Member of Congress
Chip Roy
- Role
- Current Representative
- State
- TX
- Party
- Republican
Speeches
TAX RELIEF FOR AMERICAN FAMILIES AND WORKERS ACT OF 20242024-01-31
Mr. ROY
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Gaetz).
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman Texas (Mr. Doggett).
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Massie).
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this legislation, and I do so reluctantly, because I know of the significant amount of work by my friend from Missouri; by those, frankly, on both sides of the aisle to reach agreement; and my friends on Ways and Means. There are important provisions in this legislation that are critical for job growth, for economic growth, and critical for the well-being of our country. There are numerous businesses I know in Texas and around this country that understand the importance of the expensing provisions, the interest provisions, and research and development. However, unfortunately, as happens in this town, this legislation comes with provisions that the people I represent are tired of. They are provisions that would continue to expand the welfare state--as The Wall Street Journal editorialized about--by expanding the child tax credit in ways that will continue to fund people directly through refundable credits, which we find to be problematic, and we think undermines the kind of economic activity and incentive to work and incentive to produce value that we think is critically important for economic growth. Importantly, that provision is also available to parents who are here in this country illegally with children born in the United States. We think that is a problem. We think that is not just allowing, essentially, birthright citizenship anchor babies, but funding it. That is a problem. Now, my colleagues on this side of the aisle will rejoin that that was a product of the 2017 bill that was pushed by and passed by Republicans, including President Trump, to which I say: Right. So what? It is still wrong. It is still bad policy. We shouldn't do it, and we should not be perpetuating it now. All through the eleventh hour last night, I worked hard trying to find a way to come up with a provision that might be palatable on both sides of the aisle, this side of the aisle, to find a way to say: Let's get that provision pulled off so we can move the pieces that will be good for economic growth and prosperity that I think has bipartisan support and clear support on this side of the aisle. Unfortunately, we have not done that. I am getting a lot of correspondence from people that I represent who are sick of the same old game in this town. They are sick of everyone saying that we are just going to keep doing the same thing, and that we are going to, in this case, again, continue to expand the welfare state in a way that entices people to come and benefit from the United States illegally at a time when we have a heightened level of illegal traffic into the United States: 300,000 people crossing the border in December, and millions who have crossed under this President. We are now, in the middle of that crisis, going to continue to fuel the fire. I think that is a mistake. I think it is a mistake for the country. I think it is a mistake on policy. I think it is a mistake politically. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 5585, AGENT RAUL GONZALEZ OFFICER SAFETY ACT; PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 6678, CONSEQUENCES FOR SOCIAL SECURITY FRAUD ACT; PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION...2024-01-30
Mr. ROY
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas for his service. We will be missing him next Congress, but we still have some more time and work to do together. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't want to talk about the bills that are sitting here in front of them because they are going to vote against at least three of them. We know that because they did it in Judiciary Committee. These bills are pretty simple. If you are here and you evade Border Patrol, you can't stay here or come here. If you are here and you have committed Social Security fraud, you can't stay here or come here. If you are here and you have committed a DUI, you can't stay here or come here. Judiciary Democrats voted against all three of those. Let's put aside that if you are here, illegally, you should be deported anyway. Then there is if you are here and a member of Hamas, or participated in, or facilitated the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, you cannot stay here or come here. Now, on that, it was passed unanimously. We will see what happens when it comes to the floor when some of the folks not on Judiciary Committee look at the bill. I find it interesting that a blanket statement is made that some of us take our orders from former President Trump. Well, if somebody has a phone line into Mar-a-Lago, why don't you give him a call? I think he would be surprised to hear that I take orders from former President Trump, in light of the recent time I have spent around the country. I would tell you this: I don't take orders from the former President. I know that we shouldn't make this a political issue. I know this is an issue we should solve, but I don't think that is what the former President was saying. I think the former President was saying this bill in the Senate is garbage, that it will make the problem worse; that we have all the power we need now to secure the border, and that the current President and current administration are ignoring it, and, indeed, purposely avoiding the law in order to flood America, which is endangering Americans; fentanyl flowing in; empowering cartels; empowering China; terrorists coming into our country; and