last 18 months.
  A little over a year ago, we passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act in 
which we had Republicans unite across the body to pass an increase in 
the debt ceiling that was relatively modest, $1.5 trillion is, sadly, 
relatively modest, in exchange for very significant policy changes to 
get our country on the right track.
  We repealed the so-called Inflation Reduction Act subsidies that are 
subsidizing and empowering multibillion-dollar corporations, empowering 
China, and undermining our ability to produce energy effectively.
  We implemented spending caps and put them in place to reduce the size 
and scope of government and to limit the size of discretionary spending 
and to cut back on the weaponized government at the Department of 
Justice and at the FBI and at the Department of Education and in so 
many other different agencies across the bureaucracy.
  We passed the REINS Act to rein in the regulatory state and to say 
that if regulations are going to have a certain impact, they must be 
approved by Congress. We implemented work requirements on things like 
SNAP and Medicaid. We worked together to try to transform this country 
as we told the American people we would do.
  We did that together. We united to do it. Again, we modestly 
increased the debt ceiling, modestly relatively speaking, in exchange 
for actual policy changes to take our country back and put it on the 
right path. We did that.
  We passed a strong border security bill that effectively said you 
will be detained, as our current law contemplates, or you will be 
turned away. It is that simple.
  Most Americans support that. You will be detained if you have some 
sort of a claim, asylum claim or something else or some humanitarian 
exception, but you will be detained for the full time until we 
adjudicate it, or you will be turned away. That is effectively what we 
passed in what we call H.R. 2, our second big bill number.
  H.R. 2, is our border security plan that we, Republicans, united to 
pass. Again, for the first time in decades, if not ever, this body came 
together and we passed a bill that would legitimately secure the border 
of the United States and force the hand of an administration that is 
refusing to secure the border while our country is being undermined and 
endangered.

[[Page H4054]]

  Even as we speak, I am seeing reporting pop up on my phone about the 
number of foreign nationals, the number of Chinese foreign nationals, 
24,000 last year, the amount of fentanyl pouring in, and the dangerous 
individuals that are being encountered.
  I am seeing reporting on a daily basis about this administration 
leaving our country wide open and refusing to do anything about it, so 
this Republican Congress voted last year to pass H.R. 2. We passed it, 
we sent it to the Senate, and Chuck Schumer did nothing with it.
  The National Defense Authorization Act, we are in the middle of 
working on that bill, as we speak, for fiscal year 2025. We passed the 
FY24 NDAA and this year we are working on a bill that is similar, that 
is worthy of support by Republicans, by conservatives. I don't agree 
with everything in it, to be clear, but it is a bill that is taking a 
giant step forward to refocus our military on being a military.
  Our military should be focused on killing people and blowing things 
up, on doing the hard work of defending a country when called upon to 
do it, hopefully, sparingly. We have a military that has now, 
currently, gone off track. It has been turned into a social engineering 
experiment. Recruiting is low.
  We have individuals in our military who are tired of being told that 
they have got to be a part of abortion tourism or transgender training 
or whatever DEI planning and training that is being pressed upon them 
rather than just learning how to jump out of a helicopter or fire a 
gun.
  Today, we passed amendments to the NDAA that will move it in the 
right direction. It will pull back on the DEI, pull back on all the 
transgender woke policies, pull back on the climate executive order by 
the President of the United States that is undermining the readiness of 
our military.
  We passed that amendment today. We passed an amendment to end 
abortion tourism, so you don't have taxpayer dollars funding abortion 
because the Department of Defense should not be a social engineering 
experiment. Republicans today united to do that, just as last year we 
united to do that.
  Just last week, we passed a bill to actually sanction, with teeth, 
the International Criminal Court because it is wishing to and seeking 
to issue warrants for the Prime Minister of Israel for simply defending 
his country. We passed that. We passed that bill with unanimous 
Republican support. I think there were two present votes, 42 Democrats.
  We did that by uniting as Republicans to send a message to the world 
that we believe that not only is the International Criminal Court 
illegitimate, not only is the International Criminal Court wrong, not 
only is it undermining our ally Israel, but that we should sanction it 
with actual sanctions. Not watered down exceptions for the United 
Nations, exceptions for all manner of these international organizations 
so it doesn't have teeth, we passed sanctions with teeth. It is sitting 
over in the Senate.
  Chuck Schumer refuses to stand with Israel. Chuck Schumer refuses to 
do the work that we are supposed to do as our country and allies are 
being targeted. More importantly, the International Criminal Court is 
carrying out activities that will be turned around and focused on us, 
that will be used against our own military.
  Again, a united Republican Party over the last 18 months, when we 
have united, we have passed limits to spending, modest debt ceiling 
increases for legitimate policy changes that would put us on the right 
path, a border security bill that would actually secure the border, a 
National Defense Authorization Act--now maybe twice, come tomorrow--
that would repurpose our military on the military end or limit/reduce 
the social engineering and the woke policies. We passed an 
International Criminal Court sanctions bill with real teeth.

