Chip Roy

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, again, I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina for her efforts this week and her efforts and devotion to education, generally, in her career. I am offering this amendment because I believe that we should be empowering States and local schools in communities to be able to take care of our kids. I don't think the Federal Government has any business in this area for the most part. I don't believe the Department of Education should exist in the first place. When I look at Article I, Section 8, I don't see anything about education. From my standpoint--and I believe it is a sentiment shared by many on my side of the aisle, and I have heard many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle bemoaning Federal intervention this week--so let's just call the question then. If we have concerns about Federal intervention into State affairs, then let's take the dollars and let's block grant them back to the States. Now, my friend, Mr. Massie, has a sense of Congress that we should abolish the Department of Education, which I fully support. But if we have true concerns here, to my Democratic colleagues who are concerned about, oh, my gosh, heaven forbid that we have parents be able to see what is in the curriculum. This is too much Federal intervention. How about we look at overall Federal intervention, in general, and let's block grant those dollars to States and allow State governments, local communities, local school boards and parents to make all the decisions? We will just take care of your problem right now. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, my time is limited, and the gentleman has the right to close this out. I would just say that we should have a robust debate about that. This is very limited, as the gentleman pointed out. It is Title I money under the ESEA, so this would be limited in the total economic impact. I think it is just a nice way to give some dollars to parents to be able to go take care of their children. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I would just add a couple of responses to my friend, the gentleman from Virginia. Both of us are graduates of the University of Virginia. I am an extraordinarily proud graduate of Virginia, where Thomas Jefferson, frankly, helped frame the public diffusion of knowledge, as the gentleman knows, in trying to set up a structure for public schools in order to have broader access for more Americans and give them the ability and the benefits of public education. I was public school educated K through law school, as was my wife, raised by a single mom. We went to Texas A&M University and the University of Texas School of Law, where we met. I am a big proponent of the public education system. I am a bigger proponent of empowering parents. I am a bigger proponent of being able to have checks and balances within the education system and allowing parents the ability to take care of their kids. That is what this is about. When we talk about homeschooling, the purpose here is, you have got parents who are left on the outside looking in while the public school system has abandoned them during the pandemic, and they had to go do something about it. They are abandoning them now by not providing them the proficiency of education as I just talked about in Baltimore and Chicago and in schools across the country. To say that we should restrict parents from being able to use those dollars in private schools. Say that to the hardworking parents today scraping by to send $6,000, $7,000, $8,000, $9,000 to a Catholic school because that parent wants the best education for their child. I say let's actually empower parents. That is what this whole debate is about this week. That is why I offered this amendment. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk for H.R. 5.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Indiana for the time. Mr. Speaker, again, the facts are completely irrelevant to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--completely irrelevant. Introduced in the Record a little while ago was a story from December, again, trying to perpetuate this myth about book banning. Again, the context here matters that we are talking about legislation in this body to just ensure that parents know what is in the libraries and what is in the curriculum. It does nothing more. Yet, that is the great offense. They are trying to perpetuate that myth about Federal perpetuation of so-called book banning. Let me be clear. Yes. Some local jurisdictions are removing certain books-- absolutely, and God bless them for it--books about explicit sex acts. Let that hang out over the Chamber. No, I do not want America's children to have to be subjected to that kind of terrible indoctrination in the schools--absolutely not--and parents should be empowered to stop it. Instead, they want to perpetuate this myth. The facts are true. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record an article titled: ``Facts about library books in Duval County Public Schools.''

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, let's just make sure the American people know the truth. Parents have the right to know what their children are being taught. Parents have the right to be heard. Parents have the right to see the school budget and spending. Parents have the right to protect their child's privacy. Parents have the right to keep their children safe. That is what my Democratic colleagues are objecting to. Notice how they are objecting. Notice what they are trying to do. It is a page as old as time in the Democratic playbook--fearmongering, racial division, peddling the lies of hatred, saying that somehow the legislation that would empower parents and give parents the right to know what their child is being educated with, know what they are being told, that somehow that is going to lead to banning of books. What they are afraid of is they are afraid of a parent being able to come in, armed with the information of what is being taught to their children, armed with what is in the library, and holding school boards accountable, holding their educators accountable. That is precisely what my Democratic colleagues do not want to occur. They are afraid of the Sunshine going into the classroom because they know that after COVID the veil has been lifted on a corrupted education system that has for too long been indoctrinating our children with racial division and hatred. Parents are now awakened. They have seen what is occurring behind the veil because the veil was lifted. My colleagues go around peddling the fears of banned books, completely inaccurately trying to claim that books were banned in Duval County that weren't banned, books that were either not ordered--when, in fact, there are on average 13 books about Rosa Parks in every elementary school in Duval County. That is the truth. Nobody wants to pull books about Rosa Parks. Nobody wants to pull books about Roberto Clemente. If there is legislation passed to make sure that we stop the ridiculousness of what books are being put in front of our kids, then people go: Let's pull books and look at it to make sure what is in it, and then they decide to put those books back when they pass muster. That is what my colleagues want to say are being banned. What they do not want to talk about are the books that my colleagues from South Carolina just talked about. They don't want to talk about ``Flamer,'' a graphic book about young boys performing sexual acts at a summer camp. They don't want to talk about that. Who does? A bunch of fringe leftist groups that want to stick that stuff in our schools for our kids to read. How about ``This Book is Gay,'' a book containing instructions on the ins and outs of gay sex. This is what we want being put in the schools for our children? Our Democratic colleagues do not want the American people, the parents, to know this. That is what this is about. My Democratic colleagues do not want parents to know that information. They don't. They have a bill in front of them that literally gives parents the right to know that and they are opposing it and opposing it with force. To my colleagues who say: Well, this is sticking the Federal Government into the tent of local government, I say to them: Well, welcome to the club of actually being concerned about Federal Government overreach. I agree. So I hope they will support my amendment then that would strike all the language and block grant the dollars to the States. They don't want to do that, ladies and gentlemen, because they want to meddle. They just want to meddle the way they want to. They don't want to have a clean elimination of the Department of Education. I support my colleague Thomas Massie's bill to do that. My Democratic colleagues do not. My Democratic colleagues will not support a block grant to States because they want to meddle. They want to interfere. They just don't want parents to know the truth. That is a dirty little secret.

