On the House floor, Rep. Chip Roy (R-LA) slammed massive government spending and warned that it would kill the U.S.
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00:00for 30 minutes. I thank the speaker and I want to thank the gentleman from Arizona. We've engaged
00:05in a colloquy on his time. I'm going to start by 30 minutes. He, of course, is welcome to stick
00:10around a little bit if he wants. And I'm going to just jump off from where he started, or I'm
00:15going to start from where he left off. And that is to talk about what we're debating on the floor
00:19right now, which is the reconciliation bills that we are debating in the House and in the Senate as
00:27we speak. Now, for the average viewer out there, you don't understand what we're talking about.
00:31Let me put it in basic terms. The reconciliation process is a part of the Budget Control Act,
00:36which basically gives us the ability to reconcile current policies with what we're dealing with,
00:42with respect to our spending debt deficits, right? We have to make that all add up. And we're supposed
00:47to do that in a way that would yield deficit neutrality or deficit reduction. That's the
00:52general purpose of why we have reconciliation. Reconciliation, though, because there is a 60-vote
00:58threshold in the Senate, and that means certain policies that the majority wants to get in place
01:03in the House and the Senate, if they control both chambers, often hit resistance by the minority party
01:08in the Senate, that then reconciliation is used to end-run what we call the filibuster, even though
01:14it's really just a 60-vote threshold, end-run that in order to get policy, even though we're
01:19supposedly not doing policy on reconciliation. That is how stupid your Congress is, America.
01:25That's how you're developing policy, through a bunch of arcane procedures, some of which are great
01:30and designed to have cooling effects, some of which are really stupid. But what we're doing is trying
01:36to find every which way possible to avoid accountability and responsibility, and that is,
01:41as I've been putting it around here to reporters and getting reported out, to do basic math.
01:45Because that is, in fact, our obligation, is to do basic math. And unfortunately, a whole bunch of my
01:51colleagues on the Democrat side of the aisle and a whole bunch of my colleagues on the Republican side
01:56of the aisle refuse to do basic math. They want to say that through magic fairy dust and through money
02:04trees, they can just wish away the reality that we're going to have a certain amount of inflows
02:10and a certain amount of outflows every year. And you want to know why we're $37 trillion in debt or soon
02:15to be? That's why. Now, we're having a big debate, America, on what we should do in this so-called
02:22reconciliation process. We are going to have tax policy in there that's going to affect our tax
02:28revenues for the government, but more importantly, affect the tax bill you receive.
02:33Let me stipulate for the record when I am attacked a lot in the coming weeks for saying allegedly I
02:41want to have tax cuts go up or have taxes go up. I am emphatically for cutting taxes. I would like
02:48to zero out the tax code, eliminate the income tax, get rid of the IRS. I would like to do all of those
02:56things, and I have legislation to do it. And I will vote for tax cuts, but I refuse to ignore math.
03:03If you're going to do a certain amount of tax cuts, which will create a certain amount of economic
03:08growth, yes, you still have to model how much revenue will come into the treasury versus how
03:15much you're spending. Because my Republican colleagues love to spend. They campaign on tax cuts.
03:23They deliver on most of the tax cuts. They campaign on balancing the budget and cutting spending and
03:29never do it. Ever. In the history of ever, with the possible exception of the late 1990s,
03:37when the Gingrich Republicans combined with Clinton and, by the way, a dot-com economic explosion
03:46to deliver us a balanced budget. And they did it through welfare reform and through some spending
03:52constraint. And that is the only time in modern history when we've done it. Here's the problem.
03:59This chart shows you what we're dealing with. A whole lot of people are saying, well, Chip,
04:05you and all these fiscal hawks, these fiscal conservatives, you guys want to do all these
04:10massive cuts, and we can't do it. And it's crazy what you want to do. Let me be clear what we're
04:16talking about. We're currently running close to $2 trillion deficits. If we do all of the crazy
04:24stuff we're trying to do, we will be running what? Close to $2 trillion deficits. That's the truth.
04:34That's what the models show. That's what we know. So look here. These are the projections
04:42of the way things will be if we do nothing. The blue line. We do nothing this year. We let the tax
04:51cuts expire. Taxes go up. Let me repeat. I'm against that. Taxes go up. Revenues are projected to do what
05:04they do, and we will have the amount of debt over the next 10 years you see here growing from almost
05:1030-something trillion dollars growing all the way up to $50 trillion. Okay? Now, what do these other
05:18lines represent? The orange lines, those lines are the House bill. The red lines were the Senate bill.
