Chip Roy

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Scanlon), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this crisis has taken an unimaginable toll on the State of Texas, my home State, and the citizens there as well as the migrants seeking to come into this country. I get contacted every single day, like my colleagues from Texas. In 2022, more than 2,000 Texans died from fentanyl poisoning, a 500 percent increase from 2019. I have already talked about the 53 migrants killed in a tractor-trailer in the Texas heat. Texas has been forced to deal with it on their own, spending $4 billion of their own budget, $3 billion last cycle because we are having to deal with a job the Federal Government is supposed to do. El Paso, state of emergency; Laredo, state of emergency; Brownsville, state of emergency; San Antonio, beefing up to try to deal with the surge. We are dealing with it every single day in Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Van Duyne).

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I would just remind my colleagues that it was in December when we got a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill that was 4,000 pages long around 1 a.m., and then we voted on it the next day. In that bill there was specific language that prohibited the Department of Homeland Security from actually securing the homeland by securing the border. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Alford).

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I have to address, at least for a minute, this disparaging commentary about the Governor of Texas busing migrants. Well, I guess my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would like to ignore the fact that the Democrat mayor of El Paso was teaming up with Governor Abbott to do that. The Democrat mayor of El Paso was teaming up with the Governor of Texas, Governor Abbott, to do just that. Walk a mile in our shoes in the State of Texas where we have hundreds of thousands of people pouring into our communities throughout the State of Texas. Welcome to the party. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Norman).

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, just a couple of points. First of all, this tired talking point of 90 percent of narcotics being captured at the ports of entry; well, of course, that is the only place where we have Border Patrol. Because they are overwhelmed doing processing, we don't have anybody patrolling the border between the ports of entry. So, of course, you are collecting and finding a higher percentage of narcotics at the ports of entry. The second point, is this idea that this is treating kids inhumanely. Let's be very clear that what we do in this policy is treat children from other countries exactly as we treat them from Mexico and Canada under current law. More importantly, President Obama, that radical, MAGA extremist, President Barack Obama asked for this fix in his bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess).

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 383 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, we have a crisis at our southern border that has captured the attention of the American people but has fallen on deaf ears among my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and, much more importantly, the President and the administration at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Just yesterday, I received a text from multiple law enforcement officers along the southern border, whether it is with the Department of Public Safety from Texas or whether it is with Border Patrol. For example, this is a quote: As of last night, the radios went crazy for west and south Laredo, waves of folks, literally just group after group, bum-rushing the border. The agents were spread thin as hell. In my precinct, we are literally all doubled up because our units are breaking down every other day. Ranchers are calling every other day, stating there are folks on their property, but we can't get there fast enough. I hate to say this, but we are getting our rear-ends handed to us. I used to have patterns, trends, and knew the dropoff, pickup areas, but now it is an ``expletive'' free-for-all. Approximately 600 bodies at the gate just half a mile east from Yarbrough happening right now in El Paso. I have hundreds of these texts right now flooding into my phone, like every other Member of Congress, because what is happening is an abject failure at the border. It is a humanitarian crisis for Americans and for migrants. Mr. Speaker, 5 million have been encountered at the southern border, and 2 million have been released into the United States, incentivizing more to come. Over 1.5 million have evaded apprehension--i.e., got-aways evading detection from Border Patrol since the beginning of this administration. Fentanyl is pouring into our communities. Border Patrol has seized over 35,000 pounds of fentanyl. Just last Thursday morning, I met with three fentanyl moms out of dozens of moms that I met with because their children have died from fentanyl. Eight children in the school district in the county in which I reside southwest of Austin have died of fentanyl poisoning since last August. Over 10 have had to be resuscitated, revived with Narcan. Just last summer, 53 migrants were effectively cooked in a tractor- trailer in the hot Texas heat in San Antonio, Texas. Mr. Speaker, 856 dead migrant bodies were found along the Rio Grande, in south Texas, and on ranches. Little girls are sold into the sex trafficking trade, held in stash houses in Laredo, Brownsville, El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, and throughout this country. We know this to be true. It is documented to be true. Now, the administration can't even keep up with the children that we have, with 85,000, according to The New York Times, not able to be contacted. My colleagues just blindly wipe that away, saying: That is not true. It was a phone call. They didn't get them. They must be with a family member. What Member of this body would treat their child that way? Oh, I called and didn't get ahold of them. Oh, well. We do that with 85,000 children. I guess that is not nearly as effective as a photo op in white pantsuits sitting next to kids in cages, allegedly, despite that