Mr. ROY. ``February 17, 2023--Books about Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron from the Essential Voices collection are among approximately 10,000 books that have been reviewed and approved through the new State-required book review process.'' The fact is there was a purchase of 1,300 books from Perfection Learning. ``The current effort to review all media center and classroom library books, which is now required under State law,'' was reviewed and completed. Those books were not banned. As I said earlier, there are, on average, 13 to 14 books about Rosa Parks per school in Duval County. Those are the facts. That is the truth. This is a complete misrepresentation designed to scare people when, in fact, we want to empower parents and provide Sunshine for the American people to protect their kids.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, yesterday we were given the President's budget, which outlines the President's so-called priorities. Well, his priorities were pretty clear: Continue to expand government at the expense of the American people. Expand government, a government that is at odds with the freedom, well-being, and prosperity of the American people every single day. The simple truth is, as my friends in the House Freedom Caucus and a large number of my other colleagues in the Republican Conference have been articulating, we need to shrink Washington so that we can grow America. We cannot sustain and grow out of the $32 trillion of debt and the $20 trillion of debt that the Congressional Budget Office just outlined that we are going to add over the next decade. We will not, as a country, survive through that if we do not get economic growth to the 3, 3\1/2\, and 4 percent levels that we saw under President Reagan, President Clinton, and in previous years. You are not going to get economic growth if you don't get the Federal Government off the backs of the American people and stop empowering them to target Americans, to undermine American freedoms. Biden's budget would increase taxes and implement price controls to the tune of $3 trillion. That is the President's plan. What does the media do? They run around and go: Oh, he is reducing the deficit. He is reducing the debt. Yet, by his own measures, he would be increasing the debt another $17 trillion over the next decade. The American people look to this body and this town with utter amazement at how stupid we could possibly be. If you set out and tried to be more incompetent and more stupid than the people that have been running this town for as long as I can remember, I am not sure how you can do it. Seriously. That would be a great exercise. Could anybody, if you put together 435 people here, 100 people on the other side, Presidents and bureaucrats, swapped out over the last, say, three decades, could it be any worse? William F. Buckley said he would rather be governed by the first 435 people out of the phone book than the 435 people we send here. Is he wrong? Seriously, it would be a great inquiry for us to consider. We are $32 trillion in debt. Our borders are wide open. We have got American citizens unable to carry out their livelihoods, men and women in uniform who are being denied promotions and the ability to do their job in the Defense Department. We have got kids shut out from their schools, forced into the corners wearing masks, mental health issues, and they are set back generations in terms of their academic capability. That is the best we have got? That is the best we can do? We reject that. We believe in America. We believe in Americans. We do not believe that investing in Washington, investing in the Federal bureaucracy is good for the American people. We believe the opposite. The President wants to tax and regulate $3 trillion to save increasing the debt $3 trillion over the next decade, down to $17 trillion. Whoo, boy, that will do it. We propose an immediate savings of $3 trillion right now by cutting back the woke weaponized Federal bureaucracy that is undermining the freedom of the American people so that we can make them more free and prosperous so that they can grow this economy so we can shrink the deficit, reduce debt, and reclaim the inheritance of being an American for our kids and grandkids. Think about what Biden's budget would do. It would spend a total of $6.8 trillion next year, $500 billion more than this year, $2 billion for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to increase regulation of the firearms industry. I have got thousands of Texans that I represent who are facing being made a felon because a bureaucrat at ATF decided what precisely a pistol brace might mean for how their gun is regulated. Think about that. Just some guy some, some gal sitting in central Texas bought a weapon under the law, and now a bureaucrat says you have got to do this, register this, or you are a felon. Now, I think the Court will strike that down as unconstitutional, but why would this body, why would any Republican fund the bureaucracy that is going to make a felon out of the law-abiding citizen back home? To my Republican colleagues: Don't do that. How about $3.9 billion for the Department of Homeland Security's climate resilience programs? Think about that. $3.9 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, which, by the way, refuses to secure the homeland, allows 72,000 Americans to die from fentanyl poisoning, allows cartels to get empowered and slaughter Americans in the streets of Matamoros in northern Mexico without a peep from this administration. Nothing. Let's give that department $3.9 billion for climate resilience programs. Does anybody wonder why the American people look at us and say what in the hell are you doing? $2 billion increase for the EPA to target American energy. Now, I want to remind people, I want to remind all the kids out there watching this thinking, oh, my God, but the world is going to end, we are going die, climate change, we are going to get extinguished. Oh, really? Oh, really? Why is it that my Democratic colleagues who believe that the production of CO2 is going to be the end to humanity and the Earth as we know it will not remotely consider nuclear power, which produces not an ounce of CO2, but they won't consider it? Why? Because it is a religion. It is climate fetishism. It is about government control. It is about being able to target the oil and gas industry to undermine the well-being of the American people by empowering bureaucrats so they can feel good about themselves while China continues to pump out more CO2 than any other country, ratcheting it up week by week. There are 1,100 coal-fired plants in China. They build two a week while we sit around and play tiddlywinks with solar panels and windmills, leaving our grid in Texas unreliable, now almost 50 percent wind and solar. We have to think, wait, what happens on a windless, cloudy day? I don't know. How do you want to power up your schools or your hospitals or your homes or your businesses? Could it be that you have to rely on coal or gas or nuclear power? Of course, you do. Yet, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--not here, of course; of course, with all due respect neither