05:26Well, we just did a thing where we combined the House and the Senate bill into one budget. We're now
05:31negotiating that, and this is all yet to be determined. Why am I saying all this? No one
05:36wants to read all this. Nobody's going to pay attention to a chart. All my staff, everybody says,
05:41don't use charts on the floor. Just go down and say things that will get clipped and sent around.
05:46Well, let me try to say something that will get clipped and sent around. Even if the House Republicans
05:52are successful in working with the President and the Senate to achieve the $1.5 to $2 trillion
05:58in spending restraint over the 10-year budget window, which is a mere $150 to $200 billion a year,
06:05even if we're successful, we're going to massively increase the debt in the United States all the way
06:13to well over pushing $50 trillion by the end of this budget window. That's it. If we fail,
06:22if we fail, then debt will go up a little higher.
06:30We have an obligation to do better. Everything we're fighting for right now in the House is for
06:37crumbs. I haven't decided whether I'll vote for it or not vote for it. Why? Because I'm one vote
06:44out of 220 Republicans. I'm one vote. And I got to figure out how we build a majority
06:51and how the Senate builds a majority and then work with the White House to get a bill signed.
06:56I recognize that. But there's a limit that I can accept. And so somebody asked me, I just want the
07:04whole world to tell me, should I vote for a bill if we're successful at fighting for what we're fighting
07:11for on Medicaid reforms, on unwinding the student loans, on cutting waste, fraud, and abuse,
07:20on finding savings and fees on illegal aliens here so that we can pay for continued
07:26enforcement of the law at the border. If we're successful in all of those things in terms of
07:33revenues and expenses, I'm still going to burden my kids and grandkids with over $50 trillion in debt.
07:43All right, what does that mean? Well, it means more interest. It means likely higher inflation.
07:51Because at some point, we can't afford this. That's the fundamental question.
07:57Now, I've got a bunch of my colleagues, to the point of the gentleman from Arizona,
08:02running around saying, well, we can't touch Medicaid. Well, why can't we? Medicaid was
08:11expanded under Obamacare, which we all opposed. And the Medicaid expansion was a big reason why we
08:18opposed it. So why can we now not demand reforms to the broken pieces of Obamacare that expanded Medicaid
08:28such that we are giving 90% federal match to the able-bodied, the people who are not the most
08:37vulnerable, compared to the vulnerable population who only get 50 to 60 to 70 percent? Like, why would
08:43we do that? Why would we give more to Medicaid recipients than Medicare recipients, which we
08:49often do? Why would we continue to allow states like California and other states to game the system
08:56to get federal dollars sent back in a money laundering scheme, as has been reported widely by the Wall
09:02Street Journal and others? They're openly and knowingly doing it. Why wouldn't we fix that?
09:08Why wouldn't we apply eligibility rules and work requirements combined with lowering
09:13that abusive federal match rate subsidizing blue states to game the system when they're using
09:20federal borrowed money to prop up their weak state budget? Why wouldn't we fix that? I don't have a single
09:27constituent I know who thinks we ought to continue doing that. And even more so, let me see this chart,
09:35my colleagues are running around saying, well, we're, you know, they give into these arguments that
09:39we're somehow cutting Medicaid. That's a lie. Now, we could have a debate about whether we should
09:49actually reduce Medicaid and give more money in other places or free up the states to provide
09:55better service or empower Americans to go get the doctor of their choice and be able to afford
10:00health care without having an employer or government-provided insurance-run bureaucratic system
10:05enriching insurance bureaucrats and pharma and hospitals, because that's what we have.
10:10We don't have free health care anywhere in this country. The freest country in the world,
10:15you do not have the freedom to go to the doctor of your choice. You don't. The average family in
10:22this country is paying $25,000 a year to go to insurance bureaucrats to tell you what handful of
10:27doctors you can go to, what lousy deductible you get, what ridiculous co-pay you have. And I've got a
10:34constituent who died from cancer last year who couldn't go to MD Anderson because she was covered
10:38on MD Anderson. I mean, covered on Obamacare. Think about that. Covered on Obamacare. Sick with
10:46cancer, can't go to the best cancer hospital in the world two hours from her house. That's your
10:51health care system. And we won't touch Medicaid? Our budget contemplates Medicaid going up 25%.