those cages were created by the previous administration specifically for the protection of children. Oh, no. It doesn't look as good to have a photo op when you have 85,000 missing children. Tomorrow, title 42 expires. Now, for the average American, title 42, they don't know what that is. What it is, is a part of our health code that allows us to say that we are going to turn people away in the middle of a pandemic. Yet, the administration has been using that as effectively their only means of managing the border, to the extent you can call it managing the border. In March, for example, there were approximately 200,000 apprehensions. We are going to blow right through that right now because we are at 10,000, 11,000, 12,000 apprehensions a day. When you add those 200,000 apprehensions, not even counting all the parole, half of those are being turned away under title 42. When title 42 expires tomorrow, more will come. There is an explosion at the border. None will be turned away because this administration has specifically chosen to ignore the law. This administration is refusing to do their job to defend the border of the United States. The least compassionate, the least Christian, the least empathetic thing that a country could do is to allow human beings to be used as political pawns by cartels for profit while Americans die by the thousands, while migrants get raped, abused, and put in stash houses by cartels for profit by the thousands, while migrants die along the southern border by the hundreds, if not the thousands now, while our own people get overrun on their own ranches. I sat and met with ranch owners in south Texas who had run across the dead body of a young woman, a mother with a baby, on their ranch. Imagine the most powerful Nation in the history of the world thinking it is compassionate to have a system that allows that. Yet, that is precisely what we do. Unfortunately, what my colleagues' response will be is, oh, we are going to have to do something about our immigration system and future flow in, figuring out what we are going to do to make sure that we reform immigration. Don't you know that if we had comprehensive immigration reform, this would all just magically evaporate? That is completely not true. The fact of the matter is, the starting point for any sensible border and immigration plan is a secure border in which you actually enforce the laws of the United States. Why? So people know what the rules are. We allow 600,000 to 1 million, 1.2 million, depending on the year, people to come into this country legally, as we should. Yes, we need to reform our immigration system, but none of it matters if we are going to embrace lawlessness and wide-open borders and ignore the rule of law to the detriment of people and to the detriment of the very system that attracts people from around the world. We should be exporting the rule of law rather than importing lawlessness, fentanyl, death, and destruction. The legislation we have before us would be a giant step toward ensuring that we can hold this administration accountable to make sure that we secure our border, protect our citizens, and protect migrants who seek to come here. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the amendment and on the resolution.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I offer an amendment to the resolution.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. What we offer today through this rule will be legislation that will strengthen our southern border, secure this country, protect Americans, protect migrants, and ensure that our communities can be safe, particularly along our southern border in States like Texas where the Speaker pro tempore and I and many of our colleagues reside and other friends of ours in Arizona, New Mexico, and California, that are dealing with this every single day. This bill is pretty simple. It strengthens and requires the administration to enforce existing law and closes the asylum and detention loopholes that have been exploited for years. It curbs release into the interior, a massive pull factor, by requiring DHS to detain, remove, or place in a safe third country, but in doing so allows a path for migrants to be able to pursue asylum claims and just simply follows current law to not be released into the United States. Again, it is pretty straightforward. It reimplements the asylum deals that were working and ends the bogus asylum claims. It keeps families together while asylum claims are being processed. It protects unaccompanied children by reforming TVPRA, a request from the Obama administration. It requires DHS to immediately resume border wall construction, which President Biden has halted. The fact is the American people are very well aware of the crisis at the border that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle seem to ignore. I had some friends send me, while I was speaking here, the comment section from The New York Times. I am not talking about Breitbart or something. I am talking about The New York Times. Page after page after page of citizens saying, for example: Though I have always voted Democrat, my vote in the next Presidential election will go to whichever candidate has the best, most seemingly effective plan for securing our border. It is the most pressing issue for our country. If only the President and my Democratic colleagues would agree. The fact of the matter is we have a devastating crisis that is killing Americans and killing migrants. Right now, to be very clear, our Border Patrol agents and law enforcement community along the southern border are overwhelmed. They are crying out for help. I had a man text me just a minute ago that works with Border Patrol and DPS. He said: We are in a Broken Arrow moment. We are overrun. We have no place to go. We have a crisis. This body needs to respond, and we need to take action as we speak. Mr. Speaker, shortly, I will be offering an amendment to the rule. The amendment is a very short, one-page modification that makes clear that Congress will address, within 60 days, the dangerous cartels confronting our country. It will add a sense of Congress to clarify certain language involving agricultural issues relating to E-Verify. amendment offered by mr. roy

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Brecheen).

