Texas Republican Chip Roy delivered a scathing speech addressing his party’s inaction over the economy and border security, while reprimanding fellow lawmakers for not living up to their campaign promises, as he called to cease spending money “we don’t have” and to put an end to the country’s “lawlessness” and “open borders.”
Speaking on the House floor on Wednesday, a day before Texas Independence Day, Rep. Chip Roy blasted the federal government for “open[ing] our borders to cartels,” while calling out “a group of Republicans who campaign on securing the border, who run away in abject surrender, refusing to actually do it.”
Addressing “every member of the Republican Conference,” Roy said, “If you do not secure the border now — now — you are giving up any argument you have for the American people to put their faith in you.”
“Will Republicans honor their campaign commitments to secure the border? Yes or no?” he asked.
He then expressed his doubts over the likelihood of such commitments being fulfilled.
“What I am seeing right now from my Republican colleagues does not give me faith that they will stand up in the breach, as did those men who stood on the wall at the Alamo,” he said.
Claiming to be “tired of words,” Roy vowed that “things are going to change in this body.”
“If my Republican colleagues believe that they’re going to be moving through relatively meaningless provisions, doing precious damn little for the very people who sent us here to change things, and they think that some of us are just going to go along for the ride — they are sorely mistaken,” he said.
“We will not,” he added.
Calling leadership “something that is observed and followed” and “not an anointed position,” Roy insisted “we did not come to this chamber to continue to allow the executive branch to run over the American people.”
The congressman then called out Republicans for inaction on key policies:
And what is this side of the aisle doing about it? Not a damned thing. What is this side of the aisle doing about open borders? Nothing, nothing. What is this side of the aisle doing about an ATF rule about to make felons out of 10 million Americans or more? Nothing. What is this side of the aisle going to do about spending? Lip service.
“We have a debt ceiling approaching [and we’re] running around like chickens with their heads cut off,” he added.
Instead, he argued, Republicans should “say something right now:”
We should pass a bill off this floor saying that we will raise the debt ceiling, but only — only — if you end the disastrous student loans that are going to cost $400 billion and drive up the cost of higher ed; only if you rescind the $91 billion of unobligated COVID money; only if you go rescind the $80 billion designed to increase the IRS to go after taxpayers, including by the way, more often, the poorest among us and minorities; only if you will return spending to 2022 levels, getting our spending back to pre-COVID levels. And make sure that we cap spending so we stop funding the woke weaponized bureaucracy that’s going after the American people.
“Do that, send that over to the Senate,” he added. “Send that over to the Senate and make [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer and the President of the United States choke on it.”
In addition, Roy asserted that the American people “want us to cut spending right now.”
“They don’t want us dilly-dallying around, going out to focus groups… to figure out what the hell we’re going to do for the American people,” he said. “But that is too often what this body does, and particularly this side of the aisle.”
“We are not going to have two more years of the usual crap that this body continually engages in,” he added.
He then called to end the irresponsible policies harming Americans:
No more spending money we don’t have. No more allowing lawlessness. No more open borders. No more mandates killing the American people. No more mandates driving up the price of energy; subsidizing unreliable energy, driving up the cost of that energy. No more $32 trillion of debt; wide open borders causing little girls to get sold into sex trafficking trade.
Claiming the American people “are sick and tired of the same old same old,” the U.S. representative for Texas’s 21st congressional district maintained that “so far, two months into the 118th Congress, I’m not seeing a hell of a lot different than the same old same old.”
According to Roy, the American people “gave Republicans a majority [and] we ought to darn well use it.”
The Texas congressman concluded by calling on fellow party members to “come down to the floor of the House of Representatives and stand up for the American people who sent you here and stop playing games with the election certificate you were given to represent them.”
The remarks come as the United States continues to face record-high levels of illegal immigration, with over 844,000 migrants either apprehended after crossing the southwest border or classified as “got-aways” during the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2023.
In total, in nearly the first two years under the Biden administration, Border Patrol agents apprehended a record-setting 4.2 million migrants..
In July, Roy lamented that Americans continue to die as cartels profit, as he slammed the Biden administration’s open border policies — claiming, “we’re under invasion” — and accused the “MIA” Democrats of not caring about the impact of such policies on Americans and migrants alike.
Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein
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