Chip Roy

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. And, today, we have a flow of basically statistically zero at our border. Do you remember when we were in this House Chamber, do you remember when we were debating legislation last year, and we were debating bills, and what did they say? They said: Well, we have got to pass comprehensive immigration reform in order to solve the problem and secure the border, when it was Joe Biden as the President and Alejandro Mayorkas as the Secretary of Homeland Security. Now it turns out, somehow magically, without that being signed into law, magically President Trump is able to stop the flow at the border. Do you think that is an accident?

Mr. ROY. Correct. A day. We had as many as 15,000 in a day, okay, and now we are getting far fewer than 10,000 in a month.

Mr. ROY. And was it not, in fact, true that under President Biden and under Alejandro Mayorkas' regime at the Department of Homeland Security, was it not true that these individuals--and you saw me reading off, by the way, a lot of the years when they had deportation orders, 2022 or previously. Was it not true that these individuals that were released into the United States were either released under parole. In an abuse of law that allows for isolated cases of parole, they released thousands en bloc.

Mr. ROY. Hundreds of thousands en bloc under parole, an abuse of the law, an illegal act, abuse of asylum to release people in our country, and then wide-open borders where people were flooding across the river. Did that in totality, coupled with people overstaying their visas, coupled with, frankly, a far more liberal immigration system than we should have, result in all of these individuals being on the streets? None of my constituents asked for that.

Mr. ROY. None of my constituents wanted illegal aliens who were violent and committing crimes on the streets of our country. President Trump is stopping it. Tom Homan is stopping it. Stephen Miller, Secretary Noem, all of the great men and women in Border Patrol and ICE, they are stopping it. Now, my question is: Why? Why do our colleagues on the other side of the aisle not want to stop it? Could it be for political reasons? Could it be that they want non-Americans to be in the United States to try to transform America and to politically motivate and to politically put Democrats in power? Could that be? I don't want to be so cynical as to speculate here on the House floor, but what other motives would there be to allow dangerous individuals to pour into our communities and carry out what has been carried out?

Mr. ROY. The impact of illegal aliens being in our country or, frankly, those that were wrongly put in our country through parole, asylum, overstaying their visas, or expansive abuse of legal immigration, has a consequence, right?

Mr. ROY. It has a consequence in the form of lost lives. It has a consequence in the form of hospitals that are overflowing with individuals, particularly in Texas, but around the country, jail cells that are overflowing, and schools that are overflowing. All of that is a consequence in terms of costs and continued problems. Just last week, two illegal aliens suspected of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were charged with allegedly weaponizing their vehicle against a Border Patrol agent in Portland. Both suspects originally crossed the southern border under Biden and were released into the interior. The driver wound up with a rap sheet, including DUI, while the passenger is linked to a shooting and a prostitution ring in Portland. That is what is happening. Now, why do I mention that here? Because we just said that President Trump was able to use current law and current authority to secure the border and stop the flow. He is currently using current law, current authority, to remove illegal aliens, including the 1.5 million people here under an order of removal. I want to remind everybody of that. We just blow past that little detail. There are 1.5 million people running around this country who have an order of removal from a judge. They have gone through all the processes. They have had all the fricking lawyers that are paid by the NGOs to try to keep them out of court and keep them in the country, and 1.5 million of them have an order of deportation, of removal. What do we do about it? This is what I want to say. We, Congress, owe it to the President and to the great men and women of Border Patrol and ICE, to our constituents, and to future Americans, who could be endangered by a future administration with open borders, to codify that which President Trump has been carrying out to defend our country. We owe it to all of them to pass a new and updated version of H.R. 2 that we passed in the previous Congress. We stood on this floor as conservatives and united this Conference behind a singular mission of passing laws to prevent the abuses that were being carried out by Biden and Mayorkas. I promise you--remember, we had a President Trump in 2020. We had a secure border in January 2021, with low numbers of border crossings and enforcement of the law. What happened? Biden took over; Mayorkas took over; and we had an explosion. Then, we had dead Americans and dangerous, lawless people on our streets. We, Congress, have a duty to lay it all on the line and to make sure that, this year, under this Congress, with the Republican majority in the House and a Republican majority in the Senate, we deliver to the President's desk the equivalent of H.R. 2 from the previous Congress, which would codify the changes to parole, codify the changes to asylum, codify the changes in catch and release, codify the permanent and continued development of the wall, all the tools necessary to stop the flow at the border that the current administration has put into action. We should demand it. We should change the law so that no future Biden and Mayorkas can endanger the American people. Does the gentleman from Pennsylvania agree?