  Last year, we passed a significant number of appropriations bills 
with significant policy changes, and we had 1,100 amendments processed. 
We were moving things in the right direction, but here is the trick.
  There are a lot of pieces to this, but here is the trick: How do you 
get that turned into law? Here is the dirty little secret in this town, 
most of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle would tell you, you 
must win elections in order to get that done.
  They are not wrong.
  You cannot have the majority without elections. You cannot get the 
votes you need without the elections going the way you want; to get the 
votes you need to pass the law. I agree.
  Here is the secret: You are never going to get stuff passed when you 
always have an excuse for not passing it.
  I will say that again. You will never get something signed into law 
when you start with the excuse for why you won't get it signed into 
law.
  All of the good things I just mentioned, all of the good things that 
I say that this united Republican Party has done in the face of 
absolute abject failure by our colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, we have done these great things, 
but they have stopped. They have sat in the Senate because you have to 
be willing to sacrifice something to fight to achieve and force these 
things to a conclusion.
  Now, my colleagues will say: Well, you got to win more votes and you 
can't ask for too much.
  There are times where you can ask for too much and there are times 
where you can say, we simply don't have the votes. However, when you 
have current Members of our own body saying: Well, Chip, we are not 
going to have 60 votes in the Senate in January, so you have to go 
ahead and factor that in to why we are not going to get appropriations 
bills that we would prefer, why we should only have a continuing 
resolution going into December, into a lameduck. Why? So we can then 
have the powers that be use the pressure of Christmas to pass an 
omnibus spending bill in December? I don't agree with that.
  We are already being told that we don't have 60 votes in the Senate. 
We won't get 60 votes in the Senate, so you must accept it.
  The reason why I am focusing on this for a second is, the people that 
I represent always ask me why. Why don't you get these things done?
  The people I represent, frankly, people all across the country that I 
run into, they ask me why. Why can't you secure the border?
  It is a pretty simple question. Why can you not secure the border? I 
then have to tell them, I am 1/435th of one-half of one-third of the 
Federal Government. So we have got to go build the votes.
  When you have the votes to pass something like H.R. 2 and you send it 
over to the Senate, then the only question that is going to matter is 
whether it is this year, right now, or whether it is next year. If you 
hope to go out into the election season and get a bigger majority by a 
handful of seats, get the majority in the Senate by a couple of seats, 
and hope to get the White House, then you say, don't worry, we will do 
it then. Some will say, oh, we can't even do it then because we are not 
going to have 60 in the Senate.
  The point is, you have to pick something and fight for it. You have 
to pick some number of things and fight for them. You have to take the 
message to the American people. You have to be willing to risk that 
``precious,'' to quote ``Lord of the Rings,'' that election certificate 
that you hold on to so tight that you don't actually use it.
  I would rather serve one more term and jam through as much freedom 
legislation as I possibly could than to serve 5 more terms or 10 terms 
and not get passed what we need to get passed.
  The average American family today is hurting. The average American 
family today, the average young person in America today, can't afford 
their healthcare because this government has destroyed the healthcare 
market and made it impossible to afford. They can't afford a vehicle 
because this government has regulated vehicles and made the price of 
gasoline and the vehicles that they want to buy cost prohibitive. They 
don't think they can afford houses, and as often is the case can't, 
because this government has been blowing money, driving up interest, 
and creating an environment in which housing costs are now 
astronomically expensive.
  They don't think that they can, frankly, bring a family into this 
world and have children because of the things I just talked about as 
they don't believe they can afford them.

