Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Texas Rangers, Texas's oldest law enforcement agency.

In 1821, Stephen F. Austin, the ``Father of Texas,'' brought 300 families to settle land in modern-day Texas. There was no regular army, so Austin assembled a fighting force to provide protection from Karankawas, Comanches, and eventually Mexican raiders--giving rise to the Texas Rangers.

Texans did what sovereign states have done throughout history: we stepped up and protected our communities. We stood up for the rule of law when there was none.

Much of the action seen by the early Rangers involved bloody conflicts with Comanche tribes and gangs of bandits who threatened the safety of Texans.

In the years following, the Rangers proved indispensable during major events such as the Mexican American War, the pursuit of criminals Bonnie and Clyde in 1934, and Hurricane Harvey rescue and recovery in 2017.

As local law enforcement slowly assumed much of the day-to-day peacekeeping role that the Texas Rangers held before the turn of the 20th century, the Texas Rangers now operate as a key investigative body for the State of Texas.

Rangers are renowned for conducting major criminal investigations, suppression of organized crime, border reconnaissance, SWAT, bomb squad, special rapid response, crisis negotiation, joint intelligence center management, and investigation of unsolved crimes.

The impact of the Texas Rangers on the Lone Star State cannot be understated. My home county, Hays County, is named for John Coffee Hays, a renowned Ranger appointed by Sam Houston. My great-great- grandfather John Vaughan Roy served as a Texas Ranger in Hays, Travis, and Blanco Counties, protecting our future home and holding the line against lawlessness.

To the west, Captain Charles Schreiner of Kerr County served with distinction and went on to donate land for the Schreiner Institute, a military school in my district. Today, I am honored to represent ``Ranger Ray'' Martinez, a living legend in New Braunfels with a long history of heroism and service. The Ranger spirit is also alive and well today in my friend and longtime Texas Ranger David Maxwell, who solved the over 35-year-old cold case in the unspeakable murder of his own sister.

``They were men who could not be stampeded.'' That's how former DPS director, Homer Garrison, Jr. described them. And they have certainly lived up to that.

As with so many other great figures of our history, some today wish to rewrite the legacy

of the Texas Rangers, focusing only on the harshest of narratives from the comfort of modern-day America while ignoring the sacrifice of these men to settle the west and establish the rule of law.

The scripture reminds us: ``Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.'' These heroes wake up every morning and put their lives on the line to serve and protect their fellow Texans.

The Texas Rangers are owed a debt of gratitude that cannot be fully repaid. But today, we do thank them, and we congratulate them on 200 years of selfless service.

Madam Speaker, I am proud to rise here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives as we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Texas Rangers, Texas' oldest law enforcement agency.

I am proud to represent a number of Rangers personally. I am proud to live in a county named after one of our most famous Texas Rangers. I am proud to be the descendent of a Texas Ranger. I will have more to say about all of that in a moment.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Moran), my friend, to offer his thoughts on the Texas Rangers.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's remarks about the Texas Rangers. They are such an important organization in the world of law enforcement. I say that as someone who served in the Office of the Attorney General of Texas as the first assistant attorney general where I had a large number of law enforcement, including former Texas Rangers, working for me.

I worked in the U.S. Attorney's Office in law enforcement. My grandfather was the chief of police in a small Texas town, Sweetwater, Texas, in the 1940s. My great-great-grandfather was a Texas Ranger.

As my colleague from Texas just discussed with respect to the history, in 1821, Stephen F. Austin, the father of Texas, brought 300 families to settle land in modern-day Texas. There was no regular Army. Austin assembled a fighting force to provide protection from Comanches and eventually Mexican raiders, giving rise to the Texas Rangers.

Texans did what sovereign States have done throughout history, stepping up and protecting our communities. We stood up for the rule of law when there was none. Much of the action seen by the early Rangers involved bloody conflicts with Comanche Tribes and gangs of bandits who threatened the safety of Texans.

In years following, the Rangers proved indispensable during major events such as the Mexican-American War; the pursuit of the criminals, Bonnie and Clyde in 1934; and Hurricane Harvey rescue and recoveries recently in 2017 and now currently today.

As local law enforcement slowly assumed much of the day-to-day peacekeeping role that the Texas Rangers held before the turn of the 20th century, the Rangers now operate as a key investigative body for the State of Texas.

Rangers were known for conducting major criminal investigations, suppression of organized crime, border reconnaissance, SWAT, bomb squad, Special Rapid Response, crisis negotiation, joint intelligence center management, and investigation of unsolved crimes.

The impact of the Texas Rangers on the Lone Star State cannot be understated. My home county, Hays County, is named for John Coffee Hays, a renowned Ranger, appointed by Sam Houston, who fought one of the most notorious battles against the Comanche near what is called Enchanted Rock, in the district I represent a little west of Austin in Gillespie County.

My great-great-grandfather, John Vaughn Roy, served as a Texas Ranger in Hays, Travis, and Blanco counties--all three counties I represent today, protecting my future home where I live now in Hays County, and holding the line against lawlessness.

To the west, Captain Charles Schreiner of Kerr County, served with distinction and went on to donate land for the Schreiner Institute Military School in my district.

Today, I am honored to represent Ranger Ray Martinez, a living legend in New Braunfels with a long history of heroism and service. The Ranger spirit is alive and well today in my friend and long-time Texas Ranger David Maxwell, who I worked with in the Office of the Attorney General of Texas. He solved the over 35-year-old cold case in the unspeakable murder of his own sister. That is the spirit of the Texas Rangers.

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They were men who could not be stampeded. That is how former Department of Public Safety Director Homer Garrison, Jr., described them.

They have certainly lived up to that.

With so many other great figures of our history, some today wish to rewrite the legacy of the Texas Rangers focusing only on the harshest of narratives from the comfort of modern-day America--a comfort bought by the sacrifice and the blood of Texas Rangers--all while ignoring those sacrifices that they made to settle the West and establish the rule of law.

The Scripture reminds us that greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

These heroes wake up every morning and put their lives on the line to serve and protect their fellow Texans as did their predecessors.

The Texas Rangers are owed a debt of gratitude that cannot be fully repaid, but today we do thank them, and we congratulate them on 200 years of selfless service.

Tomorrow will be March 2. That is Texas Independence Day.

On February 23, a Mexican force numbering in the thousands and led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna began a siege of the fort. The Texas forces held out for 13 days outgunned and outnumbered. They were driven by the cause of liberty and their desire for a free Texas.

William Barret Travis wrote this about the siege:

I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under

Santa Anna. I have sustained a continual bombardment and

cannonade for 24 hours and have not lost a man.

The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion,

otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the

fort is taken. I have answered the demand with a cannon shot,

and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall

never surrender or retreat.

Then I call on you in the name of liberty, of patriotism,

and everything dear to the American character to come to our

aid with all dispatch.

The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily and will no

doubt increase to three or four thousand in 4 or 5 days.

If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain

myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never

forgets what is due to his own honor and that of his

country--victory or death.

This week also includes Texas Independence Day as I said. The Texas Declaration of Independence reads:

When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty,

and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers

are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it

was instituted. . . .

The Texas Declaration of Independence states that:

In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of

self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the

people to appeal to first principles and take their political

affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as

a right toward themselves and a sacred obligation to their

posterity to abolish such government and create another in

its stead calculated to rescue them from impending dangers

and to secure their future welfare and happiness.

But what did they declare independence for?

What did Travis and the rest of the Alamo sacrifice for?

A Federal Government that opens our borders to cartels?

A group of Republicans who campaign on securing the border but who run away in abject surrender refusing to actually do it?

That is the question before us right now. That is the question for every Member of the Republican Conference.

I am speaking to you: 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?

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 of the Alamo.

I am tired of words. Things are going to change in this body. If my Republican colleagues believe that they are 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, then they are sorely mistaken. We will not.

There will be no more games as I saw unfold today on the floor of the House of Representatives where lies and misrepresentations were made about legislation, specifically for personal reasons, to take down an amendment.

This amendment, by the way, was designed to ensure that the executive orders that are driving up inflation that this majority said they wanted to expose out of the current President and our Democratic colleagues on the other side of the aisle would exempt emergency executive orders and exempt national security-related executive orders, which are the very kinds of emergency executive orders that have been killing this country for as long as I can remember and specifically for the last several years through the COVID pandemic and emergency responses.