Mr. ROY. Right.

Mr. ROY. Zero. Now, if we are lucky--if we are lucky--we might get a handful if pushed to the brink. Remember, we got four or five of them to vote for, I think, the SAVE Act. Let's bring that up for a second. Should we not--in addition to guaranteeing that we secure the border and codify the great work of President Trump to prevent the death and destruction of the American people, should we not also guarantee the integrity of our elections by passing yet again the SAVE Act, pushing our Senate colleagues to pass the SAVE Act, and send it to the President's desk, which would simply guarantee that only American citizens vote in American elections? It is that simple. Shouldn't be controversial. Shouldn't be a really difficult concept. We have passed it in the House. The Senate is blocking it. The question is whether Republicans have the nerve to put it on must-pass legislation, to fight for it, to break the filibuster in the Senate, to move the bill and get it to the President's desk, along with some other good changes, like voter ID and other things we should do. Does the gentleman agree that we should, in addition to codifying H.R. 2, secure American elections with these requirements under the SAVE Act to save America, as President Trump rightly said, as President Trump told us in our Conference meeting a week and a half ago, to get it to his desk? Do you agree?

Mr. ROY. I have one final question, one final point. In addition to protecting Americans with H.R. 2 to codify the President's actions, in addition to ensuring that American elections are secure and that you can trust the integrity of elections by passing the SAVE Act, voter ID, and what is necessary to guarantee the sanctity of our elections, should we not also consider something like the PAUSE Act to pause and take a break on immigration when, in fact, we legally have 1.1 million green cards, 1 million guest workers, and north of 1 million foreign students each year? We have more immigrants than every other country in the world combined. We have a foreign-born population of 51.9 million, almost 16 percent, a record high. This is the important part. We have social welfare and social safety nets that are being used by noncitizens that are blowing out the rolls and driving up the cost of all of these goods. My point here is that we have had massive amounts of immigration over our history. All of us love the actual melting pot that America represents, but here is the key issue: You actually have to be willing to assimilate for it to be a melting pot. It is not a melting pot if you are coming here and waving a Palestinian flag or waving the flag of Honduras or Guatemala instead of saying I am coming here to be American, to embrace Western civilization, and to embrace the greatest country the world has ever known that has bled around the world not for conquest but to liberate people, that has died for people around the globe to make it a safer and secure place. People want to come here to be a part of that, God bless them, but the people who come here who want to change it, who want to turn it into an Islamic state, who want to undermine it and who want advance sharia law, who want to bring their flags of their country here instead of adopting and becoming an American--shouldn't we not take a total review of our immigration system, from top to bottom, in addition to codifying security of our border and ensuring the integrity of our election, that only citizens vote and that only citizens are counted for purposes of representation and how we apportion our Members of Congress? All of these things that I am talking about are common sense to ensure a simple principle that American citizens are able to run this country.