[[Page H4055]]

  We have a responsibility as leaders of this country, in this Chamber 
and the other Chamber, in the executive branch, to actually deliver for 
the American people, to preserve and protect the way of life that we 
cherish.
  We sit here on the floor and regale the men who walked into the wall 
of bullets at Normandy or regale them on July Fourth or regale our 
Founding Fathers or the Declaration of Independence.
  We have an actual responsibility to preserve and protect the pursuit 
of happiness. The ability to carry out and live your unalienable rights 
given to you by God, but we are not doing that. I just want to be 
blunt. We are not doing that.
  I would say of late that I believe that the Republican Conference has 
been doing some good work to make very clear to the American people 
what we can and will do if entrusted with the majority, and a majority 
in the Senate, and a Republican in the White House. I believe we have 
been doing that.
  I believe in the National Defense Authorization Act with amendments 
and policies that reduce the woke social engineering and increase the 
focus on military.
  I believe in the H.R. 2 bill; the border security provisions.

  I believe that the appropriations bills are moving in the right 
direction and changing the process. They are not perfect.
  I believe in last year's Limit, Save, Grow effort and a lot of the 
policies we are trying to advance.
  I believe in the International Criminal Court bill.
  I believe in the bill that I hope to bring to the floor in a couple 
of weeks, the SAVE Act, to make sure that only citizens can vote in 
Federal elections.
  I believe these bills demonstrate very clearly the difference between 
Republicans and Democrats and demonstrate very clearly what Republicans 
can do when we unite for a purpose to defend the American people 
against the very swamp that we campaign against.
  However, you will never, never achieve those results if you come here 
and you capitulate on day one out of fear, whether fear of government 
shutdown, fear of failure, fear of the slim majority, fear of the 
possibility the President might veto it, fear of getting crosswise to 
some politician who might say something about you on Twitter.
  Instead, we should take this great work and take it to the American 
people, take it through the elections, and then set up the fight. We 
should set up the fight in 2025 to take our country back because this 
country turns 250 years old in 2 years.
  On July 2, 2026, we will be celebrating our 250th birthday of 
separating from England, and then 2 days later we came to an agreement 
on the language of the Declaration.

                              {time}  1930

  What are we going to do for the people on our 250th birthday? What 
are we going to be able to say to our kids and our grandkids on our 
250th birthday?
  Next year, what are we going to do to set the stage? If Republicans 
go out and get elected, take the White House, take the House, take the 
Senate, will we be able to take the policies that we came together to 
pass but failed to force through the Senate and failed to force the 
President of the United States to even move frankly halfway to our 
demands? Will we use our power then?
  Will we use our power in January to get any of them signed into law? 
It doesn't matter if you keep getting elected, it doesn't matter if you 
go out and win elections if you don't do anything with it.
  Will we finally take H.R. 2 in its form now, tweaked as necessary 
next January, hopefully made better and stronger, will we finally pass 
legislation to secure the border of the United States that will force 
the President and transcend time, not just in President Trump's tenure, 
but once and for all, will we do that as Republicans? We better.
  Will we ensure that our tax policy is geared toward working class, 
hardworking middle-class families, small businesses that are struggling 
to make ends meet around this country as opposed to the massive 
corporations and K Street lobbyists? Will we do that? We better.
  Will we actually cut spending? Will we address the $35 trillion in 
debt that we currently have that will be no doubt $38 trillion or so by 
the time we start the next Congress?
  Will we try to alleviate inflation by ending the reckless spending 
without any limit or will we just shrug and continue to borrow into 
oblivion such that if you look at the interest that we just spent in 
May, it is 79 percent of all of the personal income taxes collected 
into the revenue, into the Treasury. Eighty percent of that which we 
collected from the American people through their hard work, we took 
their money, 80 percent of that is just used to pay interest expense in 
May.
  Think about that. Imagine if you were sitting at home, 80 percent of 
your income from your job, imagine that, you have got 80 percent of 
your income from your job in May was used to pay the interest on your 
mortgage. What have you got left? What do you have left for 
electricity, for water, for gasoline, for food, for your kids, for your 
clothing? We don't.
  Will we actually fundamentally finally deal with spending in the next 
Congress?
  Will we fully restore energy freedom, repealing the subsidies or 
subsidizing massive corporations, undermining the ability of Americans 
to afford energy, driving up the prices of automobiles, piling up EVs 
on lots?
  Will we repeal the disastrous Inflation Reduction Act, so-called, 
$1.2 trillion in subsidies, will we repeal it?
  Will we end the so-called tailpipe rule that is crushing American 
families?
  Will we take back our country and provide the energy freedom that 
allows for human flourishing as it is doing around the globe? There are 
still 3 billion people around the planet who don't have access to 
reliable energy. Why would we move backward instead of forward?
  Will we end, as we are starting to try to do in the NDAA, a toe in 
the water, will we end the social experimentation at the Pentagon and, 
instead, bolster our military with the confidence and the pride of 
defending a country without being told you must follow a woke social 
agenda or no longer be in the military, you must take a shot or you 
will lose your job?
  Will we make our military stronger but more sparingly used? Will we 
end endless wars but use the power and the strength of our military for 
peace through strength and use our diplomacy through the State 
Department and our energy policies to stop wars before they start?
  Will we use our spending power to end the weaponization of government 
that right now has a 75-year-old woman facing 2 years in prison in 
Washington, D.C., right here, 2 years in prison because she prayed at 
an abortion clinic, because she dared to go to an abortion clinic at 75 
years old saying, how much do I have left to give on this Earth? I am 
going to give a little of my life to try to stand up for the unborn, 
and even if you disagree with me, and even if she was carrying out a 
misdemeanor or doing something that was stopping the flow and the law 
enforcement needed to move them, 2 years in prison under the FACE Act?
  Are we going to end the weaponization of government against its 
people, against its politicians, to end turning this country into a 
banana republic?
  Again, I ask of my Republican colleagues: We have united in purpose 
and produced these great results, whether it is Limit Save Grow, or 
H.R. 2 and border security or the National Defense Authorization Act, 
or the appropriations bills, sanctioning the International Criminal 
Court, hopefully passing the SAVE Act, will we take those things and 
turn those to victories that force them through the Senate so that the 
President can sign them?
  Will we finally take our country back and restore it to the American 
people and give them energy freedom so they can afford the energy that 
allows them to power their lives and afford the automobiles to go about 
their work?
  Will we drive interest rates down so they can afford a home again?
  Will we make education affordable and useful again instead of 
subsidizing it and then paying off the loans of those who haven't paid 
their loans off and ignoring those who never took out a loan in the 
first place?
  Will we restore order on our streets and put criminals back in jail?