These executive orders force needles into the peoples' arms. They say ``no'' but then they can't carry out their livelihoods.

This in turn will shrink the labor supply and drive up the cost of goods and services by shutting down the greatest economy in the history of the world.

My colleagues on this side of the aisle today ran away--ran away-- from actually holding the executive branch responsible.

Why?

For petty, personal, and political reasons. That ain't gonna fly. That is not going to be the way this works.

Leadership is something that is observed and followed. It is not an anointed position. We did not come to this Chamber to continue to allow the executive branch to run over the American people.

Sitting today is a young man who served his country and is being denied his commanding officer job and is being forced to try to pay back student loans because he dared to say ``no'' to a vaccine mandate that was politically driven.

What is this side of the aisle doing about it?

Not a damn 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 are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. We 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 education, 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 preCOVID levels and make sure that we cap spending so we stop funding the woke, weaponized bureaucracy that is going after the American people.

Do that.

Send that over to the Senate. Send that over to the Senate and make Chuck Schumer and the President of the United States choke on it because the American people want us to cut spending right now. They don't want us dillydallying around going out to focus groups and talking to Frank Luntz and talking about what the hell we are going to do with the American people. But that is too often what this body does and particularly this side of the aisle.

We are not going to have 2 more years of the usual crap that this body continually engages in.

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 by subsidizing unreliable energy and driving up the cost of that energy.

No more.

We are $32 trillion in debt.

Wide-open borders cause little girls to get sold into the sex trafficking trade. The New York Times finally wakes up and writes a story about it this week.

What do we do?

We pass a 3-page bill asking the Democrats to say that we will give you reports on inflation but not if there is emergency spending, because everybody has got to have their precious emergency spending.

Oh, gosh, there is a hurricane.

So who cares if it is inflationary?

So you dump $40 million.

Who cares if it is COVID and you dump $5 trillion out in the name of an emergency crushing the greatest economy in the history of the world?

No, no. We can't have a report like that.

The American people are sick and tired of the same old same old. So far, 2 months into the 118th Congress, I am not seeing it a hell of a lot different than the same old same old.

The American people gave Republicans the majority. We ought to darn well use it. It is time to stand up for the American people, and that time is now. That time is not tomorrow. That time is not after another retreat to go figure out how you are going to raise more money. That time is not after another retreat to go look at poll testing.

Come down to the floor of the House of Representatives, stand up for the American people who sent you here, and stop playing games with the election certificate you were given to represent them.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 2 o'clock and 25 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Friday, March 3, 2023, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today to offer an amendment to this underlying piece of legislation to ensure that it applies to everything. I don't believe that we should be in the business of exempting certain executive orders. I think they should apply across the board.

My amendment would strike the exceptions to the bill's inflation estimates for executive orders that provide emergency assistance or relief or related to national security.

I don't believe that we should be pulling out of the calculation those executive orders that touch on national security simply because, frankly, often my colleagues on both sides of the aisle want to be able to use ``emergency'' for all manner of sins, and they want to be able to use the Defense Department to hide behind all manner of sins and expenditures.

The underlying bill is actually an important piece of legislation, despite what my colleague from Maryland is saying.

Why? Because the executive orders being offered by this administration, and frankly by many administrations, do have an actual and significant inflationary impact.

We are allowing the executive branch to run amuck. We are allowing the executive branch to essentially legislate and make massive policies that have an enormous impact on everyday, hardworking American people.

That is why this legislation is important. Unlike our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who like to use the power of government to be able to actually put gasoline on the fire of inflation by spending more money, by engaging government into the business of the American people, we want to be able to look at information about what government is doing to cause the problem in the first place.

For example, the President's executive order on vaccine mandates. You don't believe that had a massive inflationary impact to go around this country, forcing people to stick a needle in their arm or lose their job, causing all sorts of constraints in labor supply, making it difficult for people to carry out their jobs?

You don't believe that the executive orders on minimum wage, the executive orders on the Keystone pipeline, and other limitations on Federal oil and gas leases, the executive orders with respect to WOTUS and NEPA and all sorts of environmental rules and regulations that restrict the ability of the American people to create wealth, create jobs, create opportunities; you don't believe those create inflationary impact?

Of course they do. Our job in Congress is to check the executive branch. Our job in Congress is to stand up for the American people and get the government out of their lives.

This amendment is designed to make sure that we are going to apply it equally to all manners of the executive orders produced by the President, regardless of party. We believe that it is critically important.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Comer), my friend.

Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining?

Mr. Chair, the question seems to be about we have nothing allegedly in the cupboard, nothing to offer. I think there is plenty to offer.

How about stop spending money we don't have? How about stop dumping trillions of dollars into the economy, jamming up inflation?

How about ending all of the subsidies and all of the Federal expenditures that are undermining the American people's ability to create wealth and create jobs?

The gentleman talks about the amount of debt that was increased under President Trump. How about the 43 to 45 percent of our entire debt that was increased under Nancy Pelosi as Speaker?

Because those are the actual facts, and this is the body that has the power of the purse. This is the body that starts all the spending. We know where the spending starts.

The fact of the matter is my colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to talk about creating 12 million jobs.

First of all, this body doesn't create jobs. The government doesn't create jobs. The American people create jobs.

The fact is our labor participation rate is still far behind pre- COVID levels. We are basically playing catch-up to the utter destruction that was levied against the American people by government, against the American people, shutting down this economy, locking our kids in the corners, setting our kids back generations in terms of their academic performance, and criticizing three-page bills.

I will tell you what. It is a far cry better than the 4,100-page, $1.7 trillion omnibus bill jammed through by the Democrats in December, destroying this economy.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Garden Ridge Lions Club.

The past 50 years have highlighted the Garden Ridge Lions Club's outstanding achievements and dedication to serving Central Texas. Their work delivering holiday meals to families in need, assisting school nurses with hearing testing, and building access ramps for disabled citizens, highlights their selflessness and endless service to the great state of Texas.

Each one of their members should be immensely proud of all that they have accomplished. I am certainly proud of all their outstanding achievements and dedication to their neighbors. Collectively, they have provided high-quality service for thousands of Texans in need.

On behalf of the 21st Congressional District of Texas, I want to thank each member for their service to our community. I trust that Garden Ridge Lions Club members will have great success in their future endeavors and continue to be leaders in our communities for years to come. It is a joy to wish them a happy 50th Anniversary.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Arizona being down here talking about the trajectory this Nation finds itself on with respect to all spending, but in particular mandatory spending as we call it, and the need for all of us to get serious about doing something about it.

We sat here in this Chamber last night. The President of the United States did what you do in a campaign speech, not in the State of the Union. He did what you do when you have a failed agenda and you want to try to scare the American people rather than inspire the American people: Accuse your opponents of being against Social Security and Medicare with no real backing, but offering no solutions himself to the very problems articulated by the gentleman from Arizona.

Did anybody hear the President of the United States last night address at all the reality that Social Security and Medicare are on a path to bankruptcy in terms of their funding relative to the demands to pay benefits? Of course not. Of course not. Because the President of the United States, Joe Biden, has zero solutions to the problems facing this country. Not one.

Not one solution last night was offered. Standing at the well where the Speaker currently sits, not one solution was offered. Instead, it was a campaign speech.

The fact is, the American people, I think, saw through it because in the same speech that the President attacked Republicans for not having a solution for Social Security and Medicare, accusing Republicans of saying we were going to walk away from the obligations for Social Security and Medicare, the President offered no solutions on the border. None.

The President said not a word about our men and women in uniform. The President referenced Ukraine but didn't provide an actual strategy or desired outcome besides ``Putin bad, Ukraine good.''

Look, the fact of the matter is, the entire Nation is tired of exactly what we saw last night. Tired of it. The President came in and tried to offer populist rhetoric. Frankly, stealing some of the rhetoric almost directly from President Trump.

He tried to offer some old school Democrat rhetoric, saying, we have got a program for everybody in America. Don't worry, we are going to pay for it. I gave a speech on the floor of the House about a year ago entitled the United States House of free stuff about this body. A number of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle came down and talked about all of the student loans that would be forgiven, all of the spending that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would offer with no indication of how it would be paid for because why would you do that?