11:00I'm not going to say whether that's good or bad, but can we at least just have the backbone as a
11:07Republican party to not allow our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and the media to say
11:12that we're cutting Medicaid when we're increasing Medicaid spending? I mean, it is mind-boggling that
11:21we allow that narrative to set in on a program that is broken, that has a trillion dollars of improper
11:29payments, that is ripe with abuse. What are we here for? I mean, that'd be my question for my
11:38Republican colleagues. Why did you run for office? Because I don't recall Republicans running on a big
11:45platform of the government is the solution to all your problems. I don't remember growing up as a child
11:53of the 80s listening to Ronald Reagan, or frankly listening to President Trump's speeches saying,
11:58oh yeah, man, we really love government bureaucracy and all the great things it does for the people.
12:05Nobody runs on that. Not a single Republican has run on increasing deficits. Every single Republican
12:11has run on balancing the budget. Yet every year we vote for more spending. Every year we vote for more
12:19debt. Every year we increase deficits and add to the debt. Every single year. Yet, and I want to get
12:28right to the chase here. Because for the last two months, some of us have been willing to walk out
12:33and say that we will not vote for the tax cut extensions if we don't get spending restraint.
12:41And I'm getting lots of Republicans around town who like to stir the pot and go and say, well,
12:49you're going to vote for a tax increase, are you, Chip? Oh, we're going to hit you hard. We will come
12:54after you for being for voting for tax increases. But they won't say a thing about voting for the
13:01inflation tax increase on every American family while they run to the hills on spending restraint.
13:09Because they won't do it. That's the truth. I didn't come to this town for more of the same.
13:20The men and women who walked into a wall of bullets in Normandy, they didn't do it so that we could have
13:27$50 trillion of debt and destroy our own country from within. That's what's happening.
13:35$50 trillion. This country is weaker because the very individuals entrusted to defend her, defend the
13:46Constitution, and be responsible stewards of the Treasury have failed them and continue to fail them.
13:54And let me be very clear about the budget we're talking about right now. Let's put that back up real quick,
14:02if we don't mind. Thank you.
14:07You see what happens to the debt
14:09under our budgets. They go way up.
14:13Well, this budget, the House budget, it assumes that we're able to figure out how to hold what we
14:30call discretionary spending flat. I don't know if the speakers, the only other person in the chamber
14:36with me, believes that we'll hold discretionary spending flat. But history would say we wouldn't.
14:42But our budget assumes that we hold discretionary spending flat. That's defense, DOJ, DHS, all of the
14:50spending on all of the various programs in commerce and go down the list. Okay, well, what else? I read a
14:57story yesterday that because of tariff policy, and by the way, I support the President using tariff policy
15:04to isolate China and restructure our worldwide trade that has been being abused by friend and foe.
15:13But I just read a story yesterday that they're planning on how to bail out farmers from tariffs.
15:21Well, remember, seven years ago, we had to spend 25 to 30, 35 billion dollars
15:28to bail out farmers for tariffs. This last December, we spent, I don't know, 30
15:33billion or something in a supplemental bailing out farmers. All right, well, what happens when,
15:40oh, well, we need more money for California wildfires? Or what happens when there's a hurricane
15:45that hits Florida or, you know, apparently North Carolina, Tennessee? Is that 5 billion,
15:5120 billion, 30 billion, 50 billion? You see, Congress does not have the ability to say no
15:59to spending. So let's bring it all back. Should I vote for a reconciliation package
16:08that will almost certainly guarantee a trillion and a half to $2 trillion of deficit spending
16:16because I'm getting certain crumbs in cuts in certain committees, and the only reason that I've
16:24gotten said crumbs was because we threatened to stop the extension of the tax cuts in order to force
16:32the question on spending. Look, I want to absolutely applaud the great work of a whole lot of committee
16:39chairs and my Republican colleagues for the work that they've done to identify spending restraint and
16:44savings. Education, they found a bunch of savings. I can go through committee by committee.
16:50Last night, we added a lot of fees to pay for border security and stuff in the Judiciary Committee.
16:57There are other things we could do.
17:00But the math is still going to have to be math.
17:03We are going to spend about another 300 billion dollars in this bill for defense and border security.
17:12That's another 300 billion.
17:13We're going to find savings of allegedly one and a half trillion dollars over 10 years.
17:23So that's 150 billion dollars a year.
17:27What that means is we're already in the hole.
17:31We're already in the hole.
17:43By 2035, the United States will be spending more on interest per year than all federal programs aside
17:51from Social Security.
17:52Right now, federal debt is so large, 40% of all personal income taxes go to paying interest on the federal debt.
18:01Think about that.
18:03We have over a trillion dollars a year in interest.