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I urge support for the resolution, as amended.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good).

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I never know who I am, whether I am a rightwing MAGA extremist or a Ron DeSantis-supporting RINO. Today, where I am here on the floor is--I would just say this: ``I cannot agree to vote for a full increase in the debt without any assurance that steps will be taken . . . to reduce the alarming increase in the deficits and the debt.'' Those aren't my words. Those were Joe Biden's words in October 1984, when the debt was $1.5 trillion. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are hiding. They want to hide behind process. What they don't want the American people to know is that this bill has been available since last Wednesday; that of the 20 debt ceiling increases since 2000, only two have gone through committee; that H.R. 1 in this bill went through regular order and passed off the floor; that the REINS Act, which is in this bill in its existing form, passed this very body on a bipartisan basis in 2017; that the spending repeals that we have in this bill are clean cuts, cutting the very things that this body with Democrat control passed with 158 proxy votes in August, calling people back and forcing some of us to have to fly back with the kind of process that we learned to expect under Speaker Pelosi. Instead, here, what did we have last night? Yes, we had an agreement late at night. Do you know what that agreement was, Mr. Speaker? It was a recognition of the deal that had already been constructed, which was to say we are going to repeal the god-awful IRA subsidies destroying our economy, which are absolutely going to enrich a handful of corporate America, pushing their green subsidies, enriching themselves, and destroying the American economy and energy freedom. That is what we are doing: restoring exactly what agreement had been reached that we had decided last week. The simple fact is that the American people don't really care what my Democratic colleagues have to say because it is more of the same scare tactics. They want to say that we are cutting spending to oblivion, yet the reality is what we are dealing with, Mr. Speaker, is if you kept the fiscal year 2023 defense level spending--last year's defense spending-- and add to it the nondefense level of that MAGA extremist Barack Obama that he proposed in his last budget for fiscal year 2024, then you get exactly the $1.471 trillion level we are proposing. That is the truth. Proposing pre-COVID nondefense level spending; proposing a defense to match China; proposing the kind of cuts the American people expect us to do in upfront first-year cuts, to cut student loans that are unfair to the plumber and making sure that they are biased toward kids who rack up debt; we are going to make sure that we are increasing our economic productivity by getting rid of the regulatory stranglehold with the regulations that are in the IRA regulations; and then we are going to make sure that we get rid of the COVID spending to $50 billion of unobligated dollars, in addition to making sure that the American people can carry out their business without constraint from government--in short, we are going to shrink Washington and grow America. The American people are tired of the same. They want us to do our job. They are tired of Chuck Schumer and President Biden doing absolutely nothing. Republicans in the House are doing our job, and we are going to send this over to the Senate.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Wisconsin for holding the floor down here with--I am quite confident--riveting expositions on any number of great things because my friend from Wisconsin is a great American, and I do appreciate the gentleman. It is important that we recognize the situation that this country currently faces with respect to our border crisis. It is so beyond understanding that the so-called greatest country in the history of the world could allow an environment in which, as we speak here on the floor, a little girl is getting sold into the sex trafficking trade in Houston or San Antonio in a stash house; or as happened last summer, 53 migrants died in a tractor trailer, cooked in the Texas summer heat; or 40 migrants who burned up just this past week. All, almost a direct consequence of the chosen policies of this administration. That is the simple truth. We have free will as the greatest country in the history of the world, the strongest country in the history of the world. We have to use that free will and make choices. Are we going to be a sovereign Nation that secures its borders and ensures safe passage and avenues for people around the world to come to this country, or are we going to allow cartels to maintain operational control of our border? Are we going to allow cartels to use human beings as profit centers, no matter what it means for them and their well-being? Are we going allow China to exploit our borders and run fentanyl into our communities and kill Americans, or are we going to do our job and secure the border of the United States? Those are the questions before us as Members of the House of Representatives. My