Chip Roy

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Correct. But in addition to the increase in spending for our national defense, there is also an additional $45 billion, which is almost the entire budget of our Department of Homeland Security, by the way, $45 billion additional to go to Ukraine on top of the almost $60 billion already approved, authorized this last year, bringing it to somewhere around $100 billion, again for Ukraine, well eclipsing, almost doubling our own Department of Homeland Security budget, well eclipsing the entire defense budget of Russia. American taxpayers are paying for that. We talked about, I think, the 8 to 10 percent increase in defense spending. I would have to look at my notes. A sizable pop of money. Is the gentleman in agreement, because the gentleman served in the United States military for 30 years, and I thank him for it, just like I thank every other veteran and every other Active-Duty member of our United States military for standing up to defend this country, but I don't think the gentleman did that in order to rack up more debt and to destroy our financial security. I don't think the gentleman did that in order to throw 10 percent more money to the Department of Defense, a Department of Defense which is continually more of a social engineering experiment wrapped in a uniform than it is a military designed to kill people and blow things up. Would the gentleman agree?

Mr. ROY. I will yield.

Mr. ROY. My friend from Pennsylvania makes a great deal of sense, and I can't help but observe the utter hypocrisy, with all due respect, of so many of our colleagues on this side of the aisle in both the so- called upper Chamber and the so-called people's House. How about the junior Senator from Utah, Mitt Romney, when he said in 2021, quote, Democrats want to spend boatloads of money at the wrong time and in the wrong ways instead of addressing inflation and dealing with the emerging threat of China. They are dead set on raising taxes and government giveaways. This isn't how we solve the problems facing Americans, end quote. Well, the junior Senator from Utah just supported this monstrosity-- opposed, I believe, the senior Senator from Utah in the election this year, the senior Senator from Utah being the one who was trying to stop this monstrosity today. How about the exiting senior Senator from Alabama? In July of 2022, just this year: ``Inflation hit 9.1 percent today, another record high. This is devastating news for millions of hardworking Americans. The Biden administration remains remiss in getting inflation under control. Passing another massive tax-and-spend bill would be a mistake we cannot afford.'' Well, here is the problem with Republicans, with all due respect to Republicans, they love to use the phrase tax and spend, but my Republican colleagues, who oppose tax increases, which I generally do as well, sure have no problem with spend and spend. Spend for defense, spend for nondefense discretionary, and then go with their tail tucked between their legs back home and go: I am sorry, I couldn't really do anything about it. Our hands were tied because we must have the spending for defense, and we must have the spending for Ukraine because somebody gave a fancy speech in this Chamber last night.

Mr. ROY. I want to lay that foundation about our shared desire to stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine; whatever that means in terms of resources, that should be debated. And by the way, side note: Have we ever had a full, robust debate with amendments and being able to offer any kind of discussion here about Ukraine on the floor of the house?

Mr. ROY. It is more than what the President asked for, I believe.

Mr. ROY. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. ROY. I would add that my 13-year-old son was telling me yesterday morning while I was getting ready to catch the plane to come to Washington, as we were stacking firewood for my wife and daughter and son to use during this cold snap coming into Texas, and he and I were talking and he said, ``Well, Dad''--basically begging me--``you are going to be home for Christmas, right?'' You know, that is my 13-year-old son, and I don't get to see him a lot when I am up here. And he is saying, ``Dad, you are going to be here for Christmas, right?'' And my daughter was saying the same thing, but my son was asking the question. And I said, ``Look, son, I hope so. Of course, I want to be here for Christmas, but under no circumstances am I going to walk away from my duty to fight to give you the country that I inherited, that my dad inherited from his dad, and so forth and so forth.'' Yet, most of my colleagues in this Chamber were so itching to be able to get on their plane or get in their car and go home that last night there was group that were apoplectic that we might be stuck here, that we might be stuck here until Sunday, which is Christmas day, I had multiple people come to me and say, ``Well, what is Senator Lee going to do? What is going to happen?'' Well, heaven forbid, we do our job. Heaven forbid, we do something responsibly. I would ask the gentleman, with a $118 billion increase in spending on our annual year-over-year spending, not including Ukraine spending, not including the disaster relief spending, the emergency spending, on top of the almost $5 trillion we spent in response to COVID, do you think there is a correlation to government action and government spending to inflation? Would the gentleman agree that it is government that causes inflation based on our actions, our spending, our policy choices?