Look, the fact of the matter is, this body, the people's House, is never going to be serious about representing the people until we stop spending money we don't have, stop allowing for the printing of money to carry out the very things the American people sent us here to stop doing, stop funding the very bureaucracy that are carrying out the actions that we decry in our own campaigns. We are never going to get this country on track until we stop printing money, borrowing money, and spending money we don't have.

I would defy any one of my colleagues, anyone this side of the aisle or the other side of the aisle to come prove that statement wrong.

When we are $32 trillion in debt, or almost, and we keep having a debate about who is going to spend more money on which program of our choice, how is that going to save the country?

With all due respect to colleagues on my side of the aisle, I have heard numerous Republicans say, ``We are not going to touch defense spending.'' Okay. Good for you. Maybe I agree. Maybe we shouldn't touch defense spending. Maybe we need more defense spending to beat China.

But then what, pray tell, is your solution to fund it? I promise you--look, I request all my Republican colleagues

out there, come on down. If you are the one saying you will not touch defense spending, you come down here and you give me a solution. Don't hide behind the men and women in uniform. Don't go, oh, no, we are not going to touch defense spending, we need more defense spending, we need to beat China.

I might agree with you, but I am not going to sell printing and borrowing money that undermines the very national security that you are going out and talking about.

To my Democrat colleagues, you come down here, don't say a word about how you are going to pay for any of the spending, any of the programs that you stood up and applauded last night when the President of the United States was talking about it.

You say you want to have nondefense spending; you want to have more funding for HUD, more funding for HHS, more funding for programs, more funding for some cop grants or whatever it is. It wouldn't be for cop grants. You want more funding.

How are you going to pay for it? The answer is, no one is going to come down here and give an answer to that with the possible exception of two things. My Democratic colleagues will come down and say taxes. Okay. Come down, let's have a conversation about taxes. Come down and show me what taxes you want to raise that will not cause economic impact such that our revenues actually go down. Come show that to me. Let's have a debate about that.

My colleagues on this side of the aisle will tend to say, well, it is the mandatory spending, don't you understand? Don't worry about discretionary spending, that is small ball. Well, a third of our budget is discretionary spending still, so I am not sure that is small ball. I mean, it is, after all, $1.6 trillion. I don't consider that small ball.

My colleagues aren't incorrect that we have got to deal with mandatory spending, but you can't hide behind mandatory spending, say that is the problem, while you then say, whoa, we have got to increase defense spending, and, well, I don't know that I would increase all that other nondefense spending, all those agencies, but you know what? That is what my Democrat colleagues want, so the only way I can get my defense spending is to agree to what they want, and one day we will deal with mandatory spending. What the hell, $32 trillion of debt and counting.

That is exactly what happens. And, again, to any of my colleagues, come down here and prove me wrong. Come on down. I am here. Come debate me. The American people actually want to have a debate. Maybe we should have that debate every day, all day, until we come to some conclusion about how we are going to stop doing the same thing over and over again. Stop spending money we don't have.

Now, I will tell you my solution. I actually believe you should come to the floor and come here to debate and have solutions. I believe that the bureaucracy of the Federal Government is plenty big. I don't believe it needs to get any bigger.

Call me crazy, but I think maybe returning the bureaucratic state, the administrative state, the bureaucracy, the Federal Government bureaucracy, returning it to preCOVID levels--I am not asking for that much. I am just saying, let's go back to the size of the bureaucracy before COVID spending blew the spending out of the water. That would be 2019 spending levels. Are you with me? Let's just take the bureaucracy, take it back to preCOVID spending levels.

Now, do that. Hold defense spending at 2023 levels that were just passed, that all the hawks were running around going, all right, we got more money for defense, we got a 10 percent increase in defense. Okay. Let's hold that spending. If you do what I just said, freeze the bureaucracy at 2019 levels, freeze defense spending at 2023 levels, the one we just passed, if you do that and you do that for 10 years, freeze that number for 10 years, you will save $3.6 trillion and reduce our deficit spending. You will get about, I don't know, probably about a third of the way toward balancing the budget in 10 years. I think that is a pretty good start.

Does anybody in America want to raise their hand and say that the Federal bureaucracy in 2019 was too small? Does anybody want to come down and say: The size of the nondefense Federal Government in 2019, man, that government, oh, my gosh, it was so small. There were no bureaucrats interfering with my life. There were no regulations cutting off economic activity.

Again, come on down. Tell me how that government of 2019 just a few years ago was so efficient, so great, such a good size; that you think that is the right size and that we need it to be bigger; that it is not the right size and that we need it to be bigger.

I don't know many Americans--if I go to my district that I represent, 750,000 Texans, I don't know many of them that would raise their hand and go: Oh, please, I need that bureaucracy to be bigger. Hire more Federal workers into all of those programs. Fill up more buildings in Washington, D.C. We need more of that.

Defense spending, we just got defense spending increased a bit here in 2023. Well, you say, do we need more spending for defense? There are a lot of people who might say we might. Why? Well, is our Navy what it needs to be to beat China? Do we have all the latest technology that we need to be able to beat China or another world foe? Do we have all the latest and greatest intel? Do we have all the personnel trained properly at the levels we need to ensure that we can be the finest fighting force in the world and that we can kill people and blow things up when necessary? That is what our military is supposed to do.

We might need more spending. I will grant that.

I will tell you what, take my plan of freezing the Federal bureaucracy, nondefense. Take last year's defense levels at 2023, and now increase it 2\1/2\ percent for the next 10 years. Instead of saving $3.6 trillion, we would save $3 trillion. It is still a pretty good step toward a 10-year balance.

That is one idea. I think it is the right idea. I will tell you why I think it is the right idea. I don't know why I want to give more money to an EPA that puts Joe Robertson in jail because he had water on his land and somehow that violated the waters of the United States laws.

I don't want to give more money to the bureaucrats at the Federal Bureau of Investigation to build a new $400 million facility in Maryland like we just voted through in December, to hire more FBI agents to put more people like Scott Smith, a dad in Loudoun County, on a list to be a domestic terrorist because he dared to go to a school board and challenge a school board for not doing enough to protect his daughter.

Scott Smith joined me in this Chamber last night and sat right up there listening to the bloviating nonsense we heard coming from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue sitting here last night.

I don't want to give more money to those bureaucrats. I don't. I don't mind saying it.

I was a Federal prosecutor for a couple of years. The Department of Justice has plenty that it can cut. All I am talking about is going back to 2019 levels.

Do we want to fund NIH or FDA or CDC further to carry out more gain- of-function research? Anybody? Raise your hand. Raise your hand if you want more gain-of-function research coming out of your Federal labs, maybe even working with China to do it. Anybody sign up and say: Yes, that is a great idea. Good use of money. Well done. Does anybody want more of that, more of those programs, again, with borrowed printed money?

Do you want more money to go to the Department of Labor to shut down, for example, Rhea Lana Riner's children's clothing consignment company because she violated some standards, according to the Department of Labor?

How about more money for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to issue by regulation--not a law that we passed--a barring of pistol stabilizing braces that potentially make felons out of, I don't know, 10 million or more Americans? Does anybody want to give the ATF more money to go after and target the American people? That is what we do here.

With all due respect to my Republican colleagues who like to go take shots at my Democratic colleagues for

a lot of good reasons, by the way, it is not enough to campaign against this stuff and then come here and fund it. That is what we do. We campaign against these terrible regulations and these terrible actions by bureaucrats.

The IRS is going after nonprofits and faith-based organizations because of their beliefs. The FBI is targeting Mark Houck, a dad. The FBI showed up at 7 a.m. in the morning with a SWAT team to go after his family in Philadelphia because he dared to defend his son when they were outside of an abortion clinic engaging in their First Amendment right to stand up in defense of life. Oh, but let's go give some more money to them.

That is what we will do. Let's give more money to that bureaucracy, the woke, weaponized, wasteful bureaucracy at war with the American people, targeting the American people.

The truth is, we have an obligation to reduce Federal spending even if it were filled with nothing but angels doing nothing but angelic things because we are spending money we don't have. The truth is that bureaucracy is doing anything but those angelic things.