message to my colleagues on this side of the aisle is: When you campaign on securing the border and you are given control of the House of Representatives, you have an obligation to actually secure the border. To my colleagues who run around using rhetoric about what is or is not Christian-like. I will say it is inherently un-Christian to allow migrants to die and call that compassion. It is inherently un-Christian to allow Americans to die from fentanyl poisoning and say that it is un-Christian to say that we should secure the border. It is inherently un-Christian for us to turn our backs on the responsibility of being a sovereign Nation that defends the rule of law to be the beacon of hope for people around the world to come here in the first place. This country has done more for more people around the world than any other Nation in history. Yes, our history is about opening our arms and allowing millions from around the globe to seek freedom and opportunity here, and we must continue to be. That must be built on the rule of law. If we do not maintain the rule of law, then we forsake the very thing that attracts people from around the world. People come here from Venezuela, they come here from Cuba because of the rule of law. The rule of law is supposed to matter. For people to hide behind asylum claims and hide behind exploitations of our law, to flood our border, such that we no longer have control of it, such that then the law becomes meaningless, turns the rule of law on its head and means we will not be able to be the place of refuge for the people around the world who need it. More than that, we should be exporting the rule of law. We should be improving conditions in the Western Hemisphere and around the world rather than importing lawlessness and importing fentanyl and killing our own people and undermining the lives of migrants. On March 13 a human smuggler transporting 11 illegal aliens in Ozona, Texas, was being chased by law enforcement, and during the chase the smuggler crashed into another vehicle killing the other occupants, including a 7-year old girl and her grandmother. The victims' names are Maria Alvarez and her granddaughter Emilia Tambunga. Two migrants perished from the crash. That is one example of hundreds I can give. I run into the ranchers who find dead migrants on their south Texas ranches. Madam Speaker, 1,000 migrants have died along the southwest border last year. The fact is we are seeing, as we speak, thousands rush our border from El Paso down along the Texas border because of the failed policies of this administration. We have an obligation as a body, but while our Democrat colleagues bury their heads in the sand and refuse to acknowledge the crisis at the border, Republicans have an obligation to do exactly what they said they would do and what they campaigned to do, and that is to secure the border of the United States. Let me be very clear. Securing the border of the United States does not mean more money. It does not mean more technology. It does not mean more Border Patrol agents. It does not mean throwing money at the problem. It means actually doing the job of enforcing the laws of the United States and embracing policies that will stop the abuse of our law, as this administration is doing to undermine it, to allow people to flood our zone, and to allow cartels to exploit it, which harms Americans and migrants. We absolutely can and will ensure that people who have a credible claim to asylum will be able to have that claim heard while making sure that it is not exploited by cartels to rush our border with thousands of people and make it such that it is bad for them and us while fentanyl pours in killing Americans and undermining our security. That is actually our job. I submit, Madam Speaker, that we should honor the promises that we made that gave us the majority because I can promise you if we try to pass border security that doesn't actually stop the problem, then we will no longer be in the majority. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chairman, the amendment that I am offering here directs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, as we refer to it, to withdraw two policy statements that massively expand the role of climate hysteria in certification of natural gas infrastructure, like pipelines and LNG export terminals. In February 2022, FERC released two radical policy statements that massively increased the role that the emissions play in its certification of natural gas pipelines and LNG export terminals, which are so critical to our ability to affect world consumption of gas so that we can drive down CO2 and expand our role in the world and expand American energy interests. This included requiring FERC to consider the upstream and downstream impact on emissions that building a new natural gas pipeline would have. Even Senator Manchin said: ``The Commission went too far by prioritizing a political agenda over their main mission--ensuring our Nation's energy reliability and security.'' I want everybody to hear this. This move by FERC came 1 week before Russia invaded Ukraine. This administration is perfectly fine empowering our enemies to appease the climate activists, the climate cult. We saw it with Nord