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas, and I wish him well and a very Merry Christmas with his family, and save travels home. I too share his affinity for wanting to work across the aisle. I have done so on numerous occasions. I am fairly well known for speaking my mind on the House floor. But I am happy to work across the aisle, and also an equal opportunity basher of both sides when I disagree. But I wish we would have vigorous debate here on the floor of the House. A lot of things that the gentleman from Texas talked about, I agree wholeheartedly. The immigrants he discussed wanting to come to the United States; I would like them to have safe passage under our rules and under our laws. Right now we have a broken system that is endangering lives; lives of immigrants and endangering lives of Americans. We talked about the ideals and the values of this country, and I share those ideals and values. I would ask and inquire of my colleagues in the body broadly, how can we maintain those ideals if we are bankrupt? How can we maintain those ideals if we are writing checks we can't cash? I can give speech after speech after speech about this topic, but unless we change our ways on both sides of the aisle, this country will not survive. I don't know what it is going to take to get the people who are entrusted to run this country--and that starts in this Chamber, the power of the purse, entrusted to the people's House, we are abusing it. We are conducting our duties irresponsibly, both sides of the aisle. Today, the United States Senate, the Senate, supposedly, the ``upper chamber,'' the House of Lords in the United States, if you will, sent us--or is in the process of sending us, after voting for it, a 4,155- page bill, unveiled yesterday morning at 1:30 a.m., that will cost $1.7 trillion. This bill will increase spending $118 billion. This bill has $45 billion for the country of Ukraine; 21 percent over President Biden's request, by the way. $40 billion for disaster relief. $15 billion for 7,234 earmarks, with the senior Senator of Alabama, Richard Shelby, walking out of the Senate with a legacy of $670 million. I believe the senior Senator said that monuments are for pigeons and dogs in response to my criticism. Well, there is a lot of stuff in your name in Alabama, and you just got some more, Senator Shelby. Is that what this is about? Because who is paying for that? He is not paying for it. Our kids and grandkids are paying for it. You know what else we are paying for? We are paying for $500,000 to the Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth Incorporated; $113,000 to the LGBT Center of Greater Reading, Pennsylvania; $1.5 million for The Loft: LGBTQ+ Community Center new home project in New York, which I got excoriated as somehow being hateful for tweeting that out earlier by one of my colleagues. Now, hold on a second. So I am hateful for raising whether or not we should have $1.5 million set aside for The Loft: LGBTQ+ Community Center in New York that is then divvied up by both age and sexual identity or preference. Okay. I am the bad guy for thinking that maybe taxpayers are thinking, Why are we doing that? $750,000 for New York-based In Our Own Voices, Inc., which aims to strengthen the voices of LGBT people of color and increase their capacity for combating oppression and marginalization. $250,000 to support Wisconsin's first in the Nation gay rights law book and archive. How about the climate agenda? $1.3 million for workforce development activities at a climate change education center in the Los Angeles Community College District. $3 million for clean energy workforce development at the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority; $200,000 for the Rhode Island AFL-CIO's climate jobs workforce training initiative. $875,000 for green energy on demand at Clarkson University; $400,000 for the placement of at-risk young adults into the green jobs industry. $2 million for community driven air quality environmental justice assessment at the University of Illinois. $2 million for a climate change impact on water initiative at Texas State University. I represent Texas State University and that is garbage. Why are we doing this? $10 million for the State of Hawaii's zero emission bus program; $1.6 million for the Center for Wind Energy at UT Dallas. Texas is pretty well represented with all these earmarks. Inequality and equity, the omni funds pointless equity initiatives and subsidies even more radical ideologies, such as $1.5 million for equity and ecosystem help through water column development; $2.25 million for the shoreline equity and adaptation hub. $750,000 for the acquisition of a building in Brooklyn, New York, to create the Brooklyn Center for Social Justice, Entrepreneurship, and the Arts. $300,000 for the city of Sacramento's Neighborhood Equity Initiative. $477,000 for the Equity Institute's ``teacher professional development.'' How about racial wokeness? A few examples: $443,000 for the Racial Justice Improvement Project, Montgomery County DA's office. $1 million for the Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota, to develop and implement a curriculum for racial healing and equity training. $800,000 for Economic Development For Black Communities in Colorado. $750,000 for a minority-owned small business emergency assistance program in Seattle. I could go on and on and on. For all the things that are put in here divvying us up by race, divvying us by gender ideology--all of those earmarks just flooding out with money we don't have. That is not even the worst of it. That is not even the actual irresponsibility of this body. That is just pork spending that this body is used to doing to the tune of $15 billion, $16 billion. The real problem is that we are funding a whole alphabet soup of Federal agencies that are demonstrably not doing their jobs--more importantly, are demonstrably targeting the American people. The Department of Homeland Security is getting $3.2 billion more with no policy changes required, in fact, unbelievably, with restrictions on how that money can be used. It may not be used for security. It may only be used for processing more people. That is what our Democratic colleagues and, unfortunately, a sizable bloc of Republicans believe is a good use of your taxpayer money. Hey, guys, the Department of Homeland Security is doing such a crack job of securing the homeland, they are doing such a great job at the border, let's give them some more money to not secure the border, and let's restrict it from being able to be used to do any of the security that the line Border Patrol agents actually want to do their job. There you go. That is what you got. And what happened in the Senate today? What happened in the Senate today? I will tell you what happened in the Senate today. Blunt, Boozman, Capito, Collins, Cornyn, Cotton, Graham, Inhofe, McConnell, Moran, Murkowski, Portman, Romney, Rounds, Shelby, Thune, Wicker, and Young: 18 Republicans who campaigned on fiscal responsibility, who campaigned on securing the border, who campaigned on balancing the budget, who campaigned against the swamp, who run commercials saying they are going to change this place did the swampiest thing you can possibly do, and that is to vote for a 4,100- page bill they got just yesterday, not knowing remotely what all is in the bill because it was cooked up behind closed doors with no appropriations meetings, jamming it over a new House Republican majority, doing it intentionally to prevent us from being able to debate and vote on how we are going to fund Ukraine, how we are going to fund our own national defense, how we are going to fund nondefense discretionary spending, and ensure that we use that money to secure the border of the United States. That is what your Republican Senators, those 18, did to you, America. Remember it. Remember it when Republicans are going around thumping their chests, talking about changing this town when they are neck-deep drowning in the swamp, when they are emblematic of everything wrong with the swamp. Remember it. Remember it. I don't like saying it. I have friends on both sides of the aisle, and some of these 18 are my friends. But do you know what? John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had a pretty testy relationship because they fought over the way this country should be run and be set up. We are hired to fight for the people we represent, so I will be damned if I am going to give a rat's rear end whether I offend some of the people in this godforsaken town because I dare question, regardless of which party they are in, regardless of who they say they are friends with or who they campaign with, I will be darned if I am going to be cowed into not calling out what you see unfold before you with your very eyes. Leader Mitch McConnell called the bill ``a strong outcome for Republicans.'' The arguments that I have heard from some of the Members include this argument. Having lost a vote for a continuing resolution until the new Republican majority takes over in January, we had two bad choices: cast a protest vote against