are my colleagues on this side of the aisle with the exception of the Speaker. This is just how we do things in Washington. This is debate. A $2 billion funding increase for the Internal Revenue Service is in the President's budget. Now, I want every American to understand that. They just passed a bill last summer supposedly called the Inflation Reduction Act that gives the IRS another $80 billion to expand. So that is what the American people want: More IRS agents to go target more Americans to raise at most by the CBO's own estimate 100 or $200 billion over 10 years? So you're going to spend $80 billion to go target American citizens to bring in more money. By the way, the IRS targets poor people and minorities three to five times more than other Americans. So you're going to go hire more bureaucrats, you got $80 billion, and what does Biden do? Oh, that is not enough. $2 billion more for the IRS. Genius. $100 million to the Department of Education in grant funding for communities to promote racial and socioeconomic diversity in their schools. $62 million for the DOJ to exploit the FACE Act to target pro-life Americans. I could go on and on about the amount of money given to agency after agency, bureaucrat after bureaucrat to target the American people. The FBI targeted my now-friend Scott Smith in Loudoun County, whose daughter was assaulted in a school. He dared to go to the school board. He got challenged by law enforcement, and the DOJ was going to be putting him on a list as a domestic terrorist because the National School Boards Association was colluding with the White House to do so. Is that what we want to fund: a Department of Justice that would put a dad on a list as a domestic terrorist because he went to his school board to try to defend his daughter who was assaulted in a bathroom? That is what this administration wants to prioritize: Funding a woke, weaponized bureaucracy that is undermining freedom. They want to fund the FBI that went after Mark Houck in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for daring to defend his son when they were outside of an abortion clinic and somebody was challenging his son when they were exercising their First Amendment rights, and he defended him without anything significant happening. They were not prosecuted by State law. The feds went in, had a SWAT team at 7 in the morning on a Sunday--the whole family--went into their house threatening Mark Houck. Is that what we want to fund? Is that what we want to use the power of government for? How about the $16,000--I know it is just $16,000; I realize that is chicken feed in this establishment--in State Department funding for a pro-prostitution LGBTQ group in Colombia. Is that how we want our tax dollars spent? That is just $16,000. It doesn't mean anything, does it? It does. $1.9 million in Department of Education funding for an Illinois nonprofit that trains teachers to center equity in the classroom. We need our kids to know math, how to read, science, how to lead the world, how to beat China, and we got $1.9 million to center equity, whatever that hell that means. $2 million for the State Department's Race, Ethnicity, and Social Inclusion Unit. As if the State Department is out doing wonderful things in the first place these days. How about $158 million in economic law enforcement and military support for Mexico? Pause. Yes, you just heard that correctly. We, the taxpayers, are giving $158 million to Mexico for economic law enforcement and military support while we are getting flooded at our border, cartels are absolutely running amuck and owning the state of Mexico as a narco-terror state, running fentanyl into America, and killing Americans in Mexico. Congratulations, American people, you bought with $158 million a narco-terrorist state that is undermining our freedom and liberty killing Americans, endangering migrants, and endangering Texas. Congratulations, Americans. $34 million for the Office of the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas. $34 million for Alejandro Mayorkas to screw up America. Congratulations to the American people on how your tax dollars are being spent. $1.7 billion, for the ATF that I described earlier that will make owners of the 10 to 40 million pistol braces in the United States felons. $6.3 billion for Anthony Fauci's NIAID, which was weaponized to completely lock down the United States and force vaccines on millions of Americans, massively increasing the profit of pharmaceutical companies--Pfizer and Moderna--making like $100 billion under government mandates for vaccines--government mandates for vaccines with liability protection for the companies for a vaccine that even the morons in the departments over at CDC, NIH, FDA are now at least acknowledging don't really do much for transmission; but, oh, yes, let's give them $6.3 billion. $128 million for the office of the CDC Director who actively mislead Americans about COVID vaccine efficacy while CDC and Big Tech colluded to suppress vaccine information, which we know to be true. We saw testimony yesterday. Our own colleague, Thomas Massie, had his own social media posts being edited and targeted in a disinformation campaign because anyone who dared question the wisdom of Anthony Fauci, anyone who dared question the government mandate that you stick a needle in your arm because they say so because they politicized a virus and a vaccine, you are going to be set aside. There was going to be disinformation on social media, Twitter, in collusion with all of those guys. They were shutting down free speech. We should be horrified that the United States of America with a First Amendment to the Constitution, which is supposed to protect free speech, but not for Thomas Massie as a Member of Congress--yes, for him, too--but for every American, every American regardless of the ``truth'' of what you are saying, the government doesn't decide what the truth is. That is the whole point of free speech. Yet, we are funding the very tyrants in the executive branch shutting down free speech, mandating vaccines, using the power of government to go after people and shut down their livelihoods, undermine freedom, undermine economic activity, and put us $32 trillion in debt so our kids and grandkids are going to inherit a bankrupt, tyrannical America. We should change that. We should reject that. The great news is Americans across this country are rejecting it. They are saying no. They do want to live free. They don't want a government that is shutting down their ability to live free or their kids and their grandkids. They do want to send their kids to schools that teach them that America is great and good and teach them the tools they need to succeed in life, rather than teach them that they should be ashamed of their country or be a victim. The American people under COVID woke up. More parents are homeschooling their kids. More parents are looking for private school. More States are adopting school choice. More businesses are rejecting the vaccine mandates. More individuals are saying no to those mandates. God bless the young man who is in the United States Navy who rejected the vaccine mandate, and because of our bill that we