criminals coming into our country. That is the truth. What the former President knows is that the bill being negotiated in the Senate is not a good one. He is calling that out. However, I can assure you, I don't take orders from the former President, nor do I take orders from Somalis in Minnesota, but some people do. That is the truth. The fact here is, we have legislation before us right now to address real problems for the people that we represent. I can tell you we do in Texas. We have a bill being negotiated in the Senate that is being deemed by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle as, Oh, a reasonable solution. A reasonable solution, when we had a bill last year that would actually secure the border with H.R. 2, which would close loopholes being exploited by our Democratic colleagues. I had witnesses in a recent hearing on the Constitution and States stepping into the breach. The first assistant attorney general of Texas and the former attorney general of Arizona, they all testified under oath that there is an invasion. They all came forward to say that it was the right of the Governors, the right of the States to step in. I had the ACLU witness acknowledge to me: I said, Hey, if cartels are coming guns a-blazing, they come across the river, can you defend yourself? He said, Well, if it is a violation of State law, sure. I said, Oh, really? That is an interesting piece of information to hear from the ACLU, that the State, that the Governor can, in fact, do what is necessary to defend the people of his State based on the laws of that State and, frankly, based on every understanding of what a leadership of a sovereign would do, and that is the truth. Right now what we have are Democrats in the Senate wanting to hide behind a bill they know has no chance of moving through because, frankly, if it were passed, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are concerned about us campaigning on this, making it a political issue. If that legislation were passed, the issue would still exist because the legislation wouldn't do anything to stop it. It sets a floor, not a ceiling. It sets a standard of 5,000 a day. Come on in, 1.8 million folks. That is the truth, if you read the bill. The reality is, the gentleman talks about, Oh, we have 38,000 people in detention. Well, the truth is, we had 900,000 people get released last year; 900,000 got released. That doesn't count the ICE releases, that doesn't count the 50,000 a month of got-aways. These are the numbers we are talking about, and they are on an extraordinary level. I remind everybody that here before us is legislation that all it does is try to layer on a commonsense ability to remove bad actors, DUIs, those affiliated with Hamas, Border Patrol having to chase people in high-speed chases, and those committing Social Security fraud. My Democratic colleagues don't want to talk about it because they are not going to support those commonsense measures.
GOVERNMENT FUNDING AND IMMIGRATION2024-01-18
Mr. ROY
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for yielding to me. I, too, wish our friend from Ohio well in his future endeavors and appreciated serving with him in the Chamber and appreciate the same sacrifices with respect to our family, our children, and our wives when we are here traveling and the things that we miss out on. I do wish him well. Today, in the House of Representatives, we voted by suspension of the rules what is called a continuing resolution to continue the funding of government at its current levels. Now, that is just another way in D.C.-speak of saying we aren't doing our job to pass appropriations bills through what we call regular order, the way that you would expect us to do it, send it to the Senate, negotiate back and forth, and then take that and do our job to do the work of the people on how we spend their money. Last year, we set out to change the way the House works, the gentleman from Arizona knows. We made some progress actually. I had hope. We had moved in the right direction. We passed 10 appropriations of 12 out of committee. We had two ready to go. Seven we passed off the floor of the House. We passed them not at the level I would prefer--a lower level--but we did pass them at the agreed-upon level last year under the FRA, the debt deal that capped spending. Again, we should have capped it a lot lower. It represented a mere 1 percent cut from last year's bloated level of spending under Speaker Nancy Pelosi passed at the eleventh hour in December of 2022. Every member of the Republican Conference here today except for two opposed that bill, voted against that omnibus spending bill. They spoke out against it and put out press releases against it. They said that it was enormously expensive, adding up to our debt, passing policies we didn't agree on, done at the eleventh hour right before Christmas. There was massive opposition. Only two in this Chamber on the Republican side voted for it. Fast forward. Last year, a deal was made and caps were put in place. We got our appropriations bills sent over to the Senate trying to do it at those levels, even though it was a mere just 1 percent cut. I would like to see a 10 percent or 20 percent cut. We wanted to get to pre- COVID spending levels, but this body on a bipartisan basis--a majority of Republicans and a majority of Democrats--sent to the Senate a debt deal, lifting the debt $4 trillion. For that, we were supposed to get a 1 percent cut. Then there is something in this town called side deals. Does that sound swampy? It is. There were side deals, agreements saying, no, no, no, that won't be the real deal. Do you know how I know that? Because the Democratic ranking member on the Appropriations Committee appeared before the Rules Committee about a month ago and said: Well, I voted against the FRA, the debt deal, because the side deals weren't written in it. Now, she only admitted that after she had said you are not following the law. I said: Well, where in the law are the side deals? Oh, well, they are not in the law. In fact, in her public statement last year, she voted against it and said: I voted against it because they weren't in the law. Yet today, Senate Democrats and House Republicans were negotiating spending at the level of not the caps, but the caps plus the side deals. That is to say, in plain English, Pelosi spending levels plus another $30 to $40 billion. That is what is happening in the swamp. However, they couldn't get it done. They couldn't get it done fast enough. So here we are again after we have twice extended Nancy Pelosi's spending levels without getting the appropriations bills done, not getting our job done, not getting the work finished, and today we just agreed--the Senate sent over here another continuing resolution to fund government at Nancy Pelosi's levels, and we concurred in that. Now, it is not just the debt. It is not just the spending. It is not just the fact that we are $34 trillion in debt. It is what we are funding. It is the policies we are continuing. That is the problem. Here are just a few. The continuing resolution that we just voted for, a near perfect divide down the Republican Conference, 107 to 106. House leadership had to scurry around to whip up the votes to ensure a majority of Republicans supported this terrible bill. What did we fund? Again, spending at the level of $1.6-something trillion, Nancy Pelosi's levels, we funded Biden's border crisis while we are currently trying to impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security for failing to secure the border, ignoring his duty to maintain operational control and endangering Americans. Fentanyl is pouring in. We are empowering China, empowering cartels. He lied to us under oath. We are giving him the money. Let's impeach him, but let's keep giving him the money. A weaponized IRS, an Internal Revenue Service targeting the American people. A weaponized Department of Justice and FBI that targeted Scott Smith in Loudoun County and Mark Houck, a dad in Philadelphia. Give them the money. Build them a brand-new headquarters. Give them the money. EPA, electric vehicle mandates. We are piling up electric vehicles on the lots of car dealerships around the country. We have a mandate going into place to mandate two-thirds of all vehicles will be EVs by 2032, which will massively create inflation for the American people, make goods and services more expensive, and make getting cars more difficult. The average electric vehicle is about $16,000 more expensive, and where the heck are you going to charge it? The Governor of California actually told people with EVs recently: Please don't plug in your EVs between the hours of 4 and 8 o'clock. What are you supposed to do if you can't take your car to go do your job? EPA rules killing coal and natural gas power plants. China has got 1,100 coal-fired plants. We have 250. We are building none; they are building two a week. We are going to kill our own power supply chasing unicorn energy policies. But guess what, we are funding it. Every Republican in this Chamber who campaigns against these things just voted today to fund it. The World Health Organization, anybody think that is doing us any good besides getting us involved with anti-American sovereignty and undermining our own ability to maintain health policy and our national security? We are funding it. We are funding the pro-China, anti-Israel United Nations Human Rights Council. We are funding UNRWA, through which dollars flow to the Palestinians--that is Hamas; that is the enemies of Israel. We are going around saying: ``We stand with Israel.'' How many Republicans wear the little pins, ``We stand with Israel''? They are funding opposition to Israel. ATF rule banning pistol braces. Unconstitutional, unlawful, executive tyranny, not getting congressional approval. We are funding it. Over here, we are funding the Department of Education's student loan scam. The Supreme Court says you can't do that. The administration does it anyway. Lawlessly. We are saying: Here you go, here's more money. We are funding the CDC, the NIH, and the FDA. No accountability for COVID tyranny, no restrictions. We are funding the Department of Veterans Affairs vaccine mandate. I introduced legislation today to say we shouldn't do that. We should get rid of that mandate. We are funding it. We are funding the chief diversity officers, DEI, critical race theory at the Pentagon and throughout the Federal Government. The Pentagon's abortion travel fund, transgender surgeries at the Pentagon, funding sex changes. I could go on and on the number of things that we are funding, but I want to be mindful of my colleague's time. I will end by going back to the border crisis because it is the number one thing that galls me that Republicans complain about and continue to fund. Our borders are wide open. Our people are in danger. It undermines our national security. Texas and Arizona take it on the chin. We are spending the money to do what the Federal Government is supposed to do. Our people are getting absolutely decimated. Ranchers are getting killed. Livestock are getting out. Children are dying from fentanyl. Cops are having to go do the job of the Feds. Migrants are dying, dying in the river, in the Rio Grande, dying along the border in Arizona, and we are funding it. I just don't understand the logic of my colleagues campaigning about these things. I will close with this: Federalist 58, the Founders gave us the power of the purse in the House Chamber to stop an out-of- control executive branch. We should dang well use it.