funding our military, veterans, Border Patrol, and other essential government functions, or vote for a flawed bill. That is what happens in this town. This was a setup, ladies and gentlemen. It was purposeful. Well orchestrated by Mitch McConnell. I do not question that. He is good at playing these games in this town, as is virtually everybody associated with the appropriations process and leadership of the House and the Senate. They have all the excuses in the world: There is a troop pay raise. There is a helicopter that we need to buy. There are missiles we need to buy. There are boats and planes we need to buy. Because of that, we must cast a vote for a flawed bill rather than ``a protest vote.'' A protest vote? What is a protest vote? My vote, which I will cast whenever we get this monstrosity finally sent over here, whenever the Committee on Rules goes through their sham process--and it is a sham process, ladies and gentlemen. They will entertain some amendments, and they will give some perfunctory, ``Let's review it.'' They will kick it down here to the floor. There will be no debate, no amendments offered. It will be jammed through because every one of the people in this Chamber, both sides of the aisle--maybe not everyone, the vast majority--they want to get on their jets and get home for Christmas. You should have seen the wailing and gnashing of teeth last night when Mike Lee was offering an amendment over in the Senate to try to address the expiration of title 42 and what is going to occur if the Supreme Court lifts its stay. What is going to happen in Texas, what is going to happen to the United States, what is going to happen to migrants, the empowerment of cartels, the fentanyl pouring into our country, Mike Lee dared to try to do something about that. You should have seen the wailing and gnashing of teeth: Well, what are you going to do? We don't want to be here until Christmas. Why don't you tell that to George Washington and the boys crossing the Delaware in 1776 or the boys in Bastogne in 1944? What were they doing on Christmas? Were they trying to fly out of the Nation's Capital in their jets back to their homes around their warm fireplaces so they could be with their families after they absolutely just royally screwed the country and their kids and grandkids? Because that is what they just did. That is what this body, this House Chamber, the people's House, is going to do tomorrow morning. Mr. Speaker, $600 million more for the Federal Bureau of Investigation while doing nothing to stop it from colluding with Big Tech, targeting parents, or harassing pro-lifers, all of which the FBI is doing as we speak. It is better than that, ladies and gentlemen across the country. They are getting a brand-new headquarters. Do you want to know what almost derailed this lovely $1.7 trillion piece of legislation? A fight over where to put the fancy new FBI headquarters. These are the important things we do here in this city. Let's figure out who can get their pork back home in the form of a massive Federal agency that is involved on a daily basis in targeting the American people in the name of law enforcement. That sounds like a winning prize for the people of either Maryland or Virginia. Let's grow this greater metropolitan area even more. What could do more for the people of the United States than to have a fancy new FBI headquarters filled with all sorts of people who are conspiring to target the American people and actually label a father as a domestic terrorist for daring to go to a school board meeting? By the way, the superintendent of that school system has been indicted. These are all the things that just get swept aside, pushed to the corner. Nobody wants to talk about it. Where are my colleagues, by the way? I get an hour of debate time down here. Where is everybody? Are they sipping on some eggnog with some whiskey and having some steak dinners or something? What is more important than sitting down here on the floor and highlighting the fraud being perpetrated on the American people right before our eyes, a complete and utter disastrous fraud, endorsed by 18 Republican Senators--I hope none of my Republican colleagues in this Chamber, but we will see--a bill that will fundamentally limit our ability to secure the border. It is actually in the dang bill. They don't even pretend anymore, ladies and gentlemen. They don't even try to hide it. They actually put the text in the bill that says this money cannot be used to secure the border of the United States. It can only be used to process people. That is in the text of this bill. Let me be clear to those 18 United States Senators: That alone should have been enough to have you vote ``no'' on this bill. Yet, you voted for it. It should have been enough that we are giving another $600 million to the FBI and building a new headquarters. It should have been enough that there is more money for ATF and all sorts of provisions to go after law-abiding gun owners. It should have been enough that there was $2.5 billion more for NIH, which funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan and pays Anthony Fauci's salary in perpetuity, and hires CRT propaganda speakers. I say again to those 18 Republican Senators: You own this. You own every one of those earmarks that I listed and said in this speech, every one of those earmarks that I put out in a tweet thread earlier. You own it. You own it with the kind of reasoning that says: Well, you vote for a flawed bill instead of casting a ``protest vote.'' It is not a protest vote to come to the Chamber where you were hired by your constituents to fight for them and vote against the funding of the very tyranny you campaigned against; to vote against the very irresponsible spending that is driving up our national debt, increasing inflation, weakening the dollar, undermining the American family; to vote against that; to vote against the funding of the Federal bureaucrats like, for example, the $760,000 more going to the CDC, whose Director lied about vaccine efficacy while the CDC colluded with Big Tech to suppress free speech about vaccines. How about the World Health Organization, giving them more money? The State Department, $3.6 billion: They fund drag shows in Ecuador and an LGBT group in Kazakhstan that advocates for transwomen sex workers with migration experience. I don't care what you believe about these things. Why in the hell are the American people borrowing money to fund them? Someone explain that to me. Someone explain to me how it is in the interest of the United States, when we are sitting here $31.4 trillion in debt, to borrow more money to build more Federal buildings, to hire more Federal bureaucrats, to fund these kinds of earmark programs throughout the world, things that nobody in America actually wants to see happen. Poll it. Go ahead. Elon, if you are listening, throw this out on Twitter for a poll. I promise you what the result will be. The American people are beside themselves at an incompetent Chamber in this body and the other side of this building in the Senate who seem to wake up every single day and decide, how can we screw the American people over more today than we did yesterday? Well, today is a banner day in the annals of this supposedly august institution known as the United States Congress: $560 million for an EPA destroying reliable energy; $574 million for a Department of Interior that has leased fewer Federal acres for oil and gas development than any administration since World War II. Before I turn it over to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry), my friend, I assume tomorrow, after voting for this monster of a bill as a body--not individually--I assume that we will all be heading out for Christmas. This bill will pass. This bill will become law. My question for this body, heading into the 118th Congress, is what are we going to do to change the way we do business? This is no way to operate. You cannot drop 4,000 page, $1.7 trillion bills onto the floor of the Senate, jam it through, send it over here so bad that we are having to wait to get it by midnight, work through the Rules Committee to vote on it in the morning so everybody can get out to beat a winter storm. We had all year. All year we had to try to fund this Federal Government responsibly, and we failed. We fail every year. No corporation would put up with this garbage. Every one of us would be fired. And we should be. And I will just say right now, if my colleagues will join with me to all resign, I will resign. I would love to clean this place out. I would love to get rid of every last person in here, including my friends, because if you took, in the words of William Buckley, the first 435 names in the phone book, can they do any worse than the schleps in this body? I don't for the life of me understand how it can be possible to do worse than we do. And the Senate itself, hell, the Senate makes us look like William the Conqueror. They don't even bother to do Appropriations Committee work. They just scoff and sit at their tables and go, well, we will just do the work for them. Yeah, thanks, Mitch.