18:08Spending drives inflation. In 2024, the typical American family needed an extra $17,000 a year
18:14to maintain the same standard of living as January 2021.
18:27We have increased spending, our budget, our federal budget, from roughly $3.6 trillion or so in 2015
18:37to almost $7 trillion now. That's an 80% increase.
18:40Does anybody alive think that we can sustain this?
18:49Do any of my colleagues, Republican or Democrat, think that we can sustain this?
18:55Does anybody alive right now in the chamber, if you're in the complex and you haven't hopped on
19:00a plane to fly home because we had our final vote on a Thursday morning and we're going to come back
19:04on a Monday night in our usual way of doing things in the swamp, not doing what we should do,
19:11does anybody believe that this is going to save the fiscal health of America?
19:18Like I said, I haven't decided if I'm going to vote for it or against it.
19:21That depends on a lot of variables.
19:23Does the Inflation Reduction Act actually repeal the ridiculous subsidizing that are enriching the
19:27Chinese and enriching billion-dollar corporations and undermining our energy security?
19:32Do we have the resources necessary to secure the border and the fees to pay for it?
19:36Are we putting in the provisions that we ought to be putting in there
19:40to guarantee that we're going to have the President be able to carry out his campaign
19:44promises to remove aliens?
19:47Are we going to have transformational reform to Medicaid so that we eliminate
19:50the 90% ridiculous subsidy of the able-bodied while we're giving a much lower rate of 50 to 70% to the
19:58vulnerable population?
19:59Are we going to continue to allow the provider taxes and the gaming of the system, the money laundering
20:03that is allowing money to go to California to be gamed and to be doled out to illegal aliens and put
20:08in their general budget as they openly brag?
20:11Or are we going to fix that?
20:17Are we going to fix the debacle that is the higher education system?
20:20Are we going to restrain their ability to abuse federal grants, student loan subsidies?
20:26Or are we going to continue to subsidize Harvard, Yale, the Cal Berkeley, University of Texas, Austin,
20:33University of Virginia, both my alma maters?
20:35I don't care, I'd cut them off.
20:38Take away their money.
20:40Are we going to continue to do as I heard, which is to create additional taxes on cars?
20:49Or are we going to fix it?
20:51Literally, in order to pay for the Coast Guard and air traffic control, I heard that the TNI committee,
20:56they were poised to put a vehicle tax on every vehicle in America.
21:00Limited government, constitutional Republicans were going to tax your car.
21:09Well, we fought and said, well, that's a bad idea.
21:12So they got rid of the tax, the $50 tax or $20 tax, whatever it was, on internal combustion engine cars.
21:21Which, by the way, we are subsidizing EVs and hybrids and so forth in order to get the internal combustion engine off the street.
21:29But now we're going to tax the EVs that we're subsidizing, unless we repeal the Inflation Reduction Act.
21:38These are the tangled webs that we weave in a government in which politicians promise to give away free stuff.
21:47As I've said before, we're not the United States House of Free Stuff.
21:51You can't just print money and give it to people and say, oh, we'll take care of your problems.
21:54Yet, that's what we do.
21:58Our best case scenario, if we pass this reconciliation package, is still $50 trillion of debt in 10 years.
22:06That's literally the best case scenario.
22:09I think it's much worse.
22:10Especially if our interest is going up and we'll refinance our debt at higher rates, which seems likely.
22:19But here we are.
22:21Just nibbling around the edges, begging for crumbs.
22:25Please, oh please, please give me $150 billion a year in savings on a $7 trillion annual budget.
22:33Up almost twice in a decade.
22:35Bloated and expanded under COVID.
22:39Bloated and expanded under both Democrat and Republican regimes.
22:51We've had an extraordinary first 100 days.
22:53The President has turned around the ship.
22:54We're securing borders.
22:57Apprehensions are down 94%.
22:59We're resetting our position in the world stage, diplomatically, economically.
23:05We're rebuilding our military, which is being decimated by the previous administration.
23:09Unwinding DEI.
23:10Rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in government.
23:12Firing bureaucrats.
23:13Identifying all the things that ought to be cut, and that is a good thing.
23:17And Congress, my colleagues, are doing some good things.
23:20We've passed some good bills that are hitting a wall in the Senate.
23:22The SAVE Act.
23:24The injunctions bill.
23:25A bunch of CRAs to undo the damage of the Biden administration.
23:28We passed five this week to undo the damage of the EV mandates.
23:31We've got to stay on offense, and we can, and we're doing a lot of great things.