finally jammed through in December as Republicans isn't being kicked out of the military, but he is still being harassed, he is still being denied the commanding officer job he always wanted. He is still being denied the ability to advance. They are going after him to pay the $75,000 of previous student loans. That must end. $122 million for the World Health Organization, which pushed lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and colluded with the Chinese Communist Party to cover up its role in COVID's origin, and now with this administration wants to control our healthcare and control how we are going to deal with vaccines in the future. Why would any Republican vote to fund the World Health Organization today? Why? We should not. We should reject that. We are Americans. We decide how we are going to live. $234 million for the EPA's clean water program so-called under waters of the United States, WOTUS, that put a 78-year-old veteran in jail for violating the waters of the United States by digging ditches on his land. That is your government at work, ladies and gentlemen, $456 million for EPA ``clean air programs.'' Everybody wants clean air. I don't know anybody who doesn't want clean air. I don't know any State regulators who don't want clean air. What we don't want is that to be used as an excuse to carry out the new methane tax, drive up gas prices via the ethanol mandate, and destroy reliable coal and natural gas power plants via regulation, which is precisely what it is going to do. Yet, we are all going to just sit by as Republicans and go, well, shrug. I guess that is just what we do. We have to increase government. All these kids are running around going, ``Well, we have climate change. What are we going to do?'' How about we embrace clean-burning American natural gas, develop more nuclear power, and recognize that China and India are the ones that are vastly growing and producing CO2 by developing more coal-fired plants while we sit around and play games, as I said earlier, with wind and solar, leaving us with unreliable grids and living on unicorn energy policies. Mr. Speaker, $108 million in woke EPA environmental justice funding that will funnel through EPA's new Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, $108 million of your taxpayer money for environmental justice when we are $32 trillion in debt, you literally can't make up how stupid we are. Literally, you just can't. It is, like, no, no, no. I mean, imagine the Founding Fathers going: Wait a minute. Hold on. In 2023, we are going to be $32 trillion in debt. We are not going to actually secure our borders as a sovereign Nation, allowing them to be wide open. We are going to submit to the authority of international organizations to tell us what to do and fund those international organizations to tell us what to do. We are going to fund massive bureaucracies to create things like the so-called environmental justice department with $108 million when we are spending a trillion and a half dollars more every year than we take in. I mean, that is just, like, the tip of the iceberg. How stupid can a people be? The American people aren't stupid. That is why they look at Congress with utter disdain. We are stupid unless we change, and that is my request of my colleagues on this side of the aisle, that we demand change. When there is a debt ceiling fight this summer, when the President wants to play chicken and Russian roulette with the debt ceiling increase to borrow more money to raise our credit card limit, we should demand change. We should demand actual change. We should demand immediate change. When we say return spending for the bureaucratic state to pre-COVID 2019 levels, and when my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and the President say you can't do that, you remind them about the $122 million for the World Health Organization or the $108 million for the ``environmental justice programs,'' or the $15 million for the United Nations bodies that develop the Paris Agreement--just that alone. How about $7 million of Department of the Interior funding for the monarch butterfly, $20 million in earmarks dedicated to sidewalks--$20 million dedicated in Federal funding for sidewalks. Boy, there is a real Federal nexus there, huh? Article I, section 8, thou shalt fund sidewalks. It is asinine. Yet, that is what we do. It is like breathing for Members of Congress. Just keep funding crap because, well, I don't know. I have a dinner to go to, and I can't bother to peel back the appropriations bills or the big omnibus bill that is sent over by a bunch of Senators who are running to their steak dinners and can't even bother to do the appropriations bills in the first place. This includes 18 Republicans, by the way, who voted for a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill, which I will constantly remind all 18 of them and all Americans of those 18 who voted for a massive $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill that denied us the ability to secure the border and expanded the size and scope of the Federal Government. It is not just a singular, one-party problem, ladies and gentlemen. This body needs a little religion, actual religion, and a little bit of fiscal sanity religion. We can change that. We can shrink Washington massively. Right now, in year one, we can shrink Washington so that we can get it out of the way and grow our country back to prosperity. That is step one in reclaiming our American birthright: shrink Washington, grow America. We can save more than $3 trillion over the next decade if we cut the funding of the bureaucracy back to pre-COVID levels and cap future growth; rescind $91 billion of unobligated COVID money just sitting over there right now waiting for a bureaucrat to find something to spend it on; and end the unfair, unlawful $400 billion student loan bailout that the President promised that is going to be deficit spending this year. Just boom, $400 billion of 2023 deficit spending. For what? Paying off the loan of some kid who went to college, got a sociology degree, and is hanging out in his parents' basement, tweeting and sitting on Instagram, and trying to find a job. Oh, no. We have to pay off that kid's loan, but the plumber who didn't take out that loan to go to some liberal arts college filled with a bunch of White elite liberals patting themselves on the back for how compassionate they are for Brown people--that is what they do. Let's pay off their loans, but let's make the plumber eat it. That is crazy, absolutely crazy. We reward irresponsibility instead of actually telling the hardworking American who does it all the right way that they are the one who gets rewarded. Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to increase the debt to borrow to fund a $400 billion student loan bailout for rich, liberal, White elitists, for the most part, as a statistical matter, while we are leaving out hardworking Americans who didn't take out those loans like my wife, the daughter of a single mom who took two jobs, worked hard, and sent her to a State university, who worked to pay off her loans. She is still paying them. Mr. Speaker, 20 years since we graduated from law school, my wife is still paying off the remaining vestiges of her law school student loans after paying her way and getting loans to go to Texas A&M and the University of Texas School of Law, doing the right thing, driving a 2000 Corolla with no options for, like, a decade. That is what you do if you are responsible. That is how you are supposed to live. We can save that money right now and do more good for the American people than funding and paying off these student loans. We can reclaim the $80 billion of Internal Revenue Service money that is sitting in a pot over there right now. We can reform welfare programs to get people back to work, protecting Social Security retirement and Medicare benefits in the process. We can grow America by expanding liberty and promoting economic growth, forcing policy changes to make the government do its job, curb regulatory power by enacting the REIN IN Act to make Congress decide if the regulations by bureaucrats should be enacted if they have a major economic impact. These are all things we can do right now and save up to $3 trillion over 10 years as a first step to shrinking Washington and growing America. That is our plan. The President's plan is to expand Washington and undermine America. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good).

Mr. ROY. Right. It is now $26 trillion more than that, and the President is patting himself on the back for saying, well, we are not going to increase the debt by $20 trillion; we are only going to increase it by $17 trillion over the next decade by taxing and regulating the American people into oblivion. I would just ask the gentleman a last question here, and then we are going to--in a couple of minutes I want to yield to my friend from West Virginia. Would it surprise the gentleman that we are spending $158 million in economic, law enforcement, and military support for Mexico--so, again, the American people, you and I, we are funding to the tune of $158 million, Mexico's law enforcement and military, while it is becoming a narco-terrorist state; cartels are literally killing American citizens in Mexico; infiltrating our country, causing 72,000 dead Americans from fentanyl poisoning? This is the thing the American people don't understand. Does the gentleman agree?

Mr. ROY. I asked earlier, if you set out over the last 2 or 3 decades, to do a worse job than the leadership of this country, in this Chamber, the Senate, the bureaucracy, and the White House, could you imagine doing a worse job than over the last 3 decades? I mean, in truth, the amount of debt that has been accumulated, right--in 2003, when I was a baby staffer for a Senator on the other side of this building, the national debt was about $6 trillion.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia for his leadership. We joined together with our colleagues at the House Freedom Caucus this morning to announce what we believe is, I would say, the bare minimum, if you will, sort of the baseline for resetting the table on how we deal with spending and, importantly, empowering the American people by shrinking Washington and growing America because we trust the people to do it, not government. This is an age-old debate, but this is something where leviathan, this great beast, this thing we call the Federal Government, is growing and expanding in power in ways that concern every American. Just yesterday, in the House Judiciary Committee, there were conversations about the power of the Federal Government being used to chill speech, to target American citizens, to shut down their First Amendment rights. Now think about it. Is there anything more concerning than the power of the government being used to chill the fundamental rights given to us by our Creator, as reflected in the Bill of Rights, than what we are seeing right now? The FTC is going after, right now, targeting, they want to know-- wait--who is involved with all of this. They are actually targeting journalists, targeting private citizens. Is that what the power of the government is supposed to be used for, I would ask the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. ROY. That is correct. If the gentleman doesn't mind, I am going to end here with a few minutes on the border and then yield to the gentleman from West Virginia. I thank my friend from Virginia for coming down. On that point, what we are funding, 4\1/2\ million encounters of illegal aliens at the southern border since the beginning of the Biden administration, with 7,000, 8,000 migrants crossing a day, there are 1.3 million got-aways, and nearly 1.7 million illegal aliens released into the United States. That means we have released more into our communities than the population of at least 11 individual States. Under this administration, there have been surges of known or suspected terrorists at the southwest border. There were zero in fiscal year 2019, 3 in fiscal year 2020, 15 in fiscal year 2021, 98 in fiscal year 2022, and 53 so far after 1 quarter in fiscal year 2023, these are individuals that are affiliated with known or suspected terrorists at the southwest border. Last summer, 53 migrants died in a tractor trailer in San Antonio, which I represent, cooked in the Texas heat; and that is somehow compassion? Mr. Speaker, 880 migrants have died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2022, and that does not count the thousands that have died across south Texas and other places and ranches; doesn't count the little girls sitting in stash houses, as we speak, getting sold into the sex trafficking trade, as Mayorkas and Biden fiddle, while our Nation's borders are burning. Just last week, four Americans traveling to Mexico, one of them a mother of six, they were attacked by cartels in broad daylight. Two are dead. Two are getting care; and we give $158 million to Mexico for law enforcement and military. This is why, today, I am re-introducing my legislation to designate these drug cartels as the terrorist organization that they are, so that any individual associated with them, that provides material support to a designated FTO would be sanctioned and could be pursued, lawfully. Materials include, but are not limited to providing weapons, safe houses, lethal substances. Representatives and members of a designated FTO would be subject to removal. Financial institutions could be targeted. But the main point is to make clear that these dangerous cartels are the equivalent of ISIS and al-Qaida, right off our border, killing Americans, killing Mexicans, turning Mexico into narco- terrorist states; giving China an avenue to get to the United States to pump fentanyl into our communities, and this administration is doing nothing. This Congress must not continue to fund a government that is at war with the American people, funding a woke weaponized Federal Government that is undermining our freedom, undermining our prosperity, undermining our liberty. It is our duty, as Republicans and all Members of Congress, to use the power of the purse to defund the executive branch that is tyrannically at odds with the well-being of the American people. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mooney), my good friend. I appreciate his great service to our country, and I look forward to hearing from him. Returning to the Gold Standard