Why do we continue to fund it? The funding that we continue to provide for a bureaucracy that not only is at odds with and targeting the American people, targeting the Scott Smiths, targeting the Mark Houcks, targeting the Joe Robertsons for having water on his land, targeting Marvin Horne for his raisin crop, fining him $685,000 because he didn't comply with certain New Deal-era restrictions that the Department of Agriculture put on him--think about that.

I am not saying that I can say every single thing that every example you bring up that someone didn't violate some reg or some rule because who the hell knows how many there are? I have asked. No one can tell me. How many Federal laws are there? Again, if any of my colleagues can come down here to the floor and bring me a footnoted cite and say this is how many Federal laws there are, I would love to see it. Come tell me how many regulations there are with laws and crimes attached.

According to one report I saw, there are an estimated 4,500 Federal laws, statutes, criminal statutes--sorry, not laws, criminal statutes-- and some 300,000 crimes attached to regulations. That is just one report that I saw. The Department of Justice apparently tried to calculate this in the early 1980s, and they gave up. They came up with a certain number, and they just kind of stopped.

How can any American engage in activity and not essentially be violating something somewhere where some eager bureaucrat is just able to go: Nope. You are in violation. You are shut down.

We were sitting up in the Rules Committee the other day talking about vaccine mandates, and one of the witnesses testified. One of my colleagues said: Well, why aren't you taking this end to the public health emergency or this end of the vaccine mandate through regular order?

Look, I am a big supporter of regular order. I think we should take things through committees and bring them to the floor and offer amendments. Let's keep in mind that is a one-page bill that is pretty straightforward, and I will just say this: What was the regular order carried out by the executive branch in just unilaterally executing an order to force vaccines upon private citizens through OSHA requirements--shut down by the courts, by the way. Where was the regular order? Where was the sort of equivalent to due process for the American people where we can at least go through and make some good decisions for the executive branch when they said: Yes, you military guys, you have to get this COVID vaccine.

Based on what? Well, Anthony Fauci said so. Rochelle Walensky said so.

Wait, but didn't CDC Director Walenski say that the vaccines don't do anything for transmission? Well, don't mind that. We will just keep mandating needles get stuck in the arms of our men and women in uniform, notwithstanding some of the concerns of myocarditis among the young, healthy population that predominantly make up our military, by the way.

Last night, my friend Senator Cruz was sitting right over here during the State of the Union. He brought a young man, a member of our military who has been kicked off the career track. They are coming after him to get $75,000 of money from schooling. They are coming after him. He has to write that check or they are going to keep coming after him. They have not fired him because of the bill that we passed in December saying we are not going to allow you to remove members of the military if they don't want to take the vaccine, but he is still being punished.

Right now, a patriot who signed up to serve his country has his government going after him for money that he has gotten for his family after his sacrifices to serve the country. They are going after him. His government is going after him when all he wanted to do was serve his country and not stick a needle in his arm because some bureaucrat said so.

Let me be perfectly clear to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle: This is going to change. We are not going to do this. We are not going to allow the government to do this to the American people. I mean that.

When we fund the government this year, things better change, Mr. President. You come down here and make threats to us about what you think is going to happen with respect to default. You come down here and lecture us in the people's House. Well, let me tell you, Mr. President, we are a coequal branch of government. We are not going to allow the American people to continue to be targeted by the very government that is supposed to protect them, that is supposed to do their constitutional duty, that is supposed to secure the border of the United States, that is supposed to stop fentanyl from coming in, that is supposed to have operational control of the border so that neither Americans nor migrants are dying, that it is supposed to stop dangerous cartels, that is supposed to stand up to China, that is supposed to have a strong military sparingly used but not woke.

We are not supposed to spend money we don't have. We are supposed to balance our budget. We are supposed to defend the American people.

I am not going to agree, sitting in the Rules Committee or on this floor, to continue the process of spending money we don't have, of not changing the status quo, and not demanding that the President of the United States act like it, act like he is the President, defend this country, secure our border.

He doesn't get to come down here and lecture us. The people's House decides how dollars get spent. The people's House represents the people.

We need a reckoning. We need to stand up and fight, to stand up and be counted. I am not going to go around in the circles that we constantly go around in this place, having another meeting about another meeting about another meeting.

How about we just stand up for something? How about people be on the floor of this body debating? Get another hour of Special Orders, another half-hour of Special Orders.

I am sick and tired of watching my fellow Texans in the State legislature debating right now spending more Texas taxpayer money to do the job the Federal Government is supposed to do and secure the border.

I am sick and tired of walking around on eggshells around a body comprised of Members on both sides of the aisle that refuse to do their job to stop spending money we don't have and say, oh, well, what political poll-tested 80-percent-issue can we put out there and go to the American people with so that we can sound reasonable in our demands?

How about you just demand what is right?

Why don't we just stand up and say, you know what? We are going to balance our budget. Giddyup.

That is what every American does. It is what every business has to do. But no, no, no. We will keep going around in circles, each side going to their pet projects.

Meanwhile, the Federal bureaucracy is going to continue to be at war with the American people like my friend, Scott Smith, who was here last night. Not one single mention by the President, hasn't apologized a lick for putting him through that, domestic terrorist.

Hasn't apologized a lick for the fact that his Secretary of Homeland Security, who was here last night, stood up

at a lectern and said that his own border patrol employees that work for him whipped Haitian migrants when he knew full well--both from the video evidence that we all saw with our eyes and a memo from his own people in the Department of Homeland Security--that was not true.

He knew it. And then he blamed it on systemic racism.

Has he apologized? No.

And the reason he hasn't apologized is because he is at war with the people of the United States and the fact that his job is supposed to be to secure the border.

And the President knows it.

The President goes down and does a photo op with a preset visit in El Paso where they literally go out and clean out the streets of the migrants who are piling up in El Paso and sets up a photo op, and then last night dares to come down here, lecture us, lie to the American people that we are trying to go after their Social Security and Medicare, and offer nothing about his constitutional duty as President of the United States to secure the border.

Mr. Speaker, I will yield back here in a minute. I assume my time is running short.

I will just close by saying this: The American people expect more out of the people's House.

They expect more out of the President of the United States than what we saw last night. It was not a State of the Union. It was a state of confusion.

We have an obligation to do our job and stop spending money we don't have, secure the border of the United States, and actually represent the people.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 49 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, February 9, 2023, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I am glad to have him on the Rules Committee and glad to serve with him.

Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have been asking what have we been doing over the last few weeks?

Well, I will tell you what we have been doing. We have been protecting babies born alive. We have been protecting families from the invasive audits of the Internal Revenue Service, or at least trying to if Chuck Schumer doesn't block it; trying to protect the Strategic Petroleum Reserve from 200 million barrels being dumped by the President heading right into an election, lo and behold.

Now, how about protecting, last week, nurses and doctors from being fired for daring to want to protect their own health and well-being by not taking a shot, a shot which the CDC Director says does nothing for transmission of COVID. Those are the facts.

We are standing with the American people. American people are sick and tired of an overbearing Federal Government sticking its nose where it doesn't belong into the well-being, into the health, into the jobs, into the lives of the American people. That is the truth.

Now, what are we trying do? Today, we want to protect individuals from being punished if they want to try to come to the United States but haven't had a vaccine; again, a vaccine which the CDC Director says does nothing for transmission. Those are the truths.

Here is the fact: Right now, a vaccinated noncitizen with COVID can enter the United States, via air travel, but an unvaccinated noncitizen who doesn't have COVID would be denied entry. That is the logic of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle; that is, there is no logic. That is the problem.

Everything about COVID has been free of logic and, rather, full of emotion. That is the truth.

We have been destroying the American economy. We have been destroying the future of our children; forcing them into the corners with masks; forcing them to be denied education. We have been destroying the futures of families whose family members have lost jobs; who haven't been able to serve; who haven't been able to carry out their livelihoods as doctors, as nurses, as public servants who have been unable to carry out their jobs, including men and women in uniform, until Republicans demanded, in December, that we protect our men and women in uniform from getting fired for daring to say I don't want to have a needle stuck in my arm when there is plenty of evidence indicating myocarditis and other concerns that arise from it.

I wonder why we haven't had any committee hearings by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle diving into the origins of COVID, diving into the side effects of the vaccine?