23:37But this reconciliation bill, at a bare minimum, can do no harm.
23:42And literally, that is what we're begging for, ladies and gentlemen,
23:45when we're trying to fight for one and a half trillion dollars in spending reductions.
23:50Not even cuts.
23:51I want to be clear.
23:52I want to remind everybody about Medicaid.
23:55Medicaid.
23:55There it is.
23:57It's going up 25% in our budget, for better or worse.
24:00I can make arguments, but just, it's going up.
24:07So can we at least speak truth that it's going up, and that we're begging for crumbs to get a
24:13trillion and a half in reductions over 10 years?
24:17We're going to spend 86 trillion dollars over the next 10 years.
24:21We're just trying to save a trillion and a half of that massive increase for crumbs
24:29to have 50 trillion dollars of debt at the end of that rainbow.
24:35I hope we'll come together.
24:36I hope we'll unite to deliver a product that is worthy of support.
24:39I have not decided whether I'll be able to support it.
24:42We will find out whether it has what is needed.
24:45I do want to take one second, before I yield to my friend from California,
24:53to honor a dear friend of mine who passed away a couple of weeks ago.
25:01Diana Denman, often called the godmother of the Texas Republican Party.
25:08She passed away on April 17th at the age of 91.
25:11And I don't do a lot of the floor speeches on individuals because I feel like if I do them for
25:18one or two and I don't do them for everybody that I represent, that gets tough.
25:23Obviously veterans, police officers, there are things that rise to the occasion.
25:27Diana was a legendary mentor, not just to me, but to many of my friends,
25:35many of the people that work for me, many of my staff.
25:37She played a major role in the political evolution in Texas, where Texas went from a
25:44historic Southern Democrat state to a bastion of conservative Republican politics and a warrior
25:51for freedom across the globe.
25:53I was proud to have her support, but more importantly, I was proud to have her friendship.
25:58She worked closely with some of my dear friends in politics and former bosses like Senator Ted Cruz
26:03and Governor Rick Perry, both of whom are dear friends of mine.
26:07She led a storied life.
26:09She rode her horse into the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.
26:14She acted in Hollywood, where she would go on to meet future President Reagan when she was in
26:19Hollywood in that golden age.
26:22She held many positions in the Reagan administration of the 1980s, and she stood strong against
26:28the Soviet Union and the Soviet aggression around the globe.
26:33She was truly one of the last Cold Warriors, and I mean that in all of the right and good ways.
26:40As a child of the 80s, I consider myself a proud Cold Warrior and believe very much that we need to
26:46stand against aggression in the same way President Reagan stood against that aggression and stood for
26:52freedom and as a beacon of hope for around the world.
26:54But I think we could learn from that era, as I learned from Diana, about doing things through
27:00peace through strength.
27:03I will miss Diana, and she'll be remembered for her fierce patriotism and her strong convictions.
27:09She was feisty.
27:11She was committed.
27:12She loved her country.
27:14I want to thank her for her steadfast commitment to the conservative movement, to the United States,
27:21to defending our country, and in service of the Lord Almighty.
27:28I'll keep fighting to live free, and I'll remember Diana through those actions.
27:32And I will miss her dearly, as will many of my staff who counted her as a mentor.
27:37But when I think of the people who have devoted their life to the cause, and they come and they go and
27:43they pass, and I'm reminded that we're here for these fleeting moments, what will be our legacy?
27:50What will be the legacy of this generation?
27:54Are we going to put this country back on a sustainable path?
27:57Are we going to actually honor our constitutional commitment to have a limited government in which
28:01people can live free?
28:02Are we going to constrain the appetite for unchecked spending and the racking up of debt and the deficits and the
28:09interests that are killing our economy, our country, and frankly, the futures of our own children?
28:14Or are we going to choose the harder path?
28:17Right?
28:18As President Reagan said in 1964, it was a time for choosing.
28:23Frankly, we didn't actually heed his call.
28:25We chose poorly.
28:27We chose the path of a massive, bureaucratic, tyrannical state.
28:32We've empowered government.
28:33We haven't reduced it.
28:34We've increased spending.
28:35We haven't reduced it.
28:37We should actually honor that time for choosing.
28:39And in the memory of my good friend who served with President Reagan, let's reignite that call for
28:45time for choosing to choose that path, to choose the path of the constitution, of limited
28:50government, of freedom, of responsible spending, and turning over this country to our children
28:55better than we inherited it.
28:56And with that, I will yield back.