AUTHORIZING FULLY ELECTRONIC STAMPS2024-01-18
Mr. ROY
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I am addressing my comments to the Chair. I am addressing the Chair on behalf of the people that I represent who are dying in Texas because of Democrats, directly because of Democrat policies. They can shake their heads all they want, but the blood of the people in Texas is on their hands. My colleagues flippantly dismiss the fact that people in Texas are dying because of their policies, and the migrants that they pretend to care about are dying because of their policies. Then they lie and say that Texas is responsible for migrants who die in the Rio Grande River when their own Department of Justice offers the truth, which is, those migrants died in the river and were pulled out by Mexican authorities before Border Patrol was ever contacted. The Democrats have no problem lying to the American people just like Alejandro Mayorkas lied to the American people about Border Patrol agents whipping Haitian migrants. It is something that happens over and over and over again, but the question for my colleagues on this side of the aisle is: What are we going to do about it? Are we going to keep writing them a blank check? Are we going to keep saying: Here is more money, Secretary Mayorkas? Leave us exposed. Leave people dying. Leave children dying from fentanyl. Migrants are dying in the Rio Grande, so we can go out and campaign on border security. Why don't we do something about it? Here we are, again. Catch your flights. Get on out of Washington, D.C., before the snowstorm comes in, but give them all the money in the world they need to endanger the people that we represent. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Crane).
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Arizona for his comments. I would note that, in this bill, we will be voting to fund, as I said, a Department of Homeland Security responsible for the border crisis with wide-open borders and continued funding for the CBP One app being used to use parole abusively to flood the zone into Texas where Texas is having to spend $12.5 billion doing the job of the Federal Government. We will fund the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement, which lost track of 85,000 migrant children, and the Environmental Protection Agency's electric vehicle mandate to make two-thirds of new cars EVs by 2032, destroying our economy and piling up EVs on the lots of car dealerships around the country. We will fund the EPA's natural gas and methane rule, destroying access to reliable energy. We will fund 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, the unreliable energy that it is. We will fund the IRS doling out billions in IRA tax credits to corporations, many of them billion-dollar corporations. We will fund the World Health Organization undermining our own sovereignty and cozying up to the CCP. We will fund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA, which supports Hamas over our ally Israel. Even as we go out and give lip service to supporting Israel, we will be voting to fund their enemies right now, today, on the floor of the House. We will fund the pro-China, anti-Israel United Nations Human Rights Council. We will fund a weaponized Department of Justice and FBI going after parents like Scott Smith and Mark Houck. I have more. That is what we are doing. We are voting to fund a Federal bureaucracy that is at war with the American people while we indebt our children for generations. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good).