Well, we are going to do it now, and history is going to judge us, and we are going to be on the side of protecting the American people.

I will tell you one last thing: This is the capital city of the United States of America, and Congress has the authority to protect the people who want to visit here and to make sure that American citizens are the ones who vote. It is not a State. It is our Nation's Capital seat.

Madam Speaker, I would note that last week, for the first time in 7 years, we were able to offer amendments on the floor of this body with a modified open rule, and for the first time in 10 years, we were able to amend a bill other than an appropriations measure.

I believe the gentleman doth protest too much. The bills we are talking about here are one page each, and one is six pages. We have had these bills out there for 72 hours. They have been publicly available.

When the gentleman asks why we are doing this so quickly, I will tell you why. Because I am not going to look at another nurse, another doctor, another healthcare practitioner in my district who is begging to go do his or her job, to go care for the American people that they want to take care of, and have to look at them and say: You can't do it because the Federal Government is telling you that you can't, without any basis in science, without any basis rooted in any defense whatsoever.

Keep this in mind:

The OSHA mandate put forward by this President: Struck down by

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments from the gentleman from Arizona. As he so often does, in outlining the extent to which we have significant fiscal challenges that could be met with the kinds of reforms that we don't often talk about: the need to reform healthcare policies, healthcare decisions, and things that get well beyond the rhetoric of balancing budgets, on that he and I agree enormously.

I look forward to engaging with him on the floor of the House and other places on that topic again. But I do want to say one thing that is true about what the gentleman from Arizona was talking about with respect to addressing mandatory spending, reforming so-called entitlements with respect to Social Security and Medicare, and otherwise reforming those complex areas of our government. If you can't tackle discretionary spending, you are

not going to tackle mandatory spending.

And importantly, this is the critical part, you have got to have the political willpower to address these things. That is actually why I came to the floor this evening.

America was drawn into an engaging debate among the Members of Congress who represent them in the people's House last week.

C-SPAN, not constricted by the rules of the House, was able to have cameras zeroing in on the Members of this body as we were debating last week. People were drawn into the conversations, the people on both sides of the aisle, on the drama of the debates and how we would choose the Speaker of the House and then whether we would pass the rules package.

But here I am on January 11, 2023, in the new Republican majority, and I am alone in the Chamber again with the Speaker. That is the requirement, by the way. There has to be a Speaker and then a Member on the floor. But I am alone again.

Now, we passed some bills today.

But what are we going to do as a body to make good on the reforms we passed last week and actually extend on them and build on them?

I would ask my colleagues why we don't have full debate right now on a number of the important issues of the day?

Why we don't have full debate tomorrow, next week, and the following week on the crucial issues of our day?

Today, I called a colleague on the other side of the aisle to inquire as to which Members of the minority party would be willing to sit down with me and anybody else to figure out how to deal with the debt and the deficit spending that is plaguing our country.

My colleague on the other side of the aisle engaged in conversation about what that would take, but the fact of the matter is that I don't know the answer.

What I would say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is: Come on down. Where are you?

Are you going to simply take potshots at any effort by Members of my side of the aisle--the majority now--who dare to raise questions about how we might tackle $32 trillion of debt, a trillion dollar-plus deficits every year, and tackle the question of interest rates going up causing our interest payments to go up every year?

Every 50 basis points--every half of a percentage point--that goes up adds about $100 billion a year in additional interest expense. I think in the next year interest is going to eclipse our national defense spending.

Now, where are all my defense hawks?

Where are all of my Republican colleagues who like to stand up and say: We have got to fund our men and women in uniform; we have to buy more planes and more bombers; we have to have more guns; and we have to make sure we have the strongest defense in the world?

Great. I agree. Peace through strength sparingly used, non-woke, and trained to kill people and blow things up. That is what I want our military to be and to do, and I want it to continue to be the best in the world.

But we are not going to be able to do that if we are spending more on interest to the debt than we are on our own national defense.

As the gentleman from Arizona rightly is pointing out about the state of our ``mandatory spending'' and ``entitlements,'' we are not going to be able to maintain our country, have a strong national defense, and ensure a peaceful world for our children and our grandchildren. These are just facts.

We used to have a lot of political back and forth between Democrats and Republicans. We would accuse our colleagues on the other side of the aisle of being tax-and-spend Democrats--and they were tax-and-spend Democrats. But something changed along the way. We stopped debating tax policy for the most part, and now everybody in this Chamber for the most part are spend-and-spend Members of Congress, spend-and-spend members of a uni-party.

Mr. Speaker, I am all on board with the enthusiasm, the unity, and the energy coming out of last week that we are going to transform this institution. I believe it.

I believe by offering amendments in the appropriations process on the floor of this body we will be better.

I believe that by having 72 hours to read bills and not waiving that rule--that we actually do it--that we will be better.

I believe that by having single-subject bills without them being multisubject, complicated, and thousands of pages that we will be better.

I believe that by requiring amendments to be germane--that is, actually related to the underlying purpose of the underlying bill--that we will be better.

Those are all things that will make us better.

But they will only make us better if we are all united in the purpose of what we are trying to do.

I know I have got very strong disagreements with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I have significant disagreements with a lot of my friends on my side of the aisle. But, Mr. Speaker, you will never solve those disagreements if you never sit down at the table and work.

The only way to work is to put some sort of constraint on our spending. So with all due respect to my friend from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert) with whom I agree about mandatory spending and about having to solve those problems in the long term, discretionary spending matters. Discretionary spending matters because it charts the priorities of a Congress that represents the American people. We have to make the tough choices on discretionary spending.

Oh, by the way, that they are only 20 or 25 percent of the overall spending does not mean that they are not insignificant. If we do not balance our budget right now and chart a course to balance that budget over the next 10 years, we will spend an additional $10 trillion over the next 10 years--that we don't have.

But what will happen is--and here is what is going to happen, this is important for the American people to understand--we reached an agreement as a party last week to ensure that we return to 2022 levels of spending--that is a top line level of $1.471 trillion--and that we operate with that cap in spending that says nothing about what the levels are for defense or nondefense discretionary, just that we would cap at 2022 levels of spending.

But here is what will happen. We will have a debate about that, and we will pass some appropriations bills. If we do our job as Republicans, we will pass good, solid bills for this year's spending that stick within those caps and stay under the 2022 levels of spending.

We will send them to the Senate, and Chuck Schumer will say--with all sorts of wailing and gnashing of teeth--that we are taking food out of the mouths of orphans and babies and that we are undermining the ability of people to survive and live and that we are taking away their medicine; we are killing people; and we are doing all sorts of horrible things.

As a result, it will be September, and we won't have an agreement, and then there will be some brinkmanship, a bunch of politics, and a bunch of messaging and speeches, and then there will be a continuing resolution that funds government at the current levels that were passed in December under that $1.7 billion omnibus spending bill that was passed on December 23 using Christmas as a backstop.

That is almost certainly what is going to happen if we don't stop it.

There are two ways to stop it: Democrats and Republicans sit down and work honestly around a table to stop it, or brinkmanship, forcing the question by bringing it to the brink. Those are the two possible ways that we can try to stop what I just described will occur from occurring. This is the reality of what we have got to change in this body.

What else is going to happen?

Come summer, at some time undetermined--usually chosen by the executive branch as the maximum moment to be able to extract some sort of pain on the body--we will be told that the debt limit is going to be reached. That might be May or June or July or August.

Then we will be told: You must raise the debt ceiling.

If any of us say: Wait a minute, why are we going to raise the debt ceiling if we don't stop doing the things that are causing us to accumulate more debt?

If any of us dare to say that, what will happen?

Oh, my. It is already happening. The Wall Street Journal, all of the bond traders and the stock traders on Wall Street, all of the investment bankers, all of the brilliant economists, and all of the opposing political party will all say:

Don't default on the debt. You can't default on the debt,

so don't you dare demand that we actually change the things

we are doing that are causing the debt because we might

default on the debt.

So let's keep spending money we don't have and keep

accumulating more debt increasing our interest payments and

making it more difficult to service that debt while we

undermine our own fiscal accountability and our own bonds

ratings in the future.

But no, no, don't you dare, Congressman Roy, say that you

might use the debt ceiling as leverage to extract fiscal

reforms to stop the insanity.