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Pennsylvania for joining me tonight. I appreciate his commentary, I appreciate his leadership, and I appreciate his service in the United States military. I appreciate his service to his constituents, and I appreciate his great family. It is a sacrifice for all of us. It is tough when you have young kids, Madam Speaker. Our kids are about the same age. We leave them at home, and we come here, but we are doing it because we want to save this country for our kids and our grandkids. That is why I am in public service. I know when I had a diagnosis of cancer about 14 years ago, Hodgkin's lymphoma, I didn't know if I would be around days or weeks, and 14 years later, I am sure some of my colleagues, maybe they are happy to see me, maybe they are not. I know that when I leave my kids, I know God gave me some more breath and some more time on this planet to try to make sure that we save this, the last great hope for mankind as President Reagan called it. Madam Speaker, I will close with this, and I will turn it over, so my friend from North Carolina can take the floor. We are here to represent the American people. The American people did not send us here as Representatives to give away our country. They did not send us here as Representatives to allow our friends on the other side of the aisle to empower dangerous tax cuts, thugs, gang members, and people who are killing Americans. They did not send us here for that. Every time we vote on appropriations bills and every time we are putting forward legislation, we ought to be thinking about these Americans who lost their lives at the hands of these non-Americans. We ought to be thankful we have a President who recognizes that these non- Americans needn't be on our streets, that we should be siding with ICE and Border Patrol, and that we should be defending the men and women in our law enforcement across the country so we can protect these Americans. So that we can choose to side with the American citizens, not the non-Americans who are dangerous, and we can side with law enforcement to protect these. We can act. This is my message to my Republican colleagues: We have a choice this year. We can retreat and get into the mode of elections. Or we can lead, we can work, and we can roll our sleeves up and right now codify the rules, the laws, and the actions of the President to secure our border and ensure that no future President can abuse them. We can do that right now. We can pass H.R. 2. We can send it to the Senate. We can force the Senate to act if we just have the will to do it. We can send the SAVE Act again. We can add voter ID. We can send it to the Senate. We can dare them to break the filibuster by forcing a talking filibuster instead of the fake filibuster of a forced 60-vote threshold. Make them work. Make 51 Senators sit on the floor and have a quorum. Make them speak. Make them do their job so that we can defend our country and defend our people. Pass the SAVE Act, pass voter ID, and secure American elections. Secure our border permanently instead of just having it depend on the current President. Reform our immigration system. Pause it. We have done it before. Pause it, review it, and stop people from overstaying their visas. Fix the system. Make sure we are not importing people who are adherent to sharia law and want to undermine Western civilization and create mayhem and be against our way of life. Choose the path of leadership. Come here as a Congress and bind together. Don't sit around complaining about having a two- or three- or four-seat majority. Lead, act, and go. That is why we are here. That is why that flag exists. Madam Speaker, put your trust in God, and put the armor of God around you. Stand up and lead for this country. If we do it, then the American people will send us back here in a bigger majority. If we do it, then President Trump will be able to accomplish even more in the next 2 years than in these 2 years. If we act now, then we can actually save this country. If we act now, then we can secure the border. If we act now, then we can secure our elections. If we act now, then we can guarantee an immigration system that no longer imports people into our country who want to undermine it. We can provide healthcare freedom, and we can balance the budget if we act and we lead. Right now, let's secure our country. We can do it this year. That is our calling. We are not here to get re-elected. We are here to deliver for the American people. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I rise as the designee of Mr. Perry, and I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, this amendment revises the scope of review clause within the bill and strengthens the codification of the Supreme Court's Seven County decision issued earlier this year. Now, my friend from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry) is the author of this amendment, and I am offering it for him because he is in committee business. He was offering this amendment to further improve the bill and limit agencies from taking into consideration factors which are not within their authority to regulate. This is the core issue at the heart of what was going on in the Seven County decision. Congress should continue to build upon that unanimous decision. Let me be very clear that the Seven County decision was unanimous and further improved NEPA. This bill that the chairman has brought here to the floor takes significant strides in improving NEPA, and improves upon it by limiting what agencies can regulate to what they already can by law. By ensuring that the scope of review is conducted within the sole legal purview of each Federal agency, we can drastically improve the current landscape of drawn-out, ineffective permitting. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, this amendment would insert that Federal agencies ``may consider only those effects over which the lead agency or cooperating Federal agencies have jurisdiction by law and share a reasonably close causal relationship to, and are proximately caused by, the immediate project or action under consideration.'' There shouldn't be anything objectionable in that commonsense application, that commonsense phrasing. It is a commonsense change that strengthens the bill by narrowing the scope of NEPA to impacts that Federal agencies have the legal authority to regulate. It is pretty simple. It avoids time-consuming reviews of impacts from paleontology to traffic patterns that agencies cannot even control. By ensuring that the scope of review is conducted within the sole legal purview of each Federal agency, we can drastically improve the current landscape of drawn-out and ineffective permitting. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, the goal of this amendment is in keeping with the unanimous Supreme Court decision in which the Court jumped in and reversed the D.C. Circuit. The D.C. Circuit had said, well, we are not going to allow this to proceed, despite you having this 3,600-page report, this environmental impact statement, gone through public comments, et cetera. Everything had been approved, and then the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated that approval, finding that the environmental review overlooked a number of various impacts. The Supreme Court came in and said, No, let's reverse that. You have gone through the process, and what we are trying to do is codify that which would enable us to avoid the kinds of delays that have been hampering our ability to have energy projects. There is a reason everybody's utility bills are up and energy costs are high. It is because we have constrained the ability of our States, communities, and businesses to be able to create and provide the ability for us to have power without getting hamstrung into decades- long disputes and fights going through all the back channels of a maze of bureaucracy. This is a simple, commonsense amendment to try to streamline that. