Rep. Chip Roy (TX-21) gave the below remarks on the House floor Wednesday afternoon regarding H.R. 3746, a debt ceiling increase contrived by House GOP leadership and the Biden White House. Footage of the remarks can be found here.
“I listen to the gentleman from Massachusetts wax on, talking about governing. Well, we don’t govern, Mr. McGovern. We represent.
That’s what we’re supposed to do, anyway, is represent the people of this country; fed up with the government that is now 40% bigger since the beginning of COVID.
A government barreling towards $36 trillion of debt, and an absolute devastating burden on the future of this country, on our children and our grandchildren — who are not going to be able to afford homes, not be able to afford go to school, not be able to afford food, groceries. Talk about food programs, I don’t hear a whole hell of a lot about what we’re doing to devastate American families with rampant inflation, because we keep spending money we don’t have.
To my colleagues on this side of the aisle, my beef, is that I don’t understand the struggle with the negotiators against that kind of reasoning. My beef is that you cut a deal that shouldn’t have been cut.
The fact is, at best, we have a two-year spending freeze that’s full of loopholes and gimmicks that would allow for increased funding for the federal bureaucracy in order to achieve a $4 trillion increase in the debt by January 1 of 2025.
$4 trillion.
We have permitting reform, which might have some good elements in it. But the problem is you have the Biden administration saying, accelerate implementation of the “historic clean energy and environmental justice investments and the inflation Reduction Act” – the very policies destroying the American way of life and making them unable to afford energy and afford their food.
We have watered down work requirements; the CBO just said [this] will actually increase the cost of SNAP by $2 billion — a supposed 1% automatic top line reduction in spending at the end of the year, that will actually make a Christmas omnibus more likely. A 2% cut to Biden’s $80 billion IRS expansion – 2% of that $80 billion expansion — [and] administrative pay-go, I’m told.
We’re not going to do the REINS Act. We’re not going to constrain the regulatory state. We’re going to do a waivable administrative pay-go. Great – we’ll pass the bill next week. Yay us! It’ll die in the Senate. Why aren’t we using this leverage?
A complete punt to SCOTUS on the Biden administration’s unfair half-trillion dollar student loan bailout, billions in COVID dollars left on touch to fund things like vaccines and COVID-19 testing, and the loss of our biggest leverage points to force Biden to actually secure the southern border.
I encourage my colleagues to vote no on the rule and to oppose this legislation.”