Let me just be clear. I think it is critical that we change the way we are doing business, and I intend to use the debt ceiling to ensure that we get fiscal and structural reforms. I am not going to bow down just because a few of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and a few pundits on TV write nasty editorials and some of my donors, some of the people out there in the world and activists text you and say: Oh, my Gosh, what are you doing? You are going to risk default on the debt.

Do you know why I am not going to do that?

Because it is my job not to back down when people are afraid of what we are supposed to do here. What we are supposed to do is bring things to a decision in this body responsibly.

All last week while we were debating the Speaker, a whole bunch of my friends and supporters--financial supporters--were blowing up my phone with text messages. A whole lot of them were saying:

Attaboy, stand up, fight for the American people, change

the institution, and let us actually try to make that place

work rather than continuing down this road of destruction.

But a whole bunch of them were also texting me saying:

What are you doing? What are you doing?

We are not going to have a Republican Speaker. We are going

to get a Democrat Speaker. You guys look like clowns.

What are you doing?

You look ridiculous. You are making the Republican Party

look ridiculous, Chip. Stop doing it.

Come Friday after 15 votes, we came to a conclusion. Nobody died, and nothing went crazy. We got a Speaker of the House, and we got some agreements among all of us about how the body should proceed, about ensuring we open it up, have transparency, offer more amendments, and give greater ideological diversity among the committees.

Let's have a real debate on these things, and let's get a really strong committee on the Judiciary Committee--a Church-style committee-- to look at how government is acting.

That is what we got by standing up and fighting and ignoring all of the handwringers who can't stand the heat. Or to state it differently, all of the handwringers out there in the chamber of commerce crowd and the donor class who basically want us to do their bidding so they can get richer.

That is the truth.

Don't default on the debt. That might hurt my financial bottom line, Chip. Don't you dare rattle and have debates on the House floor that might rock the boat, because my boat is pretty good, Chip. I am doing quite well.

Mr. Speaker, there are a whole hell of a lot of people in this country who are not doing well, and I am not here to represent the donor class. I am not here to represent the talking heads. I am here to represent every hardworking American across this country and particularly in my district who are sick of the direction of this country.

So I am glad that we had the debate that we had last week. I am glad that we captivated the American people's attention. I am glad that C- SPAN was free to show the conversation and the debate. I am glad that we did something we hadn't done in 100 years because it is the two- party system entrenched that has broken down the ability of Members of this body to actually be Members.

That is actually our job.

Putting politics and partisan politics aside, it is our job as individual Members of this body to come here and do our job. It is not our job, for example, to get on a committee and say and do whatever the chairman of the committee says which, by the way, is one of the things that happens in this town.

Our job is to get on the committee and work, debate, put good bills on the floor, amend those bills, debate those bills, and pass some of those bills.

It is also not a race to introduce bills. It is not a race to pass bills. What would be wrong if we only passed about 30 bills this whole Congress? Would that be a bad thing? What if we only passed the 12 Appropriations bills, did our job, sent them to the Senate, passed a handful of bills that would actually make our country better, and then just sat back and worked a little bit and talked a little bit rather than running down to the desk to file another bill to introduce another statement to do another press conference to then run around and say: Oh, we have to pass a messaging bill. Oh, this is such-and-such week. This is the week for police officers, or this is the week for breast cancer awareness, or this is the week for whatever somebody in the Hallmark industry decided the week was for. Oh, well, we have to pass a bill.

Why? Do you think we lack laws? Do you think we lack regulations? Do you think we need to spend more money that we don't have? Why don't we just stop, pause?

My message to my Republican colleagues is the best thing we could do for our country is to stop doing all the things that this body has been doing for as long as I can remember. Whatever this body has been doing, let's do the opposite. How about that?

How about we actually have this Chamber full, like it was last week? Why don't we have hundreds of people on the floor and debate issues in front of each other? Why don't we pick a day like Tuesday and have 50 Members from one side and 50 Members from the other side and call that debate day?

Let's debate Ukraine in full view of the American people. Maybe the next week we can debate spending restraint, how we are going to tackle spending. I would like to listen to my colleagues tell me how you plan on tackling spending because, right now, my basic understanding of how my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would tackle spending is tax people or keep spending money or both.

My view on this side of the aisle is that we don't want to tax people, but we want to keep spending money in the name of defense. Anybody want to come challenge me on that assertion? I am happy to debate them. Either side of the aisle, come on down. Let's debate it. I don't think anybody will take that debate on because they know I am right.

Why don't we change that? Where are my colleagues on the other side of the aisle when it comes to spending? I would like to know. I think the American people deserve to know.

Do you believe in modern monetary theory, just keep spending money and it doesn't matter? I don't. I think that is foolish. I think it is reckless. I think it undermines our dollar. I think it undermines our financial stability.

More importantly, I think it makes it impossible for us to make good decisions about how to make policy and execute policy. How can you make a tough decision about whether or not you need to buy a bomber or whether or not you need to fund a particular grant program or fund a particular entitlement that is way oversubscribed and out of money? How can you make a decision about that if the answer is just to keep printing money?

I mean, that is my question. I suggest there is no more important question for us to answer because if we don't, then we are never going to come to agreement on the policies, ever.

If I go home and talk to my wife and say, ``Look, we are going to cap our spending at our 2022 levels of spending,'' then we have to make choices. We have to decide, well, are we going to just not make our mortgage payment? No, we have to do that. Are we going to not feed our kids? Well, no, we have to feed our kids. Are we going to have electricity and heat? Well, we would like to have that.

Then comes the discretionary questions: Do you take a vacation? Do you get a new car rather than patching together your 15-year-old car? Do you

send your kids to a certain school? Do you save a certain amount of money for college? Maybe you forgo college because you look at college and say, ``Why am I going to spend $300,000 to send them to college where they will teach my kids that America is evil?'' I will save that for another rant.

That is my point. We have to do that as families, but this body never does it, ever. We pretend to do it.

The point of the agreement reached last week was to open this body up, empower rank-and-file, but also, importantly, establish some parameters for how we fund the Federal Government. Those parameters should be that we set limits. If you set limits, now you have to sit down and figure it out.

Here is the problem. I don't believe that Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats want to sit down at the table and figure out how to limit spending. I don't believe that the President of the United States or his current Director of Office of Management and Budget or any of his team wants to sit down at the table with us and figure out how to limit spending.

I have not even heard them come down and say, ``Well, fine. You are right, Chip. We are spending more money than we have, and we are racking up more debt, so we believe we need to increase taxes.'' Okay. Come make your offer. We will raise taxes. Show me how raising those taxes is going to eliminate the deficit. He whispers, ``It is not.''

Show me how raising those taxes is not going to undermine economic growth, make it more difficult for American people to get jobs, undermine the prosperity of the American people. Show me that. Come demonstrate that. He whispers, ``That is not really that easy to do.''

But our job is to responsibly represent the American people. It is not to govern. We often use that word. That is crazy. We don't govern. We represent. Our job is to represent our constituents. I don't know any constituents--frankly, even my most left-leaning constituents, to be honest--saying, ``Oh, yes, please go up there and spend more money we don't have.''

I would just suggest that, according to the CBO, we are going to see another $15.7 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years. That is the truth. The truth is that, in fiscal year 2022, we collected a record $4.9 trillion in taxes, nearly a trillion more than the previous year.

We don't have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. We have an overpromise problem.

I had a reporter come up to me in the hallway a minute ago and say: Mr. Roy, are there any circumstances in which you are going to support providing more aid to Ukraine?

How on Earth are we having that conversation on January 11 after, on December 23, we just added another $45 billion for Ukraine?

The reporter responded and said: They say that it is really important to get more money to beat Russia.

Oh, really? What do our experts say? What is our responsibility to pay for that? Do we just write a check anytime a world leader comes and says, ``But it is really important for my people that you write me a check''?

I want someone to write me a check, minus all the ethics stuff. Don't go write all that.

Look, the truth is, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert) is 100 percent correct that mandatory spending--Social Security, Medicare, all the related expenditures that go along with that--are driving the vast majority of the debt that we are accumulating every year. That is correct. If you are not willing to take on discretionary spending, how are you going to take on Social Security, Medicare, and reforming those to work when the first ad that is going to be run is going to be pushing granny off the cliff, if you dare even have a conversation about the issue?