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, of course, they maintain discretion. Agencies will have full discretion if we adopt this language, the discretion to consider the effects over which that agency or the cooperating Federal agencies have jurisdiction. That is it. What we are saying is that we shouldn't have courts making stuff up, and we shouldn't have agencies making stuff up. That is all we are trying to say. Let's get everybody in their lanes. Let's get the agencies in their lanes, and then, let's allow the American people to do what they do best. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, my amendment shores up and strengthens the definition of what triggers an environmental impact statement. I offer this amendment to further improve the bill and prevent agencies from keeping projects in permitting limbo. Again, the driving force here is to try to free up the American people and free up free enterprise to be able to produce adequate and abundant energy for the American people, to be able to produce and create and develop projects that create and provide jobs and to be able to make sure the American people can prosper without being hamstrung by the bureaucracy of a Federal Government that has been limiting our ability to keep up and produce. While the base text of the bill makes a great effort to reduce the length of NEPA review by placing caps on all parts of the process, further defining what constitutes a significant effect that triggers an environmental impact statement will make the bill stronger. Performing an environmental impact statement is the lengthiest and most expensive part of the permitting process. The Government Accountability Office estimates the lengthy EIS process costs between $250,000 and $2 million every time there is a project. My amendment inserts commonsense language that requires at least one significant effect be triggered before an agency subjects a project to the lengthy EIS process. Specifically, my amendment defines a significant effect as: having a proximate and concrete harm that is directly caused by the proposed agency action and that materially impairs human health or property. By adopting this amendment, House Republicans can actually demonstrate their promise to get Washington's bureaucracies out of the way of progress and fulfill, I think, the great intent of this legislation that the chairman has put together and my colleagues on the committee have brought to the floor. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, the reason we are here, the reason that we have this legislation on the floor, is that NEPA is egregiously broken. The SPEED Act, which has been brought to the floor by the chairman, places commonsense caps on how long an EIS can take, and this amendment goes further to restrict what triggers this lengthy, onerous process. Under the current runaway practice, NEPA reviews delay reliable energy projects by 3.9 years. Think about that. Want to know why we have difficulty getting affordable energy? All of these reviews, all of this cumbersome process, has delayed the ability for people to come together and produce energy for themselves, the energy that allows us to be in a heated facility and lit and living and having the benefits of modern life and having hospitals powered and having cars that function and homes that are heated and cooled. You add this 4-year lengthy addition with an EIS, environmental impact statement, and you make it more difficult. America must be able to get energy projects up and running and on the grid if we are going to compete on the global stage and continue to be able to live the benefits of modern life. This amendment addresses the most onerous part of the currently bloated NEPA process. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Chair, I will remind my colleagues that what this amendment does is defines a significant effect as having ``a proximate and concrete harm that is directly caused by the proposed agency action and that materially impairs human health or property,'' fairly common sense. Mr. Chair, in closing, I am going to take 30 seconds, a point of personal privilege here, to respond to something that the gentleman alluded to earlier in another exchange with another Member talking about so-called frivolous litigation by our current President. I find it absolutely extraordinary that in the same week that we found out that the FBI literally told higher-ups at the Department of Justice and the White House that there was not probable cause to engage in a raid at Mar-a-Lago on the former President of the United States, that we are somehow going to enter that fray and not acknowledge the extent to which the abuse of power and the abuse of authority by the Biden administration and by his Department of Justice was extraordinary, historic, corrupt, and worthy of note. If my colleagues want to venture into a debate about lawfare, then we will be happy to talk about the Manhattan DA. We will be able to talk about Fani Willis. We will be happy to talk about Jack Smith. We will be happy to talk about Arctic Frost, not because we are happy that they occurred, but because the American people are offended about the assault on President Trump, on the Members of this body, and on the people of the United States. Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, it was great to have had the chance last night to be at the White House with the President, his Cabinet, and my colleagues. Obviously, we celebrated the Christmas season and our collective belief that this season is particularly important for the American people in recognition of who we are as a people in a Judeo-Christian society and celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is not just a holiday for white lights and garland and making merry. It is a holiday that serves as the center of who we are as a people. As the Speaker knows, sitting there in the Speaker's chair under ``In God We Trust,'' it is that collective faith that we have in the Lord Almighty and our collective belief in his Son that has served as the core of the strength of this country from its founding. I will talk about two things today that are related to that. One is a policy issue. That issue is the ability of the American people to get healthcare and care for one another. The other is defending our Judeo-Christian heritage in Western civilization from the onslaught of those who wish to push the Islamification of our country into the forefront. Mr. Speaker, I will start on the point of the healthcare policy because I think it goes to the central problem we face as a people right now. A lot of folks are talking about ``affordability.'' It has become the political hot-button buzzword. It is affordability. This is being driven intentionally by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle because they have got virtually nothing to run on. They made a choice to shut the government down in order to set up a fight and to try to elevate the issue of healthcare because they believe they can win on it politically. Mr. Speaker, I want everyone to think about that for a minute. They shut down the government because they want to politicize the issue of healthcare and not actually work to solve the problem. Republicans, in my view, have avoided the issue of healthcare out of political fear historically. I believe that this Republican Congress, this Republican House and Senate, and this Republican-led White House have the opportunity today to transform healthcare for the American people so that it can be affordable, so that they can have choice and they can go to the doctor of their choice, and to empower doctors and patients, not insurance bureaucrats and government bureaucrats. I want to repeat that again because I am going to engage in a colloquy and yield to my friend from Missouri in a moment on this