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Virginia.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, there are other things that we are funding that we shouldn't: The ATF rule banning up to 40 million pistol braces; the ATF rule massively expanding background checks without the consent of Congress; the Department of Education's student debt cancellation schemes, despite the Supreme Court ruling against them; public health agencies like the CDC, the NIH, and FSA held unaccountable for COVID tyranny, enforcing masks and vaccines upon our children; the Department of Veterans Affairs vaccine mandate, which I have introduced legislation to get rid of; the chief diversity officers at the Department of Defense and throughout government, indoctrinating people, pushing out a radical, leftist agenda with critical race theory and DEI; the Pentagon's abortion travel fund; the FDA's rule allowing abortion drugs to be shipped by mail; taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries at the Department of Defense. We are funding all of that with taxpayer money and borrowed money. We are indebting our kids and our grandkids to fund the bureaucrats that are undermining the freedom of the American people, preventing them from being able to prosper, according to the rights given to them by the Almighty because this government is failing to do its job, and worse, is interfering with their God-given rights to do what they want to do for their families. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Davidson).
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I rise to claim the time in opposition.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I do rise in opposition to the legislation that was just sent to the United States House of Representatives from the United States Senate. I just spent a good deal of time going around the country, traveling to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Madam Speaker, you might imagine why. I spoke to thousands of Americans. Not one American said: Please, Congressman Roy, add more money to the debt. Please, Congressman Roy, keep spending money we don't have. Keep deficit spending every year, bankrupting our kids and grandkids. Nonetheless, that is precisely what we are doing yet again, kicking the can down the road. That is what we do. It is what we do best in this Chamber. It is what we do best in Congress. It is why the American people are so frustrated with this town and with the swamp because it is a swamp that is entirely not drained. We are sitting here doing the same thing again. It is Groundhog Day in the House Chamber all the time, every day, yet again spending money we don't have. Last year, an agreement was reached with spending levels and caps. Now, I didn't particularly love those levels and caps. A number of us didn't. There were supposedly some side deals. Madam Speaker, does that sound swampy? Side deals. What was written into the law? What was written into the law was a level that was somewhere around a 1 percent reduction over last year's enormously bloated omnibus spending level, a 1 percent cut. Can this body possibly adhere to those caps? No. We can't do that. Last year, we tried to fix this place. We tried to do appropriations bills. We passed 10 appropriations bills out of the committee and 7 appropriations bills off the floor. We tried to restore regular order. We had about 1,100 amendments. We tried to process those so the American people could see their Chamber working again. Nevertheless, what happened? Everything reverts back to the mean in this town, the same old story because a side deal is cut. We have to spend at a higher level, you see, Madam Speaker, and that is what is going on back and forth between the Senate and the House. The American people need to understand what is happening. This continuing resolution will fund their government at the same level as last year's massive omnibus spending bill that all of my Republican colleagues, all of them with the exception of two in this Chamber, were adamantly opposed to, voted against, spoke out against, put press releases out against, and campaigned against, and they are going to vote for it. Right now, they are going to vote to continue to spend at that level. Not only that, they are going to vote to continue to fund the radical progressive policies embedded in it, continue to fund the bureaucracy that is at war with the American people, continue to fund open borders, and continue to fund Alejandro Mayorkas even as we attempt to impeach him in the Homeland Security Committee. We are going to fund him. We are going to fund those open borders. We are going to fund the United Nations. We are going to fund the World Health Organization. We are going to fund UNRWA to give money to the Palestinians to give to Hamas. We are going to campaign against those things, but we are going to fund them. My Democratic colleagues want to hide behind side deals rather than adhere to the agreed-upon caps that would at least modestly reduce spending by 1 percent. That is what is happening in this Chamber, and we are going to do this CR in order to buy time to cut a deal that will increase spending, that will increase spending past the caps in order to honor side deals and to actually increase the funding for a Federal Government that is at war with the people whom I represent. That is shameful. Under no circumstances should we vote for that. Under no circumstances is this something that we should be supporting. We should stay here and do our work, but, instead, people said: Why can't you give the time back, Congressman Roy, so we can go catch our planes before the snowstorm gets in? I am sorry. I think maybe we should stay here and do our job and actually find a way to cut spending like we campaign on over and over again. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. General Leave