I will make an invitation to any colleague in the Chamber, but particularly my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, come down here and talk about Social Security and Medicare and all of our mandatory spending.

I will issue the same request that my colleagues on this side of the aisle acknowledge, that you cannot hide behind Social Security, Medicare, and mandatory spending to say that we shouldn't limit discretionary spending, defense spending because that is an insignificant part of the budget.

It is significant, and it is significant not just because of the trillions of dollars of debt that those spending accounts for Defense, Education, Department of Justice, Commerce, and every other agency, Homeland Security--it is not just because we are spending too much money there, and it is adding up to deficits and debts. It is because we are funding the very agencies that are undermining us.

We are funding the bureaucrats who are undermining the current individual in America who is out there as an entrepreneur trying to get a job started. It is undermining my friend Scott Smith in Loudoun County because we label him a domestic terrorist because the FBI was brought in along with the National School Board Association. They all coordinated and said: Okay, let's label him a domestic terrorist.

We are funding a Department of Homeland Security that wants to continue to create or execute policies that invite more people to come to our border, endangering them and us.

The reason you care about discretionary spending is because it funds the policies of government, of the bureaucracy, of the administrative state that undermines our well-being, undermines our prosperity.

We have the opportunity now, right now, as Republicans to lead the House of Representatives forward to change. We should, in fact, change.

Last week was a monumental step forward to changing this institution, to opening it up, to allowing rank-and-file Members to have a say, to putting more diversity on our committees, to having more debate in committees, coming down to the floor, and fighting for the people that we represent. All of that will be for naught if we don't embrace wholeheartedly the mission, the hard mission, of limiting the spending that is destroying our country and demanding that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle come sit down at the table so that we can actually do our jobs for the people we represent.

Then, finally, send a message to the United States Senate, to the Democrat-led United States Senate, to the Democrat President of the United States at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue that it is not enough to give speeches. It is not enough to oppose what we produce out of the people's House.

The American people spoke in November. They want us to be responsible. They want us to limit spending. They want us to secure the United States. They want us to have a secure and sovereign border. They want us to get out of their business. They want us to stop being at each other's throats. If you want to do that, then embrace fiscal responsibility and stop spending money you don't have to fund the bureaucrats who are undermining our liberties.

Stand up in defense of liberties, civil liberties and the freedoms of the American people, by calling out the bureaucrats in our committees and exposing it through oversight.

Stand up for a strong military that is nonwoke, that is sparingly used but ready to go fight when needed.

Secure the border of the United States with the policies that are necessary to do so and embrace radical federalism where we return power to the States so we can agree to disagree and stop being at each other's throats.

Do you want to do those things? Then there is one key thing you have to do. You have to fight the swamp. You have to take on the bureaucracy. You have to take on the powers that be.

That started last week. We have some of the tools that we need, but that battle is just beginning. We are going to take this town on for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 14 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, January 12, 2023, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague from Texas as she recounted some of the realities when talking about school boards. Well, I have come to know Scott Smith of Loudoun County. I consider him a friend. I have been talking to him since the actions against his family--in response to his daring to go to the school board to question the abuse of his daughter--resulted in his name being put out as the poster child for the weaponization of government against parents who dare question school boards.

And, yes, in fact, the National School Board Association sent a letter. But what became increasingly clear is that it was in collusion with the White House seeking the letter. That has become readily clear from the emails that we have gotten through Freedom of Information Act requests, that the Biden White House was seeking the National School Board Association to have that kind of a letter request in order that they, the Biden administration, be able to target Scott Smith and other parents around this country.

Every American should shudder at the power of the government, the Federal Government, being targeted at parents for daring to stand up and defend a daughter who was abused in a bathroom in the Loudoun County Public Schools.

By the way, the superintendent in Loudoun County has been indicted. This is the truth. Yet, this administration wanted to make Scott Smith the bad guy--not the rapist, not the school board that allowed this to occur in the schools in Loudoun County. It is not just parents.

What about Bunni Pounds in the Christians Engaged organization? The IRS was targeting their nonprofit status because they happened to be religious. This is the power of the IRS.

How about the power of our public health elite who made decisions and put out misinformation that undermined the ability of Americans to stand up and to continue their jobs and continue to go to school?

Instead, they were masked and had needles put in their arms.

Now we want to know the truth. Not the origins, but the truth. This committee is critically important, and we are going to find the truth. We are going to defend the American people against the weaponization of government.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole) for yielding.

I am delighted to be down here on the floor of the House of Representatives in a Republican majority, and I am delighted to be talking about a rules package crafted by that Republican majority and that reflects what I think is a fundamental transformation of this House to ensure that the people can be represented by their Representatives. That is the point.

There is a reason that I have had great conversations with some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle about why having 72 hours to read a bill, or why having a bill that isn't littered with Christmas tree additional subjects rather than single subjects, as my friend from Virginia (Mr. Griffith) articulated so well, or whether having germane amendments and being able to open up the floor by virtue of changing the rules or restoring the Holman rule so we can have an impact on agencies that are out of control and not responding to the people's House, there is a reason why those rules are so fundamentally important: to restore this body and to restore the people's House.

That is why we are here. Everybody keeps running around in classic swamp speak talking about secret deals, a secret addendum.

What we are talking about is how people come to an agreement in this town to ensure that we are going to carry out what we have said we are going to do.

The rules package is on full display. The rules package has been on full display and publicly available since Friday or earlier last week.

The text of that rules package has been something we can look at. My friends are right. A good chunk of that text is the agreement reached a while back, a couple of weeks ago, 1 week or 2 weeks ago, with one significant change: the single-person motion to vacate which is in the spirit of that which goes all the way back to Jefferson. In fact, we are currently now operating not under any rules. That is why we are having a debate. We are about to debate on adopting the rules.

I can walk down right there into the well and file a motion to vacate a single person right now because that is the precedent. That is what we are operating under, because that goes back to Jefferson.

The whole point here is trying to ensure that we are continuing the great history of the people's House.

Yes, we have had conversations and agreements as individuals are supposed to do, looking each other in the eye and saying that we are going to bring balanced budgets to the floor of the House.

You bet that we have agreements that we are going to do that. You bet we have had agreements that we are going to bring the Texas border plan to make sure that we secure the border rather than perpetuating the fraud that the President of the United States continues to perpetuate endangering the American people. You bet that we are bringing forward a promise to have legislation that will set term limits because the American people are tired of a House that doesn't represent them. You bet that we have got agreements to do those things.

You bet that we have been talking about making sure that we can bring amendments to the floor of this House--open debate amendments on appropriations bills--that that was a part of the package that we were talking about; and you bet that a part of our agreement was ensuring that a Church-style committee under the leadership of my good friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan) of the Judiciary Committee, will target weaponization of government against the American people. You bet that those agreements were reached.

I will not back away from that or shy away from it.

But this rules package is a rules package that reflects this body and the entirety of the Republican Party on making sure that we restore the people's House.

We are united to do that. We are coming out of last week strong and united to make sure that we stand up for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage everybody to vote for this rules package.

Mr. Speaker, I guess the President of the United States was able to find the southern border on a map.

It took him 2 years to finally get down to the southern border, and what happens?

Everybody just goes around and cleans up everything that is going on in El Paso.

Let me tell you something: The people of Texas know the truth. In Texas we are dealing every single day with 6,000, 7,000, or 8,000 people crossing the border every day.

Now, with a House majority, we have got the will and we have got the power to do something about it. It is time we do something because the people of Texas are taking the brunt every single day.

There are still migrants that are being sold into the sex trafficking trade. There are still Americans who are dying from fentanyl poisonings.

No camera presence down in El Paso, no going down there for a show trip is going change the fact that Texans are struggling.

It is time right now for the House majority to do our job. We are going to have to stop funding a Department of Homeland Security that refuses to secure the border of the United States. We are going to do that this year.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Pennsylvania, I appreciate the Speaker, and the gentleman from California.

Mr. Speaker, my friend from Pennsylvania and I share a love of outlaw country music, whether it is Texas-based--my preference--or generally. There is a famous picture of Johnny Cash standing up giving his middle finger, and it is on the cover of an album. If all 435 of us stood on the steps of the Capitol with our middle finger to the American people, it would be a more honest action than what we are engaging in here on the floor of the people's House right now.