Mr. ROY. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania for the purposes of a colloquy.

Mr. ROY. Yes, 1:30 in the morning.

Mr. ROY. There is a joke in there somewhere.

Mr. ROY. Hey, wait a minute. Does the gentleman have any ideas about why Alabama might be receiving so many of these earmarks?

Mr. ROY. That is a great question that my friend raises. The omnibus spending bill that is coming over to us from the Senate, to the best of my understanding, raises defense spending somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 to 10 percent, right?

Mr. ROY. Merry Christmas to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, and merry Christmas to the staff here. God bless you all and thank you for all the work you do for this country. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY. I assume the gentleman would agree that when we are talking about this spending--let's pause for a second. Let's just set aside the fact that we are giving a $76 billion increase to a Defense Department, which has not been held accountable for its departure from Afghanistan, leaving billions behind, walking away from Bagram, undermining our interests, no accountability, no review of the woke policies, orders not to use terms like ``mom'' and ``dad'' at the Air Force academy or a whole story yesterday about the Marines maybe walking away from the use of ``sir'' and ``ma'am,'' it is just a fundamental undermining of the culture of the Department of Defense--purposeful by the way. Every recruit and every member of the Armed Forces Active Duty whom I have talked to says that it is gutting the ability to recruit, and it is gutting the ability to have strong morale. Let's put aside that. Let's put aside $45 billion for Ukraine without accountability and a knowledge of how it is being spent and what it is being used for in our national security interests. Let's set aside $40 billion for disaster relief. I don't even know where it is going. Let's set aside the $16 billion in earmarks my friend just talked about and that he and I outlined. Let's set aside the $3 billion for DHS with no policy changes and, in fact, language inserted in the bill that prevents us from actually securing the border while processing more people; the $600 million for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the new headquarters for the FBI; the $215 million for ATF; $2.5 billion for NIH which is basically at war with freedom and forcing needles into the arms of the American people and undermining the freedom of the American people in terms of their health choices and paying Anthony Fauci's salary; a CDC of $760 million; the World Health Organization; the State Department at $3.6 billion; an Education Department which is administering Biden's $400 billion student loan bailout, all of that stuff, let's ignore all of that. Let's ignore all of those horrible policies and all the things that he is doing to undermine our freedom and creating the alphabet soup and expanding the alphabet soup of bureaucracy that is tyrannizing the American people. Let's put all that aside. We are just talking about inflation, and we are spending more money and dumping more money. While we are raising interest rates to cool it, we are going to spend more money causing more inflation, undermining the dollar even more. In July of 2022, we had Mitch McConnell just saying that, oh, a few years back Republican policies created the best economy for American workers in a generation, low inflation, robust growth, record unemployment. Democrats' recklessness--Democrats' recklessness he said--has produced soaring inflation, slowing growth and growing risk of a full-on recession. How about Shelley Moore Capito from West Virginia in August of 2022 in an op-ed, thumping the lectern about the Inflation Reduction Act: ``Americans understand pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy and raising taxes will certainly not reduce inflation.'' How about Todd Young from Indiana: ``About the border, this is a national security crisis. We must strengthen our border security.'' How about Mitt Romney from Utah who told Mayorkas that he needed to secure the border and urged him to keep title 42 in place. And then he just worked against the whole effort today by the junior Senator from Utah. Things are upside down, and we are spending money we don't have causing inflation. Republicans go out and campaign against it, and then they do it. And my Democratic colleagues have never once had an honest conversation on the floor of this House about what we are going to do about inflation, what we are going to do about spending money we don't have and racking up debt. When I came to Congress as a staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee, our national debt in 2003 was about $6 trillion, I think. We are at $31.4 trillion and climbing. The question here is: Are we going to do anything about it? The resounding answer from this body,--including my colleagues on this side of the aisle--is: No, we are not. So I think my question for the gentleman is: Does he share my belief that it is time to end the status quo and that it is time for a radical departure from the way we are doing things? It is time to change the way we are doing business in the House of Representatives. It is time for a change to do the way we are doing business in the United States Senate, and it is our job to keep our heads up high as not conservatives and not Republicans or Democrats but as Americans who want to actually do the hard work necessary to be responsible stewards of this country and of our great birthright. Does the gentleman agree with me that as we head into the 118th Congress and as Republicans are in the majority that we must fundamentally change this institution from top to bottom, from the leadership down? This place must change, and we will not accept anything but change. That is why we were sent here. As we exit here for Christmas, as my friend goes home to his daughter and I go home to my son and my daughter, I am not going to look them in the eye and say that I didn't do everything I know how to do so we can change this place so that we can save America for them. Mr. PERRY: I agree with the gentleman with this caveat: It is not just time; it is long past time. I would suggest to the good gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) that he has worked diligently in his time here within the system, within the status quo, to make these changes. Others do not want to make too many ripples because you have to work with these folks, and this is the system that is set up, and if you make everybody mad at you, how are you going to be effective? The status quo is not working, ladies and gentlemen. We have tried. We have tried to work within the system that is here. The system that is here produces this. Do you know how I know? Because since I have been here, this isn't the first time I have come to the mic. I can come here probably every few months and go through the same thing. It is not the first time right around Christmas we have got a short-term continuing resolution right before Christmas so we can pass an omnibus and just keep on spending the money that we don't have and more programs that don't make any sense. We have got $3 million for the University of Maine system to research wild blackberry production for changing markets and climates. Well, my goodness, as a man who had to pick blueberries--that was my first job was picking fruit, and blueberries were one of them--I don't know why it is the job of the whole country to pay for the University of Maine to figure out about blueberry production. Ladies and gentlemen, this system is broken. The status quo doesn't work for Americans. The lady that has to buy these blueberries and can't afford them doesn't care about this system here. She doesn't care about the status quo and making colleagues uncomfortable in this Chamber or the other one. What she cares about is feeding her children and feeding her family. And right now she can't afford to do it because of the status quo. This cannot continue. Something has to change. Einstein said that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity. Ladies and gentlemen, citizens of America, we are doing the same things under the same conditions with the same people, and somehow, we think something is going to change. Well, it is not going to change unless we change it. We are highlighting this tonight. The gentleman from Texas and I are here highlighting this tonight to tell you how egregious it is, how long it has been going on, and to elicit your support--your support-- calling your Representatives and your Senators and saying: This will not stand. We are sick and tired of this: $2.52 million for an electric battery and an electric charging station program at some community college; $6.85 million for real estate strategies to obtain equity property acquisition and redevelopment in Delaware. Why is that your job to pay for that? We don't have the money to pay for that. You would like it in your community I bet. But you are going to pay for it in someone else's.

Mr. ROY. And does the gentleman believe that it is possible for people who have concerns about these things--about the spending, about the ridiculous decisionmaking in this Chamber--to want to stand up and be able to say that they stand with the people of Ukraine in solidarity but don't believe that writing a blank check is in their interest, our interest, or anybody's interest?

Mr. ROY. I am suggesting that it was in no way, shape, or form a coincidence. I am suggesting that it was purposeful theater designed very specifically to create the winds in the sails of the appropriation process which is badly broken, and we get a 4,100-page bill dropped on us that we then must vote for. Right? Have to vote for it.