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from West Virginia and appreciate his strong passion in representing the great people of West Virginia. He is a good friend, and I am glad that he could join us here today. Earlier, I was talking about the need for this country to reclaim economic growth in order to dig ourselves out of the hole that this absurd institution and lack of leadership from Washington, D.C., has created for the American people in the form of $32 trillion of debt and ridiculously stagnant economic growth. After decades of being able to achieve growth in the 3 and 4 percent range, we are now sitting in the doldrums of 1-percent-type economic growth. That might even be rather robust in the era of Joe Biden. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Bishop) to expand upon this important point.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I would inquire as to how much time we have remaining.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I don't know if I will use every bit of that. I appreciate the point that the gentleman from North Carolina just made, because it is critically important and it merits at least one final repetition, that this great country racked up the level of debt that we currently have today relative to the size of its economy in 1946. But why was that? To rid the world of fascism, to confront our enemies, to defeat those enemies, and to protect this great country. Then we embarked for 50 years and grew ourselves to the point to be able to balance the budget by 2000, with strong economic growth. It took that much time. Here we sit today in 2023 with $32 trillion of debt, sitting, at the President's own admission, at 60 basis points of economic growth this year. He wants his grand solution to be, oh, we will just rack up $17 trillion more debt in the next decade, because I am going to save $3 trillion by taxing the American people and regulating the American people. It doesn't work. This is President Biden's actual form of voodoo economics. He is going to level this country, layer mountains more debt on our kids and grandkids, all while funding the very things that are undermining our ability to have economic growth, prosperity, and freedom. As I noted before, the millions of dollars going to the EPA to turn an American citizen into a felon and put him into jail because he had a pond on his ranch, the millions of dollars in the name of clean air that are going to methane regulations to drive the price of gas and the price of energy up for the average American. Every single American should demand of his or her Representative in this body that we stand up to a tyrannical executive branch overstepping its bounds, undermining our freedom, and undermining economic growth. Every Member of this body should look to cut spending this year of the Federal bureaucracy, return it to pre-COVID levels as a baseline, save $3 trillion by getting government out of the way, restore economic growth and hope and opportunity for our kids and grandkids, stop funding the very things that are undermining our well-being, secure our country, secure our border, have a sparingly used but lethal, nonwoke military that will kill people and destroy things when they need to, and restore the greatness of this country by shrinking Washington and growing America. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Kentucky for yielding me time. I thank our colleagues on the other side of the aisle for working with us on that unanimous consent, which I think is important. It is important for us to have a full debate and a full airing of the use of war powers in the United States. As James Madison pointed out, it was critically important that we put that power in Congress. We should have this debate. If we are going to have troops in Syria, this body, this House of Representatives, this Congress ought to speak to it; and we shouldn't hide behind a 2001 authorization of the use of military force and not update that authorization of the use of military force. I am not here to say whether we should or should not be in Syria. I am here to say that Congress should speak to it. We should debate it. We should decide. We should have an actual conversation in this body, on this floor, when we are going to place our men and women in uniform in harm's way. That is the point that we should be considering. I very much believe that the gentleman from Florida has brought something forward using privileged tools that we have here in the body, and that we should take that under consideration. We should support the resolution the gentleman has brought forward, and if we have concerns, we should then have a debate, a full-throated debate, about the use of military force and our men and women in uniform in Syria.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's remarks about the Texas Rangers. They are such an important organization in the world of law enforcement. I say that as someone who served in the Office of the Attorney General of Texas as the first assistant attorney general where I had a large number of law enforcement, including former Texas Rangers, working for me. I worked in the U.S. Attorney's Office in law enforcement. My grandfather was the chief of police in a small Texas town, Sweetwater, Texas, in the 1940s. My great-great-grandfather was a Texas Ranger. As my colleague from Texas just discussed with respect to the history, in 1821, Stephen F. Austin, the father of Texas, brought 300 families to settle land in modern-day Texas. There was no regular Army. Austin assembled a fighting force to provide protection from Comanches and eventually Mexican raiders, giving rise to the Texas Rangers. Texans did what sovereign States have done throughout history, stepping up and protecting our communities. We stood up for the rule of law when there was none. Much of the action seen by the early Rangers involved bloody conflicts with Comanche Tribes and gangs of bandits who threatened the safety of Texans. In years following, the Rangers proved indispensable during major events such as the Mexican-American War; the pursuit of the criminals, Bonnie and Clyde in 1934; and Hurricane Harvey rescue and recoveries recently in 2017 and now currently today. As local law enforcement slowly assumed much of the day-to-day peacekeeping role that the Texas Rangers held before the turn of the 20th century, the Rangers now operate as a key investigative body for the State of Texas. Rangers were known for conducting major criminal investigations, suppression of organized crime, border reconnaissance, SWAT, bomb squad, Special Rapid Response, crisis negotiation, joint intelligence center management, and investigation of unsolved crimes. The impact of the Texas Rangers on the Lone Star State cannot be understated. My home county, Hays County, is named for John Coffee Hays, a renowned Ranger, appointed by Sam Houston, who fought one of the most notorious battles against the Comanche near what is called Enchanted Rock, in the district I represent a little west of Austin in Gillespie County. My