Let me tell you what is happening right now. In true swamp fashion, what we are about to do is deem as passed a House bill on Federal agency reporting goals with a House amendment to a previously passed Senate amendment to enable us to have a revenue measure--to enable us to give the Senate a revenue measure to satisfy the constitutional requirement that revenue bills originate in the House. The House amendment to a Senate amendment fast-tracks the omnibus by allowing the Senate to bypass a motion to proceed vote.

Now, that is a bunch of complicated, parliamentary procedure gobbledygook for the American people, but what it is is a fraud. It is a fraud.

It is actually trying to end-run the rules in order to jam through what? A massive $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill without any actual debate. That is what is happening right now on the floor of the House of Representatives, nothing else.

In that $1.7 trillion bill--and pause for a second--what are we actually packaging here? A week-long continuing resolution to keep the government open through this weekend into next week so negotiations can continue to wrap up this $1.7 trillion monstrosity.

So the vote today is a vote to perpetuate and extend funding for a week to allow a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill in a lameduck Congress. That has not been done, by the way, in the last 70 years when we have had a flip of the House, a flip in majority control of the House. We have not done that over the last 70 years. In the five times there has been a flip, we do not pass big spending bills in a lameduck Congress, which is what this is. My Democratic colleagues know it; my Democratic colleagues in the Senate know it; and the Senate Republicans who seem to be trying to grease the skids of this, they know it, as well. Here we sit.

So to the American people, you need to understand what the people's House is doing to you today--standing on the steps of the Capitol sticking their middle finger up at you would be more honest because this is defense spending, $858 billion, a 10 percent increase.

We can debate the need for a defense spending increase. Many of us probably would agree we need to have more defense spending, but we also need to fix the Department of Defense. We need to stop having it turn into a woke agency that is essentially social engineering wrapped in a uniform. Let's fix the Department of Defense. No, we are not debating that. We are just going to give another blank check of 10 percent additional spending.

But it is worse than that. We are now going to have nondefense spending reports--we haven't seen the text because, oh, no, the little people here in the House can't see the text before we actually vote on this crap. No, no, no, they are going to jam it through without seeing the text. Nondefense spending--reports indicate somewhere between an 8 to 11 percent increase.

Now, to put that in context, we are talking about something in the order of $50 to $60 billion. Here is the thing, we just spent something like $2 trillion in nondefense discretionary plus-up during COVID, and we are now going to jump into this, and we are going to say, oh, yeah, I have got a good idea. Let's jump up nondefense discretionary spending. That is all of the alphabet soup of all of the agencies that are attacking the American people every single day, empowering the FBI to designate parents as domestic terrorists, empowering the DHS to not actually secure the homeland while Americans are dying from fentanyl poisoning and immigrants are burning up 53 of them in a tractor trailer in San Antonio.

That is what we are dealing with. This CR is the gateway drug to an omnibus spending bill next week. That is why we should oppose it. We should oppose the CR, we should oppose this rule, and we should oppose the omnibus.

The American people deserve a House of Representatives that is actually doing the work of appropriating rather than jamming through an omnibus bill right before Christmas in a lameduck session after the American people spoke and sent a new majority to the people's House.

Mr. Speaker, I understand the collegiality of the body and wanting to engage. I am happy to engage. We just never get a chance to engage.

We are down here, basically, in a fake debate. That is what we all know. I mean, the truth is it is not like we have a body, a Chamber filled here with human beings debating this $1.7 trillion while we are $32 trillion in debt. I would be happy to.

Why don't we actually roll up our sleeves around these tables and do the work? But we don't do that.

We are literally down here, and we are going to do--what?--30 minutes a side, if we even do that, and then we are going to vote. We are going to vote on a rule that packages together, as I said, deeming as passed a House bill on Federal agency reporting goals with a House amendment to a previously passed Senate amendment to pass a $1.7 trillion omnibus, combined with a CR for an extension for a week, in a lame-duck Congress. That is the truth.

The American people pull their hair out. They go, gosh, what on Earth is happening in Washington?

Well, I will tell them what is happening in Washington. This, this is what is happening in Washington.

We know what this is about. This is jamming through a bill at the eleventh hour to get the political priorities of the current Democratic majority, and a handful of Senate Republicans are happy to do it so they can get pork.

The House and the Senate have requested a total of $16 billion for 7,500 earmarks. The top requester: Senator Richard Shelby, ranking member of Senate Appropriations, with $656 million. This is a nice little send-off for the appropriators in the Senate.

But the fact of the matter is the American people are the ones who get screwed in this deal. They are the ones who end up losing their country with $32 trillion in debt.

There is no justification for ramping up spending an additional 10 percent for nondefense discretionary after all the money that has been spent under COVID and using the Defense Department as the backs upon which you are going to place the debt of our children and grandchildren and say that, ``Oh, yes, we are doing this for defense.'' That is just wrong.

At what point are we actually going to do the work of the American people in the people's House? At what point are we going to actually debate? At what point are we actually going to amend? At what point are we actually going to live within our means and stop writing checks we can't cash?

The American people are staring at us. They throw their hands up in the air and wonder what has become of the country that their brothers and sisters and dads and moms and daughters and sons have fought for.

Why do we stand in front of that flag? Why do we open in prayer? Why do we say the Pledge of Allegiance if we are going to rip apart the flag right here in this body, in this Chamber? Because that is what we are doing, using backroom deals, dropping these bills on the floor, and not allowing us to actually engage in debate over these important matters.

The American people are tired of spending money we don't have, and they are tired of open borders. They are tired of empowering bureaucrats like the FBI. They are tired of forced vaccine mandates at the Department of Defense. They are tired of an IRS harassing the American people, allegedly, for more revenue. They are tired of an NIH and a CDC making it up as they go along and shutting down economies and jamming it down the throats of the American people. They are tired of an EPA and a Department of the Interior restricting Americans' ability to have reliable energy. The American people are tired of it.

I hope help is on the way. I am glad the Republicans seem united against this in the House, and I am looking at Mitch McConnell when I say this: Do your job, Leader McConnell. Do your job, and follow the wishes of the American people, who gave a majority to Republicans in the House of Representatives. Let's stop this bill.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from California talked about the extent to which the process is bad and that we can do better. Well, I am glad that he agrees with that.

The question is, well, let's agree right now to amend the CR to March. Why don't we do that? Why don't we agree right now to amend the continuing resolution until March?

Well, we know why my Democratic colleagues don't want to do that, right? They don't want to have a full-throated debate on this. They don't want to have an actual discussion.

Why don't we have an open process? Why don't we actually have amendments here on the floor of the House? We haven't been able to offer an amendment on the floor of the House of Representatives since May 2016.

But the gentleman from California knows this. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle know this. This isn't about actually saying let's have a process that works. It is the opposite. It is using Christmas and the end of the year to jam this through, not to buy time with a 1-week CR so we can negotiate.

Who is negotiating? Three people in a room? We are not. We are not debating this on the floor. We are not going to do it in the light of day. No. What is going to happen is one big bill will be dropped on the floor after this rule is jammed through, on the 23rd of December, 2 days before Christmas, intentionally, right before Christmas, in order to force everybody to come in, with no amendments, to vote up or down on $1.7 trillion.

How on Earth did we end up $32 trillion in debt? That is how, and there is no actual resolve to do anything about that.

Again, control of the House of Representatives has shifted from one party to the other five times since 1954. In none of those years have we had the outgoing Congress pass a comprehensive spending bill in the lame duck that is after the election. We shouldn't do it now. We shouldn't do it in the future.

One last point: If there is a debate in the Senate right now and some of our Senate colleagues decide to object to the continuing resolution, which I would support, which would then call into question the funding on Saturday, when we wake up, let's be very clear that it is Democrats who would be risking shutting down the government because they are so married to funding the alphabet soup of the bureaucracy throughout this town that is strangling the American people, strangling prosperity, spending money we don't have, refusing to secure the border, empowering FBI agents to go after the American people. Those are the priorities of my Democratic colleagues.

If there is any debate on Saturday as to whether the lights are going to be turned on in the government, it is on the hands of Democrats married to a bureaucracy rather than standing up in defense of the American people who send us here.