Mr. ROY. On any matter whatsoever. So what I would inquire of the gentleman is does he agree with this: If you go back and look about what is going on, everything you are seeing unfold before your eyes, America, is a setup? It is a complete setup. You go back to September, and a block of about 42 of us wrote a letter to the leaders of these august bodies saying, Hey, how about not doing a continuing resolution into the middle of December right before Christmas? How about you not do that because we know exactly what that results in. We sent that letter. What happened in September? A continuing resolution right until the middle of December. Now, you get to the continuing resolution in the middle of December, and there is all sorts of chatter about: Will there be a continuing resolution into early 2023 with a new House majority? Never in the last 70 years have we had a change, a transfer in the majority of the House Chamber and had the Senate do what it did today, which is jam through a massive spending bill with the existing House, soon to be minority, and jam it through. Now, fast-forward to right now, and what do you have? We have this bill sent to us that spends $1.7 trillion: a 10 percent increase in defense spending; $42 billion increase in nondefense spending, which is 6 percent; Ukraine funding of $45 billion; disaster relief funding of $40 billion; and $15 billion of earmarks that I went through and described a little bit ago. Who spoke in the Chamber in the United States House of Representatives last night, other than the President of Ukraine? Now, does the gentleman believe, as I do, that that is not an accident? The entire setup from the House Republicans and the Senate Republicans working with the Democrat leadership in both Chambers was to set that up so that you have the President of Ukraine speaking here saying we have got to pass this massive spending bill because you had the whole theatrical event set up from the beginning, set up to expire right before Christmas to then jam through 7,200 earmarks, a massive amount of spending, a continued explosion of the bureaucratic state, a restriction on the ability to secure the border, all because you knew you had a handful of Republicans on the hook who couldn't help themselves because we are talking about defense and we are talking about Ukraine. Does the gentleman think that maybe that stuff is not a coincidence?