great-great-grandfather, John Vaughn Roy, served as a Texas Ranger in Hays, Travis, and Blanco counties--all three counties I represent today, protecting my future home where I live now in Hays County, and holding the line against lawlessness. To the west, Captain Charles Schreiner of Kerr County, served with distinction and went on to donate land for the Schreiner Institute Military School in my district. Today, I am honored to represent Ranger Ray Martinez, a living legend in New Braunfels with a long history of heroism and service. The Ranger spirit is alive and well today in my friend and long-time Texas Ranger David Maxwell, who I worked with in the Office of the Attorney General of Texas. He solved the over 35-year-old cold case in the unspeakable murder of his own sister. That is the spirit of the Texas Rangers. {time} (1415) They were men who could not be stampeded. That is how former Department of Public Safety Director Homer Garrison, Jr., described them. They have certainly lived up to that. With so many other great figures of our history, some today wish to rewrite the legacy of the Texas Rangers focusing only on the harshest of narratives from the comfort of modern-day America--a comfort bought by the sacrifice and the blood of Texas Rangers--all while ignoring those sacrifices that they made to settle the West and establish the rule of law. The Scripture reminds us that greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. These heroes wake up every morning and put their lives on the line to serve and protect their fellow Texans as did their predecessors. The Texas Rangers are owed a debt of gratitude that cannot be fully repaid, but today we do thank them, and we congratulate them on 200 years of selfless service. Tomorrow will be March 2. That is Texas Independence Day. On February 23, a Mexican force numbering in the thousands and led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna began a siege of the fort. The Texas forces held out for 13 days outgunned and outnumbered. They were driven by the cause of liberty and their desire for a free Texas. William Barret Travis wrote this about the siege: I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained a continual bombardment and cannonade for 24 hours and have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken. I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then I call on you in the name of liberty, of patriotism, and everything dear to the American character to come to our aid with all dispatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily and will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in 4 or 5 days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor and that of his country--victory or death. This week also includes Texas Independence Day as I said. The Texas Declaration of Independence reads: When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty, and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted. . . . The Texas Declaration of Independence states that: In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal to first principles and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right toward themselves and a sacred obligation to their posterity to abolish such government and create another in its stead calculated to rescue them from impending dangers and to secure their future welfare and happiness. But what did they declare independence for? What did Travis and the rest of the Alamo sacrifice for? A Federal Government that opens our borders to cartels? A group of Republicans who campaign on securing the border but who run away in abject surrender refusing to actually do it? That is the question before us right now. That is the question for every Member of the Republican Conference. I am speaking to you: If you do not secure the border now--now--you are giving up any argument you have for the American people to put their faith in you. Will Republicans honor their campaign commitments to secure the border? Yes or no? What I am seeing right now from my Republican colleagues does not give me faith that they will stand up in the breach as did those men who stood on the wall of the Alamo. I am tired of words. Things are going to change in this body. If my Republican colleagues believe that they are going to be moving through relatively meaningless provisions doing precious damn little for the very people who sent us here to change things and they think that some of us are just going to go along for the ride, then they are sorely mistaken. We will not. There will be no more games as I saw unfold today on the floor of the House of Representatives where lies and misrepresentations were made about legislation, specifically for personal reasons, to take down an amendment. This amendment, by the way, was designed to ensure that the executive orders that are driving up inflation that this majority said they wanted to expose out of the current President and our Democratic colleagues on the other side of the aisle would exempt emergency executive orders and exempt national security-related executive orders, which are the very kinds of emergency executive orders that have been killing this country for as long as I can remember and specifically for the last several years through the COVID pandemic and emergency responses. These executive orders force needles into the peoples' arms. They say ``no'' but then they can't carry out their livelihoods. This in turn will shrink the labor supply and drive up the cost of goods and services by shutting down the greatest economy in the history of the world. My colleagues on this side of the aisle today ran away--ran away-- from actually holding the executive branch responsible. Why? For petty, personal, and political reasons. That ain't gonna fly. That is not going to be the way this works. Leadership is something that is observed and followed. It is not an anointed position. We did not come to this Chamber to continue to allow the executive branch to run over the American people. Sitting today is a young man who served his country and is being denied his commanding officer job and is being forced to try to pay back student loans because he dared to say ``no'' to a vaccine mandate that was politically driven. What is this side of the aisle doing about it? Not a damn thing. What is this side of the aisle doing about open borders? Nothing. Nothing. What is this side of the aisle doing about an ATF rule about to make felons out of 10 million Americans or more? Nothing. What is this side of the aisle going to do about spending? Lip service. We have a debt ceiling approaching, and we are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. We should say something right now. We should pass a bill off this floor saying that we will raise the debt ceiling but only--only--if you end the disastrous student loans that are going to cost $400 billion and drive up the cost of higher education, only if you rescind the $91 billion of unobligated COVID money, only if you go rescind the $80 billion designed to increase the IRS to go after taxpayers--including, by the way, more often the poorest among us and minorities--only if you will return spending to 2022 levels getting our