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The American people are tired of getting a complete lack of representation from their Representatives. Nobody in this country looks at Congress and says: Wow. Heck of a job, guys and gals. Well done. Who would do that? Would we do that? By the way, it does not matter who is sitting in the Speaker's seat or who has got the majority. We keep doing the same stupid stuff. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have no problem with wide-open borders endangering the people that I represent. None. My constituents are the ones left holding the bag, and the people of Texas are the ones left spending $12.5 billion. My people are the ones who have had six kids die from fentanyl poisoning in the school district that I represent. It is not fun to smirk at that, is it? We are talking about dead children from fentanyl poisoning because of wide-open borders because of the policies of my Democrat colleagues who refuse to do anything about it. My colleagues won't do anything about the wide-open borders. I will continue to speak to my colleagues.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Madam Speaker, everybody in this country expects us to do our job, and yet, we continually fail to do it. We continue to spend money we don't have, undermining our own national security, and our own well-being, funding a bureaucracy that is at war with the people that we represent. At some point, we ought to actually do what we campaign on. At some point, on both sides of the aisle, we should actually recognize that the American people expected a republic for the Representatives that they send to the United States House of Representatives to actually represent them. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
DENOUNCING THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION'S OPEN-BORDERS POLICIES, CONDEMNING THE NATIONAL SECURITY AND PUBLIC SAFETY CRISIS ALONG THE SOUTHWEST BORDER, AND URGING PRESIDENT BIDEN TO END HIS...2024-01-17
Mr. ROY
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I unfortunately missed three votes today. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 11, ``nay'' on rollcall No. 12, and ``yea'' on rollcall No. 13.
PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL UNDER THE RULE SUBMITTED BY THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD RELATING TO "STANDARD FOR DETERMINING JOINT EMPLOYER STATUS"2024-01-12
Mr. ROY
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I unfortunately missed two votes today. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 9 and ``yea'' on rollcall No. 10. personal explanation
CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 2670, NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 20242023-12-14
Mr. ROY
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. ROY. I yield myself the balance of my time to close. Madam Speaker, another point that I think merits observation is that, as we speak, with the 18 days remaining, the Senate, rather than working on ensuring that we get a better NDAA--but, more importantly in this context because that process is kind of played out--rather than figuring out how we are going to deal with FISA and reform it to make sure Americans' civil liberties are protected, we have the Senate in negotiations with the White House on figuring out what crumbs can be given for border security to be attached to Ukraine funding while Zelenskyy is paraded around Washington trying to demand more money for Ukraine when our border is wide-open. So the Senate has plenty of time to hold themselves here in negotiation with the White House so we can beg for crumbs for the protection of our sovereignty and security of the people of Texas and the people of this country, but we don't have time to figure out how to fix FISA. It is pretty extraordinary. It is pretty extraordinary. In the meantime, in this very bill is $600 million authorized for Ukraine. Now, I am actually not personally all that troubled by those provisions. We supported them in the authorization bill in July, but I would note, importantly, to my colleagues on this side of the aisle, a majority of Republicans opposed an amendment for the continuation of that funding to Ukraine in a September vote on the floor. A majority of Republicans opposed that funding, and, yet, we are authorizing it here on the back of a number of provisions that we don't support and on the back of FISA being piled on the top of that Defense authorization bill. For the life of me, I do not understand why this is how Republicans think we should end the year heading out for Christmas. Madam Speaker, in closing, we have come to the floor today on a bill that all of us want to see passed. Every single one of us wants to pass a National Defense Authorization Act. Every single one of us wants to ensure that our men and women in uniform are paid appropriately, have the tools they need to carry out their job, have the care they need when they get home, and that we do our job. Every single one of us wants to make sure that we do that. Nevertheless, we are doing a terrible disservice to the people of this country by piling on an extension of a FISA regime that was abused--notably and clearly abused--against American citizens without reforming that piece of legislation by kicking the can down the road and by extending it not just through April but through April of 2025. A vote for this bill is not just a bill for pay raises and support for our men and women in uniform. A vote for this bill is a perpetuation of the woke policies undermining our military, breaking down morale, driving down recruiting, and now undermining the civil liberties of the American people by not reforming FISA. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
MOTION TO ADJOURN2023-12-14
Mr. ROY
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.