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to call up H.R. 9525 to extend the funding of government through February 3, 2023.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Pennsylvania, I appreciate the Speaker, and the gentleman from California. Mr. Speaker, my friend from Pennsylvania and I share a love of outlaw country music, whether it is Texas-based--my preference--or generally. There is a famous picture of Johnny Cash standing up giving his middle finger, and it is on the cover of an album. If all 435 of us stood on the steps of the Capitol with our middle finger to the American people, it would be a more honest action than what we are engaging in here on the floor of the people's House right now. Let me tell you what is happening right now. In true swamp fashion, what we are about to do is deem as passed a House bill on Federal agency reporting goals with a House amendment to a previously passed Senate amendment to enable us to have a revenue measure--to enable us to give the Senate a revenue measure to satisfy the constitutional requirement that revenue bills originate in the House. The House amendment to a Senate amendment fast-tracks the omnibus by allowing the Senate to bypass a motion to proceed vote. Now, that is a bunch of complicated, parliamentary procedure gobbledygook for the American people, but what it is is a fraud. It is a fraud. It is actually trying to end-run the rules in order to jam through what? A massive $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill without any actual debate. That is what is happening right now on the floor of the House of Representatives, nothing else. In that $1.7 trillion bill--and pause for a second--what are we actually packaging here? A week-long continuing resolution to keep the government open through this weekend into next week so negotiations can continue to wrap up this $1.7 trillion monstrosity. So the vote today is a vote to perpetuate and extend funding for a week to allow a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill in a lameduck Congress. That has not been done, by the way, in the last 70 years when we have had a flip of the House, a flip in majority control of the House. We have not done that over the last 70 years. In the five times there has been a flip, we do not pass big spending bills in a lameduck Congress, which is what this is. My Democratic colleagues know it; my Democratic colleagues in the Senate know it; and the Senate Republicans who seem to be trying to grease the skids of this, they know it, as well. Here we sit. So to the American people, you need to understand what the people's House is doing to you today--standing on the steps of the Capitol sticking their middle finger up at you would be more honest because this is defense spending, $858 billion, a 10 percent increase. We can debate the need for a defense spending increase. Many of us probably would agree we need to have more defense spending, but we also need to fix the Department of Defense. We need to stop having it turn into a woke agency that is essentially social engineering wrapped in a uniform. Let's fix the Department of Defense. No, we are not debating that. We are just going to give another blank check of 10 percent additional spending. But it is worse than that. We are now going to have nondefense spending reports--we haven't seen the text because, oh, no, the little people here in the House can't see the text before we actually vote on this crap. No, no, no, they are going to jam it through without seeing the text. Nondefense spending--reports indicate somewhere between an 8 to 11 percent increase. Now, to put that in context, we are talking about something in the order of $50 to $60 billion. Here is the thing, we just spent something like $2 trillion in nondefense discretionary plus-up during COVID, and we are now going to jump into this, and we are going to say, oh, yeah, I have got a good idea. Let's jump up nondefense discretionary spending. That is all of the alphabet soup of all of the agencies that are attacking the American people every single day, empowering the FBI to designate parents as domestic terrorists, empowering the DHS to not actually secure the homeland while Americans are dying from fentanyl poisoning and immigrants are burning up 53 of them in a tractor trailer in San Antonio. That is what we are dealing with. This CR is the gateway drug to an omnibus spending bill next week. That is why we should oppose it. We should oppose the CR, we should oppose this rule, and we should oppose the omnibus. The American people deserve a House of Representatives that is actually doing the work of appropriating rather than jamming through an omnibus bill right before Christmas in a lameduck session after the American people spoke and sent a new majority to the people's House.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I understand the collegiality of the body and wanting to engage. I am happy to engage. We just never get a chance to engage. We are down here, basically, in a fake debate. That is what we all know. I mean, the truth is it is not like we have a body, a Chamber filled here with human beings debating this $1.7 trillion while we are $32 trillion in debt. I would be happy to. Why don't we actually roll up our sleeves around these tables and do the work? But we don't do that. We are literally down here, and we are going to do--what?--30 minutes a side, if we even do that, and then we are going to vote. We are going to vote on a rule that packages together, as I said, deeming as passed a House bill on Federal agency reporting goals with a House amendment to a previously passed Senate amendment to pass a $1.7 trillion omnibus, combined with a CR for an extension for a week, in a lame-duck Congress. That is the truth. The American people pull their hair out. They go, gosh, what on Earth is happening in Washington? Well, I will tell them what is happening in Washington. This, this is what is happening in Washington. We know what this is about. This is jamming through a bill at the eleventh hour to get the political priorities of the current Democratic majority, and a handful of Senate Republicans are happy to do it so they can get pork. The House and the Senate have requested a total of $16 billion for 7,500 earmarks. The top requester: Senator Richard Shelby, ranking member of Senate Appropriations, with $656 million. This is a nice little send-off for the appropriators in the Senate. But the fact of the matter is the American people are the ones who get screwed in this deal. They are the ones who end up losing their country with $32 trillion in debt. There is no justification for ramping up spending an additional 10 percent for nondefense discretionary after all the money that has been spent under COVID and using the Defense Department as the backs upon which you are going to place the debt of our children and grandchildren and say that, ``Oh, yes, we are doing this for defense.'' That is just wrong. At what point are we actually going to do the work of the American people in the people's House? At what point are we going to actually debate? At what point are we actually going to amend? At what point are we actually going to live within our means and stop writing checks we can't cash? The American people are staring at us. They throw their hands up in the air and wonder what has become of the country that their brothers and sisters and dads and moms and daughters and sons have fought for. Why do we stand in front of that flag? Why do we open in prayer? Why do we say the Pledge of Allegiance if we are going to rip apart the flag right here in this body, in this Chamber? Because that is what we are doing, using backroom deals, dropping these bills on the floor, and not allowing us to actually engage in debate over these important matters. The American people are tired of spending money we don't have, and they are tired of open borders. They are tired of empowering bureaucrats like the FBI. They are tired of forced vaccine mandates at the Department of Defense. They are tired of an IRS harassing the American people, allegedly, for more revenue. They are tired of an NIH and a CDC making it up as they go along and shutting down economies and jamming it down the throats of the American people. They are tired of an EPA and a Department of the Interior restricting Americans' ability to have reliable energy. The American people are tired of it. I hope help is on the way. I am glad the Republicans seem united against this in the House, and I am looking at Mitch McConnell when I say this: Do your job, Leader McConnell. Do your job, and follow the wishes of the American people, who gave a majority to Republicans in the House of Representatives. Let's stop this bill.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from California talked about the extent to which the process is bad and that we can do better. Well, I am glad that he agrees with that. The question is, well, let's agree right now to amend the CR to March. Why don't we do that? Why don't we agree right now to amend the continuing resolution until March? Well, we know why my Democratic colleagues don't want to do that, right? They don't want to have a full-throated debate on this. They don't want to have an actual discussion. Why don't we have an open process? Why don't we actually have amendments here on the floor of the House? We haven't been able to offer an amendment on the floor of the House of Representatives since May 2016. But the gentleman from California knows this. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle know this. This isn't about actually saying let's have a process that works. It is the opposite. It is using Christmas and the end of the year to jam this through, not to buy time with a 1-week CR so we can negotiate. Who is negotiating? Three people in a room? We are not. We are not debating this on the floor. We are not going to do it in the light of day. No. What is going to happen is one big bill will be dropped on the floor after this rule is jammed through, on the 23rd of December, 2 days before Christmas, intentionally, right before Christmas, in order to force everybody to come in, with no amendments, to vote up or down on $1.7 trillion. How on Earth did we end up $32 trillion in debt? That is how, and there is no actual resolve to do anything about that. Again, control of the House of Representatives has shifted from one party to the other five times since 1954. In none of those years have we had the outgoing Congress pass a comprehensive spending bill in the lame duck that is after the election. We shouldn't do it now. We shouldn't do it in the future. One last point: If there is a debate in the Senate right now and some of our Senate colleagues decide to object to the continuing resolution, which I would support, which would then call into question the funding on Saturday, when we wake up, let's be very clear that it is Democrats who would be risking shutting down the government because they are so married to funding the alphabet soup of the bureaucracy throughout this town that is strangling the American people, strangling prosperity, spending money we don't have, refusing to secure the border, empowering FBI agents to go after the American people. Those are the priorities of my Democratic colleagues. If there is any debate on Saturday as to whether the lights are going to be turned on in the government, it is on the hands of Democrats married to a bureaucracy rather than standing up in defense of the American people who send us here.