important topic. Right now, the average American family is getting crushed and is unable to afford healthcare because Democrats broke our healthcare system. I want to be very clear: Democrats knowingly chose to break the American healthcare system 15 years ago. We told the world what would happen, and it has come true. American families and the businesses that employ most of them are spending about $25,000 a year for insurance premiums that give them fewer options and restricts them on what they can do, gives them higher copays, higher deductibles, and fundamentally makes it impossible for them to have actual care. I go back to my point about In God We Trust and celebrating the Christmas season. As Christians, we are called to take care of those less fortunate than we are. We are called to help those who need help. That is why so many of our hospitals historically were nonprofits built up from faith-centered institutions. That is why so many hospitals are Saint Fill-in-the-Blank Hospital. It is because Christians came together to say that we should care for those who need help, but then came in government. In all of its infinite wisdom, government came in and regulated healthcare, restricted our options and socialized the payments. Now what is the result? It is an impossibility of the average American family to be able to actually get healthcare from the doctor of their choice. It is the inability for them to go get insurance that will give them comfort that if the cancer that I got in 2011 hits them, that they will be able to go get care because they can't afford it. They can't afford it because we have broken it. We didn't break it, Democrats broke it. Right now, Republicans have a choice: Go along with Democrats to continue to socialize healthcare, continue to enrich insurance companies and continue to take away options from the American people or we can stand up for healthcare freedom and stand up for the ability of an average American family to be able to go to the doctor of their choice, get insurance, and go on health-sharing ministries such as Medishare and be able to defray costs, rather than having constrained, regulated, no-option, expensive health management by bureaucrats. That is what we have. The fact is, Mr. Speaker, there is this big debate right now about so-called subsidies. I want to be very clear about what we are talking about. We are talking about COVID-era pandemic cash that was thrown out into our economy in this case for some plus-ups for some subsidies for the broken ObamaCare system. Now we are 5 years removed from COVID, and my Democrat colleagues are trying to say that if we don't extend those subsidies that somehow we are denying people healthcare. That is just flat false. It is a lie. The fact is, ObamaCare remains in place. Its subsidy structure remains in place for better or worse, and those subsidies that they are talking about would literally go into the pockets of insurance companies whose profits have gone up 1,000-plus percent over the last decade. It is an insurance enrichment scheme. My Democratic colleagues broke healthcare, and now they are down here saying: We must give more money to insurance companies. That is what they are saying. Any Republican who goes along with that needs to answer for doing the same thing. Why would we give more money to the insurance companies that saddled up with government to enrich themselves rather than help the American people? Mr. Speaker, 85 percent of all Affordable Care Act revenue insurers received comes from the Federal taxpayers. Mr. Speaker, 85 percent of all the revenue, I should say, that the insurers receive are coming from the Federal taxpayers. Insurers received at least $35 billion in Federal subsidies in 2024 for people who didn't use their plan a single time. Mr. Speaker, $35 billion went into the pockets of insurance companies for people who didn't even use their plan. I want to say this, and then I am going to yield to my friend from Missouri: We have solutions. When people say that Republicans don't have a plan, it is false. We put out plans. We have put out solutions. We have solutions. We believe in expanding people's access to care by empowering them with the same tax treatment, equal tax treatment, the corporations get. Individuals should get the same tax deductions and tax breaks to be able to have healthcare. Mr. Speaker, we believe in expanded health savings accounts that you can use for direct primary care to go to a doctor, have that doctor's cell phone number, have a relationship with that doctor and not be put into some complicated scheme where you have to get approval for somebody who is in network or not in network and who may or may not be within 100 miles of your house. We want the American people to be empowered. We want them to be able to go defray costs and share costs in health-sharing ministries and Medishare and all these different organizations that are, frankly, the last lifeboat that people have right now for access to care. We want to allow providers to own hospitals rather than be restricted from being able to do that so that the corporate, monolithic hospitals are not the only option. We want 1,000 flowers to bloom and for people to have the freedom option. Guess what, Mr. Speaker? You can leave ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act, structure all in place. Leave it all sitting there, but just provide the American family with a freedom option. Allow them to have choice. Shouldn't that be our right as Americans? People talk about a right to healthcare. What they are really saying with that is that government should be providing healthcare rather than the individual, the family being able to have the right to get the care of their choice. What on Earth kind of freedom do you have in a country where you literally can't go get healthcare and you are prohibited from it? The government has stopped us from exercising our freedom. We have plans. What we don't have is the backbone and the willpower to stand up and deliver. I say: Do it now. I say: Stand up and fight for healthcare freedom now. I am tired of it. I don't want another election. I don't want another: Don't worry, we will do it next time. I want to do it now because too many people are suffering at the hands of a bureaucracy and the tyranny of government-run health management rather than the ability to get care. The current situation with respect to healthcare exists entirely by record of vote and a record of policies because my Democrat colleagues put forward policies that the American people are having to live under today. They broke the healthcare system. My Democratic colleagues are proposing an insurance company enrichment scheme. Literally they are printing money in the Treasury and giving it to insurance companies. Their solution for healthcare is enriching insurance companies. Our solution for healthcare is empowering doctors. Our solution for healthcare is empowering people. Our solution for healthcare is spreading costs out among people who want to help each other out in the American way. It is why I started talking about Christmas. The question for Republicans is: If not now, then when? When are we going to stand up and deliver for the American people? That basic right--I will say it--right to access healthcare of our choice without government interfering, without government regulating, and without government stealing our ability to care for our own families and loved ones in our community. I know the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Burlison) feels the same way. He has done incredible work on this subject. We are aligned, I think almost entirely, on the opportunity for Republicans to lead, the opportunity for Republicans to stand up and deliver for the American people on healthcare freedom for every American. Every American should be able to do that. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Burlison).