spending back to preCOVID levels and make sure that we cap spending so we stop funding the woke, weaponized bureaucracy that is going after the American people. Do that. Send that over to the Senate. Send that over to the Senate and make Chuck Schumer and the President of the United States choke on it because the American people want us to cut spending right now. They don't want us dillydallying around going out to focus groups and talking to Frank Luntz and talking about what the hell we are going to do with the American people. But that is too often what this body does and particularly this side of the aisle. We are not going to have 2 more years of the usual crap that this body continually engages in. No more spending money we don't have. No more allowing lawlessness. No more open borders. No more mandates killing the American people. No more mandates driving up the price of energy by subsidizing unreliable energy and driving up the cost of that energy. No more. We are $32 trillion in debt. Wide-open borders cause little girls to get sold into the sex trafficking trade. The New York Times finally wakes up and writes a story about it this week. What do we do? We pass a 3-page bill asking the Democrats to say that we will give you reports on inflation but not if there is emergency spending, because everybody has got to have their precious emergency spending. Oh, gosh, there is a hurricane. So who cares if it is inflationary? So you dump $40 million. Who cares if it is COVID and you dump $5 trillion out in the name of an emergency crushing the greatest economy in the history of the world? No, no. We can't have a report like that. The American people are sick and tired of the same old same old. So far, 2 months into the 118th Congress, I am not seeing it a hell of a lot different than the same old same old. The American people gave Republicans the majority. We ought to darn well use it. It is time to stand up for the American people, and that time is now. That time is not tomorrow. That time is not after another retreat to go figure out how you are going to raise more money. That time is not after another retreat to go look at poll testing. Come down to the floor of the House of Representatives, stand up for the American people who sent you here, and stop playing games with the election certificate you were given to represent them. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Texas Rangers, Texas's oldest law enforcement agency. In 1821, Stephen F. Austin, the ``Father of Texas,'' brought 300 families to settle land in modern-day Texas. There was no regular army, so Austin assembled a fighting force to provide protection from Karankawas, Comanches, and eventually Mexican raiders--giving rise to the Texas Rangers. Texans did what sovereign states have done throughout history: we stepped up and protected our communities. We stood up for the rule of law when there was none. Much of the action seen by the early Rangers involved bloody conflicts with Comanche tribes and gangs of bandits who threatened the safety of Texans. In the years following, the Rangers proved indispensable during major events such as the Mexican American War, the pursuit of criminals Bonnie and Clyde in 1934, and Hurricane Harvey rescue and recovery in 2017. As local law enforcement slowly assumed much of the day-to-day peacekeeping role that the Texas Rangers held before the turn of the 20th century, the Texas Rangers now operate as a key investigative body for the State of Texas. Rangers are renowned for conducting major criminal investigations, suppression of organized crime, border reconnaissance, SWAT, bomb squad, special rapid response, crisis negotiation, joint intelligence center management, and investigation of unsolved crimes. The impact of the Texas Rangers on the Lone Star State cannot be understated. My home county, Hays County, is named for John Coffee Hays, a renowned Ranger appointed by Sam Houston. My great-great- grandfather John Vaughan Roy served as a Texas Ranger in Hays, Travis, and Blanco Counties, protecting our future home and holding the line against lawlessness. To the west, Captain Charles Schreiner of Kerr County served with distinction and went on to donate land for the Schreiner Institute, a military school in my district. Today, I am honored to represent ``Ranger Ray'' Martinez, a living legend in New Braunfels with a long history of heroism and service. The Ranger spirit is also alive and well today in my friend and longtime Texas Ranger David Maxwell, who solved the over 35-year-old cold case in the unspeakable murder of his own sister. ``They were men who could not be stampeded.'' That's how former DPS director, Homer Garrison, Jr. described them. And they have certainly lived up to that. As with so many other great figures of our history, some today wish to rewrite the legacy of the Texas Rangers, focusing only on the harshest of narratives from the comfort of modern-day America while ignoring the sacrifice of these men to settle the west and establish the rule of law. The scripture reminds us: ``Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.'' These heroes wake up every morning and put their lives on the line to serve and protect their fellow Texans. The Texas Rangers are owed a debt of gratitude that cannot be fully repaid. But today, we do thank them, and we congratulate them on 200 years of selfless service.

Mr. ROY

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

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining?

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, the question seems to be about we have nothing allegedly in the cupboard, nothing to offer. I think there is plenty to offer. How about stop spending money we don't have? How about stop dumping trillions of dollars into the economy, jamming up inflation? How about ending all of the subsidies and all of the Federal expenditures that are undermining the American people's ability to create wealth and create jobs? The gentleman talks about the amount of debt that was increased under President Trump. How about the 43 to 45 percent of our entire debt that was increased under Nancy Pelosi as Speaker? Because those are the actual facts, and this is the body that has the power of the purse. This is the body that starts all the spending. We know where the spending starts. The fact of the matter is my colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to talk about creating 12 million jobs. First of all, this body doesn't create jobs. The government doesn't create jobs. The American people create jobs. The fact is our labor participation rate is still far behind pre- COVID levels. We are basically playing catch-up to the utter destruction that was levied against the American people by government, against the American people, shutting down this economy, locking our kids in the corners, setting our kids back generations in terms of their academic performance, and criticizing three-page bills. I will tell you what. It is a far cry better than the 4,100-page, $1.7 trillion omnibus bill jammed through by the Democrats in December, destroying this economy. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Comer), my friend.