Stream 2. We see it right here. We refuse to expand American energy right when we could be sticking it to Putin. Instead, we have everybody over here clamoring about what we need to do in Ukraine instead of having gotten in front of that by exporting American energy, by making sure that we control the world's supply of energy by putting out clean-burning American natural gas. Just 1 week after FERC made this move, Russia invaded Ukraine, massively disrupting European natural gas supplies. When the Western world was begging for U.S. LNG, this administration was giving them the middle finger to appease the climate cult. Meanwhile, our enemies--China, Iran, Russia, Venezuela--are massively pumping out emissions. China has 1,100 coal-fired plants. They are adding two a week. We are not adding squat to our natural gas or coal production capacity. Texas is about to be 50 percent wind and solar because we refuse to actually produce the coal and gas necessary to have power on a cloudy, windless day. China accounts for 30 percent of global emissions--and increasing. Russian natural gas exports to Europe release 41 percent more emissions than U.S. LNG. Bottom line: This administration's war on U.S. energy will not do a thing to help the environment but will hurt freedom and prosperity here and abroad. We should accept this amendment. This amendment should be agreed to across the spectrum because it is good for American oil and gas. It is good for the world. It will actually help drive down CO2 while making our country stronger and helping us push back on Russia in the process. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I agree with my friend (Mr. Armstrong). If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have no issues with the fact that they were amending these drafts and leaving it in draft form, we just want to give the certainty of saying to remove these. They were clearly a bad idea. That is exactly what Senator Manchin was saying. Let's not go down this road. This is the problem with FERC. FERC is becoming a radical organization that is inserting itself in places where it does not belong. When the executive branch oversteps its bounds, it is incumbent upon Congress, in Article I, to do something about it. We are simply saying to pull these. Admit that this was a foolish direction to go, and let's ensure that we are sending a strong signal that we are pro-pipeline, pro-moving American LNG and making sure that we are exporting energy to the world that is actually clean burning and will help our economy, help push back on Putin, not make us reliable on China, and make us a heck of a lot stronger. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I yield to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Armstrong).

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Pennsylvania. I couldn't help but notice my colleagues on the other side of the aisle going, yet again, to one of their pages in their playbook that they love to bring out every single time we have a debate--oh, who can you trust? You can't trust corporate America. Guess what? I don't trust corporate America. I don't trust Big Oil. I don't. I don't trust them any more than I trust any of the big government bureaucrats that decide what is best for me. I do trust the market. I do trust people being able to go out and use their capital to go out and produce the best energy for the American people. This administration and my Democratic colleagues don't want to do that, as exemplified by the fact that the President of the United States dumped 300 million barrels out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve last year heading into an election. Mr. Speaker, 300 million barrels. They cut the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in half in order to bail out their election because their policies were so bad. Even Goldman Sachs is saying that the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which massively expands unreliable energy, would cost $1.2 trillion. That is the truth. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule for this bill. I think it is critically important that we take a massive step forward to try to ensure that we open up exploration on lands, repeal the methane tax, and overall permitting. It is only a simple step because the step that has to be taken is to free up the market from the ungodly amount of subsidies coming from Washington, subsidizing unreliable energy at the expense of capital being able to flow into the development of oil and natural gas and nuclear power to ensure that we have the power to live our lives. When you have a cloudy, windless day, you have to have power. This building is powered by natural gas. Hospitals across the country stay open because of natural gas. The fact of the matter is, you cannot power the world right now with wind and solar power. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle live in unicorn land with fairy dust, completely ignoring the reality of what happens to real Americans when the cost of their goods and services go up; when they have inflation skyrocketing and raising up; when it is destroying their way of life because people want to feel good about themselves hopping in their Tesla and rolling around pretending there is a magic energy tree. There isn't. People's lives are at stake. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle want the American people to lack the energy that they need to live their lives productively and affordably. You want to know why inflation is going up? Because this body has spent money it doesn't have. The Fed has printed money and jacked up the extent to which we have massive easy money out in the supply money. We have spent money we don't have. We have regulated the oil and gas industry to death, such that we don't have the ability to actually back up their magic fairy dust energy supplies with wind and solar.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I lend my thanks to the gentlewoman from North Carolina for her stewardship of the legislation we are addressing this week. I am offering this amendment because I believe it is critically important for parents to have the ultimate say in the education of their children. I first want to say that I support, as my colleague from Kentucky Mr. Massie does, eliminating the Department of Education altogether and leaving this to parents and the States. Frankly, I would prefer to just block grant dollars to the States and give them full control in the absence of actually eliminating the Department of Education, which my next amendment will address. If we are going to be operating in this framework, then we might as well ensure that parents at least can have the benefit of dollars getting to them directly to be able to do as they see fit to educate their children. The Parents Bill of Rights Act is designed to try to empower parents, give them the ability to see what their children are learning, see the curriculum. Despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle with wild accusations of book banning-- which is completely inaccurate and devoid of fact--the fact is, we are trying to empower parents to be able to see what their children are learning. My amendment, though, would give parents recourse by allowing them to take their tax dollars, the dollars that they send to Washington for a purpose, and put it towards the education of their choice. Again, I would rather they not be laundering the money through this godforsaken town. I would rather that money go directly to the schools in their neighborhoods. If it is going to come here, I would like them to, at least, get the benefit of getting that money back to be able to use it to educate their children the way they believe is best for them. I introduced this policy as a stand-alone bill called the SCHOOL Act in 2020 with my good friend, Senator Rand Paul, when parents' tax dollars were going to schools that closed their doors during the pandemic, that shut kids out of schools, that forced them into the corners with masks. The results of that have been catastrophic. Twenty-three Baltimore schools have zero students proficient in math per State test results. Chicago Democrats are sounding the alarm on 55 schools reporting no proficiency in math or reading. These are very serious concerns. In 2022, the National Center for Education Statistics evaluated the progress of children during the pandemic and revealed reading ability had suffered the largest decline since 1990. To my colleagues who say that this defunds schools, first off, whose dollars are these anyway? They are the American people's dollars. This government takes dollars and then does stuff with it. We want to make sure that parents can use their dollars the way they feel is best for the education of their kids. We are returning to the families their money, so they have greater flexibility to provide the best possible education for their kids. Mr. Chair, that is the goal of this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I thank my friend from Oklahoma for his support of the amendment. I agree with every word that he just shared with the body. I would just note, again, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have been raising a lot of concerns that my side of the aisle is inserting the Federal Government into the business of the States and localities. Look, I will acknowledge, I don't love going down this road. I don't think we should have to. I think this should all be left to the States, and if the folks in California, the folks in New York, the folks in some State want to put this garbage in front of their kids, then let them hash that out. As long as we are going to have the Federal Government inserting itself, which this body led predominated by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, have been pushing now for years, at a bare minimum, shouldn't we ensure that parents have the ability to see what is in the curriculum, parents know what books are in the library? That is the debate this week. What we are trying to do with this amendment is essentially call the bluff of my Democratic colleagues. Put your money where your mouth is. If you don't like the fact that the Federal Government is involved in education, welcome to the party. Let's give the money right back to the States and local governments where they can do what is best for the people in their States and local communities. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Brecheen).