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I know my friend from Missouri needs to head home, but before he heads out, I would ask him a couple of quick questions in colloquy. For the average viewer out there who can't necessarily follow all this, if we distill this down simply, no matter what you call it, no matter how you define it, what we are simply proposing is that individual families, individuals, be able to get the same tax benefit as currently corporations get when they are putting their dollars into a Blue Cross, Aetna, or some other insurance plan, right?

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

Mr. ROY. Because of a broken system created by wage controls post- World War II, instead of employers only being able to get the tax break when they give dollars to pay Blue Cross to provide some sort of plans and then you have to then further subsidize that--so maybe your employer puts in $1,800 and you put in $900, in total, it is costing $2,700 a month. Instead, we are saying: Look, get the same tax break, employer, but put it into a massively expanded, tax-free account, where you are able to use it for insurance, real insurance, that you can go get, a catastrophic coverage and/or direct primary care, all sorts of plans out there where you have a doctor who says: Look, for $100 a month, you can call me. I am at your call. I will do this kind of service. Another option is health sharing, whether it is secular or faith- based, where you have, oh, wait a minute, I don't need catastrophic insurance for this problem. It is a broken leg, but I don't have $5,000 for the emergency room visit and all the care and whatnot, so you share and defray that cost across people often in a faith-based organization, but sometimes secular. Isn't that the engine of what we are talking about?