[[Page H4056]]

  Will we secure our borders and stop the lawless from coming across 
the Rio Grande?
  Will we end the reckless spending that is indebting our kids and our 
grandkids to a future in which the dollar is worthless, and their 
country is destroyed because we didn't do our job here?
  Will we pass tax reform that is good for families and small 
businesses, not the K Street lobbyists and big corporations?
  These are the questions the American people want us to answer. They 
are tired of the excuses. They are tired of sternly worded letters. 
They are tired of hearings. They are tired of speeches. I will look in 
the mirror. I am giving another speech. They want to see us do it.
  My call to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but particularly 
my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle, we owe it, we owe it 
to the 400,000 tombstones sitting on the other side of the Potomac, we 
owe it to all those who fought and died and bled for that flag and for 
everything it represents. We owe it to our kids and our grandkids; we 
owe it to the world so that America can continue to be the beacon of 
hope. We owe it to restore American independence, restore liberty and 
freedom, restore a faith and a confidence in a government that is doing 
its actual constitutional job. We owe them that, not excuses.
  We owe them to deliver, not to come back and say: Well, we tried. We 
owe them every ounce of our being when we are here in this town to work 
and get our job done; not to play politics, not to campaign, not to go 
to another political event, but to be here and do our job.
  It is an honor to serve in Congress, but there is no point in being 
here if we are not actually going to deliver for the American people 
who sent us here to deliver for them. We will win the arguments if we 
will make them. We will lose the arguments if we are too afraid to 
fight.
  I am tired of the celebrations of all the people who have fought, 
bled, and died for this country with an absence of a conviction 
politically, with all due respect to the many veterans in this Chamber 
who wore the uniform and fought and bled for this country, politically 
are you willing to fight and bleed and politically die for your 
country? Until you are, until you are willing to risk that, until you 
are willing to take that election certificate and nail it up on the 
wall and say: I am going to take this thing for a spin, I am going to 
actually do what I said I was going to do, and then let the American 
people decide. Until we are willing to do that, then we are going to be 
relegated to, in Reagan's phrasing, ``the ash heap of history.''
  I happen to believe that we can take this country back, but I happen 
to believe that if we don't, if we don't take the steps right now to 
rescue her, then we are going to lose her. We are going to be that 
generation that Reagan talked about when Reagan said we are only ``one 
generation away from extinction.'' The question for us is, what will we 
do?
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________