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, every one of us here have significant groups of constituents and people across this country from the communities in question, from the Chinese-American communities, from the Indian- American communities, who have interest in wanting to make sure their communities can be represented and might well support some of this. But of course they do. Of course they do. What are we going to do here but pick winners and losers? That is what this Congress does every single day, pick winners and losers. Who are the losers on this? It is not Big Tech, it is not all the big corporations that are all happy to collude with the people's House in order to get their labor supply, what they need. But who are going to be the losers? A lot of the hospitals. Why did the hospital association oppose this? Could it be that there are Filipino nurses and others who are going to be left behind or are going to have to go to the back of the line? The Filipino nurses that were crowding the room in which I was being treated for cancer at M.D. Anderson, which is chock-full of Filipino nurses? We are picking winners and losers here based on nationalities and specific countries. The gentlewoman from California just tried to mount a defense that we are not going to open the door to Chinese Communists coming to the United States but conveniently leaves out of the code all of the exceptions: exception for involuntary membership, exception for past membership, exception for close family members. I mean, any idiot could drive a truck through those holes. This is not a hard thing to understand what is happening. At the eleventh hour, at the end of the 117th Congress, while Democrats are colluding with a bunch of weak-kneed Republicans in the Senate to pass a bunch of money that we don't have, to borrow more money that we don't have, to jam through a massive omnibus spending bill at the expense of the American people, this body is about to jam through a garbage immigration bill that will undermine people around the world seeking to come here who are going to be put to the back of the line while colluding with Big Tech and big corporate interests to do it. That is what is happening right now on the floor of the House. We never actually have full-throated debates about this stuff, contrary to what the gentlewoman said. She just dismissed it: Oh, we had a couple hearings. One witness mentioned something in a hearing and that constitutes a hearing? We are not having an actual debate here on the floor. We are having 30 minutes of each side getting up and saying their talking points. Then we will have a vote, and then we will move on. We are not going to be able to offer amendments on the floor because nobody in this body, none of the leadership on that side of the aisle or, frankly, often this side of the aisle, gives a damn about my right to be able to offer an amendment on this floor of this House as my constituents gave me the power to do. We are here trying to defend the interests of having an immigration policy that is not based on the interests of one industry at the expense of countless other industries and at the expense of an immigration system that actually works while our border is wide open, being exploited by cartels and China to kill 72,000 Americans last year, and my Democratic colleagues don't give a rip about a wide-open border exploiting the American people and migrants getting abused in the process.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from as Arizona being down here, as always, enlightening the American people and using the floor time in the honor of our soon-to-be-leaving-the-House friend, Louie Gohmert, and making sure that we use the time here to inform our constituents back home. As usual, the American people understand I am speaking to a mostly empty Chamber, with the exception of the Speaker and my friends who are now leaving who were just here. This is pretty much what we get in terms of debate here in the House Chamber. Earlier today we had a little bit of back and forth on a couple of bills, but they are pre-programmed, like 30 minutes a side, pre- designed, all designed to get right off the floor; and I want to talk about that. That is why I am coming down here today. Today, we took up two bills on the floor of the people's House. We took up a bill that is ostensibly focused on marriage and allowing recognition of same-sex marriages from one State to another. But in that bill is something that is pretty significant for the American people to understand, regardless of your views about how the bill is being sold, about it being about recognition of same-sex marriage. Actually, they say it is about codifying Obergefell and same- sex marriage. It does no such thing. It only deals with recognition across State lines. But even if you think that is good policy, even if you voted for it-- and I didn't think it was good policy. I would have voted against it on the merits--in the bill is a sword, a private right of action, a private right of action able to be used and creating the ability of the Attorney General of the United States to go after individuals for actions they carry out, their closely held religious beliefs. People in this Chamber voted for it, knowing full well that the language in that bill will allow lawyers and organizations to come sue Americans and force them into court; and their response is that, oh, don't worry, you have the Constitution of the United States and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Well, no kidding. I know the Constitution exists. And the Religious Freedom Restoration Act dates back to, I don't know, '93 or '94, sometime in the 1990s. But now, if you dare, as an organization, a religious school, for example, say: ``Wait a minute. It is against our tenets of faith to hire a same-sex couple, or an individual who is part of a same-sex couple, as a teacher in our school,'' or maybe another organization makes a choice along those lines, now you are in court. Now you are having to go defend yourself. Now you are having to go take this up to the Fifth Circuit and up to the United States Supreme Court, trying to figure out how they are going to interpret all of this, whether this law is even constitutional in the first place, all because our colleagues on the other side of the aisle wanted not to just provide for recognition across States--again, a proposition with which I do not agree. But not just that. They wanted to make sure that there was a sword to go after you if you disagree. Earlier this summer, a member of Parliament in Finland was prosecuted for a pamphlet she distributed 20 years ago in defense of traditional marriage and in opposition to same-sex marriage. Again, whatever your views are on the issue, let me be perfectly clear: What is happening today, what was decided today on the floor of the House, and all those Members on that side of the aisle and the 39 on this side of the aisle who voted for that legislation, voted for a sword to go after individual Americans, private citizens, and private organizations for daring to carry out their closely held, private religious beliefs. We will be back here talking about that. We will be back here trying to pass legislation to make sure we can protect them. I offered an amendment in the Committee on Rules to try to get a vote on the floor of the House, and I was denied even the ability to offer the amendment. We couldn't even offer the amendment. Lord knows, I don't have the power to offer an amendment on the floor of the House of Representatives. Again, I want everybody out there in America to understand that not since May 2016 has an individual of the so-called people's House been able to walk into the well of the House and offer an amendment on a piece of legislation, this time as consequential as marriage and religious liberty. Again, let me reiterate, whatever your views are on the issue--and I have mine--shouldn't we be able to debate marriage? Shouldn't we be able to debate religious liberty and the ability to protect your views and your closely held religious beliefs? No, no, no. I was punted out of the Committee on Rules for supposedly, irony of ironies, on a day in which we just authorized $860 billion in a 4,400-page bill I got 40 hours before I voted on it, because it would score over half a million dollars--yeah, $500,000-- over 10 years. That wasn't even actually what the CBO said. They said it could because it might create some revenues and some expenditures and, those expenditures, those outlays, would be what? Damages if you went to court and you succeeded. I want you to be able to understand that my Democratic colleagues used a point of order to shut down an amendment to protect religious liberty if it would be successful to protect your rights. That is assuredly and 100 percent what happened, yet it was just blown over, disregarded here in the House Chamber, including by 39 members of my own party, because that is the way this town works. The bill was dubbed a gay marriage codification of Obergefell bill. You had 39 members of my party go: Oh, well, I have to be for that because we have to be for our Libertarian-type principles. Never mind that you are trampling on the ability of States and communities to be able to decide how they want to live, how they want to set up their communities, trampling on millennia, thousands of years, of traditional marriage, which is designed very specifically for families and children. There is tons of evidence and research on this. But, no. We have to do that. We have to ignore the sword and the attack on religious liberty. It was voted on today without debate and without an amendment. It is extraordinary. What else did we do today in this august body, so much debate and interaction and discussion among the 435 Members here on the floor? What else was done today? I will tell you what was done today. On the desk on the floor of the House of Representatives was a stack of papers up on the second level, 4,400 pages stacked up right there, which I got at 9 p.m. on Tuesday night. We have a rule in the House of Representatives that you are not supposed to vote on legislation if you don't have at least 72 hours to read it. Why might you have that rule? I don't know. Color me crazy. Maybe I should read what is in a 4,400-page bill. I know that is a radical position. I know that puts me over in the insane camp. Oh, there is crazy Chip ranting on the floor of the House because, oh, my God, he wants 72 hours to read a bill. Whenever I say this, how many people go: You know what is in the bill. What is wrong? How long does it take you to read a bill? How many Members do you think read all 4,400 pages? Oh, but, Chip, they have staff for that. You have all the committee staff. The committee staff does that. We hold the election certificate. How many of your staff do you think read the 4,400 pages? I know my staff was poring over it late night on Tuesday night and all day yesterday just to see what was in it. Surprise, surprise. What do you find in it? 4,400 pages, $860 billion authorized under the National Defense Authorization Act. I had less than 40 hours before I was voting on it, in plain violation of the 72- hour rule, because we waive the rules all the time. We set up rules and waive them. Nobody seems to care. They just go: Oh, my God, I have a steak dinner to go to. I