In a passionate nomination of Rep. Jim Jordan for Speaker of the House, Congressman Chip Roy said Congress must change. And that change only comes by adopting the rules and procedures or from leadership.
“People ask me, ‘What do you want,'” he said. “I want the tools or I want the leadership to stop the Swamp from running over the average American every single day. We can’t keep doing this. I’m going to sit here until we figure out how to stop sending money we don’t have. I don’t want any more empty promises. I don’t want any more, ‘Oh, don’t worry. Trust us. We’ll do it.’ I want to know that we’re going to be able to exercise our rights as a member of this body to stand up for the American people and actually fix this country.”
Roy opened by noting how the chamber actually looks when members of the House are actually there for debate.
“How many times have we been down here giving speeches and there’s not a soul in the chamber,” he asked. “Yet this is what it takes to get 435 people in the chamber and have an actual debate. The American people are watching, and that’s a good thing. What we’re doing is exercising our rights to vote and have a debate and have a discussion about the future of this country through the decision of choosing a Speaker.”
Roy said the opposition to Rep. Kevin McCarthy isn’t personal, but it is about the future and the direction of America.
“The American people are looking at this body and wondering why we can pass $1.7 trillion bills that are unpaid for,” he said. “They can just slide in $45 billion for Ukraine, but not pay for it. Forty-billion for emergency spending, but not pay for it. Ten percent increase in defense spending. Six percent increase in non-defense spending and not pay for it. And not do a thing except put language in a bill that prohibits our ability to use the money to secure the border. That bill gets rammed through, and we know exactly how it gets rammed through, because the defense world and the non-defense world come together and say, ‘You know what, we’re going to cut a deal.’ And we’ll all go to the mics and we’re all going to give speeches and the American people are the big losers. That’s what happens. We know that’s what happens. The Rules Committee sits up there and passes a bill, sends it to the floor and we have no debate on the floor of this body. We haven’t been able to offer an amendment on the floor of this body since May of 2016. The former leader and I have discussed this right here. That’s true. But the fact is this place has to change. It has to change. And the change comes by either adopting rules and procedures that will make us actually do our job or it comes from leadership.”
Roy said the change will not come when Congress uses the men and women in uniform in defense and wrap themselves around that and spend more money they don’t have, thus weakening that defense and weakening the country in the process.
“But that’s what we just did,” he said.
He then nominated Jordan as Speaker of the House, noting that in his opinion the tools and leadership still aren’t in place to make the House better with McCarthy as Speaker.
Roy should be speaker! It would actually give Americans a reason to believe we had a real leader concerned about us. And willing to fight to do it.