have a Christmas party to go to. I was down here last night debating the rule on marriage. I was solo. I was one, even on my side of the aisle. When I finished, the House Chamber closed. We were done. I rolled down the street and went to a Christmas party. There were a lot of Members there. There were a lot of Members all over this town rolling out down to their Christmas parties. They sure as hell weren't here debating marriage and religious liberty. What do we get in getting this NDAA passed? We got a vaccine mandate repeal. Or did we? I think we got a really important step forward to say that the members of the military shouldn't be fired if they dare question whether they must take a needle in their arm for a vaccine that has not been proven to be actually effective in halting transmission and certainly not necessary for those who are young and healthy, by virtually any account by any doctor that we have had testify on this. So you reject the needle and you get fired from the United States military. For 2 years, we have been calling to get rid of the vaccine mandates. Finally, in December 2022, right on the way out, Democrats say: Whoa, okay, in order to get this 4,400-page monstrosity across the finish line, we will accept that we will, in 30 days, undo the memo at the Department of Defense. That memo could be reissued. In fact, the Democrat chair of the Committee on Armed Services effectively said that. Are we going to get anybody reinstated? Are we going to get everybody honorably discharged? Are we going to be able to say maybe you shouldn't be harassed? Because that is what happens. You didn't take a needle; you are not getting that job. You didn't take a needle; you are not necessarily getting that promotion. Retaliation, again, for a vaccine that doctors and the CDC today acknowledge does nothing for transmission, that is unnecessary for people who are healthy and young. Here we are. We passed an NDAA in order to get--oh, man we finally got that vaccine mandate repeal language. Look, I am glad to get it. We have been fighting for it. We didn't get half a loaf. We got the crumbs of one piece of bread. But it was so important so we could stop the next person from getting fired. We sure as hell didn't help the guy who got fired last week. It is $860 billion, $45 billion above the President's request, 9 percent over 2022 levels. I am for more money for lethality. I am for more money for a Department of Defense fully capable of killing people and blowing stuff up because that is what you want your Department of Defense to be capable of doing when called upon to do it. I am not for a social engineering experiment wrapped in a uniform. Unfortunately, that is what we are turning the Department of Defense into. Authorizing a Department of Defense center for excellence in environmental security on how and why environmental stresses to human safety and water and energy will cascade to economic, social, political, or national security events; renewing the DOD's annual environment and energy reports; establishing a joint working group on prioritization for energy systems, which ``may reduce conventional air pollution''; creating a pilot program for electric vehicle charging stations; having zero emissions by 2035 for nontactical vehicles. Meanwhile, China is just pumping out aircraft carriers and boats, building their military, building coal-fired power plants. We ain't building any coal-fired power plants. We are barely building any gas- fired power plants. They are out building their military, and we are focused on the coral reef, which appeared 286 times in the text of the NDAA. Well, what else do we do? We establish a commission on reform and modernization of the State Department to offer recommendations to the President and Congress related to personnel-related matters, to strengthen diversity and inclusion, to ensure that the Department's workforce represents all of America. Well, I am sure China is shuddering. We order the DOD to submit a report on its efforts to increase marketing and advertising to adequately reach racial and minority communities. We require the Coast Guard to implement a recommendation by the RAND Corporation to increase representation of women and racial and ethnic minorities. We require the Coast Guard Commandant to develop a 10-year strategy to enhance diversity. We talked about the coral reef before. We got the Global Food Security Reauthorization Act. We have a program for projects to combat coastal erosion in Alaska. What we don't have is a repeal of the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force. It has been there for 20 years, and we are not even using it. Why do we leave these in place indefinitely? What do we have in there? A provision that undermines Second Amendment rights, creates a pilot program on the safe storage of personally owned firearms for members of the Armed Forces. It is on a voluntary basis, but here is the problem: It establishes a structure for the DOD to be providing storage devices for members of the military. We know what the next step is: another grant program, another funding program through the Department of Justice, another program through another agency to be telling you that you must take or you can volunteer to take--you take these but you must put the gun in whatever storage device the government gives you. That is where this is headed. We all know this. They act like it is minimal, doesn't matter, but that is what happens. Then we embrace it, and that program never goes away. It just gets bigger. No little pilot programs try something and then get out of the way. When did the government ever start something and not make it bigger? We are sitting here with $32 trillion of debt, and all we are doing is talking about how much money we are going to spend. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle say: Why don't you increase taxes? I tell you what, why don't we have that debate? You can't tax enough to spend all the money we are spending. You literally can't. Run the numbers. Put up a spreadsheet. If we ever actually debated and came down here and had a serious conversation, we could have that debate. I would love to have that debate, but we just keep writing checks we can't cash. What else are we doing? Authorizing and extending security support to Ukraine at $800 million without inspector general oversight. Amendments were offered in the Foreign Affairs Committee just the other day, saying: Well, shouldn't we have more oversight with Ukraine money? Democratic colleagues said: Well, we are for oversight, but not right now. Why in the hell would we want to have oversight right now over the money we are now spending in Ukraine and how it is being used? No, let's just figure it out later because then what will we do? Nothing. We will do the same thing we always do: Spend more money that we don't have. Not one Member of this body can come down here and refute that because every Member of this body knows it is true. I will throw that out there, a challenge. I would love any Member of this body, any of my 434 colleagues, to come on down. Let's debate the proposition that we are going to do anything other than spend more money that we don't have. I will wait for the takers because the fact is it is true, and it is both sides of the aisle. Here is what will happen: Next year, Republicans will be in control. Next year, there will be all sorts of debate about appropriations bills. We will go through all the motions. Maybe we will pass some really good appropriations bill that holds spending in check to inflation or frozen at 2022 levels or whatever. Come up with something, anything that any normal budget, family, business would do. Our guys will come down and do all that, be all proud, pat ourselves on the back, ``Oh, yes, look at us. We just passed something that is fiscally responsible.'' Even if it is not, we will say it is. Then what? We will barrel forward. The Senate won't accept it. Sometime in August or September, right before a big government shutdown threat, Senators will say, ``We are not taking that.'' A whole bunch of people will say, ``Oh, no. Defense, they need their appropriations.'' A whole bunch of people will say, ``We need nondefense discretionary.'' Hey, I have an idea, why don't we just spend it all? Let's just do that. Let's just say, yes, we will get a 10 percent increase for nondefense discretionary and a 10 percent increase for defense, and we will just call it a day and say, ``Well done us.'' We just spent our children's inheritance so we can go give a speech saying how we helped our military; we wrote a whole bunch more checks for a whole bunch more government bureaucrats and agencies because we have more grants and more programs to promise you more stuff at the United States house of free stuff. We are just going to dole that out without regard to any responsibility whatsoever. Not one Member of this body can refute what I just said other than the maybe hyperbolic examples, although I don't know that they are that hyperbolic. I will wait and see next September where we are on the numbers. ``Inflation is high. Don't you understand, Chip? So why don't we just spend at inflation levels?'' Oh, good. Let's just increase the entire budget of the United States by 8, 9, 10 percent when we are $32 trillion in debt and when mandatory spending is on autopilot to continue to blow through the roof. What about those interest rate payments? Those have gotten a little crazy, huh? Sitting here with now 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 percent interest. We didn't see that one coming, did we? Except that we did, but we didn't care because both sides will retreat to their postures, and then they will just kind of throw their hands up and say: ``Chip, it just is what it is. Biden is President. You need 60 in the Senate. We have a thin majority, so, man, what are we going to do?'' And here we sit. I will give this speech again in January, and I will give it again in March, and I will give it again in May, and then we will be here in September, and I hope someone can prove me wrong, but I will take the bet. There will either be a CR because we can't come to an agreement, which means we are spending at this year's levels, which is I guess somewhat fiscally better, but bad for defense and bad for how you do things, or there will be a massive bunch of spending. That is it. Those are your choices. There will not be a reasonable sit-down to do the job that we are supposed to do. I believe I am going to get in trouble, but I need to go do a radio interview, so I am going to have to walk off the floor now. Here is the thing: I am just asking any one of the Members of either side of the aisle to say we are going to stop doing that. At some point, we are going to stop doing that, stop spending money we don't have, stop cooking all these bills up in back rooms and dropping them on the floor like happened just today with a 4,400-page, $860 billion National Defense Authorization Act, airdropped onto the floor, take it or leave it. So, I left it, and I had to vote against defense, which is not exactly where I want to be, but I am sure as heck not going to continue to go down this road and look at my kids and grandkids one day and say: Well, too bad. Your country is bankrupt. I hope my colleagues will wake up tomorrow and say they want to avoid having to say the same thing to their kids or grandkids. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.