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ISSUES OF THE DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) for 30 minutes.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert), as he always does, making such a strong case for the need for this body to do the hard work that we are supposed to do and actually using not just taxpayer money but borrowed money remotely effectively.
He has made the case for a long time about how mandatory spending, the spending that we had promised to people through Medicare, Social Security, and other programs, is blowing the lid off of our budget and the need for us to get right and that there are ways that we can solve the problem. There are ways that we can take dramatic steps to lower the costs of healthcare, which the gentleman from Arizona talks about regularly, about the need for us to do to drive down the costs of healthcare so that we can actually contain this beast that is consuming our expenditures and causing us to have to borrow so much money, weaken ourselves against China, and so forth.
So, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for his consistency on this matter. Would that our body or even our own Conference be so consistent in having an interest in having that conversation.
I would note again for my constituents, for those people across the country, all of you that are watching this on C-Span, that I am speaking to an empty Chamber.
This is what we do. This is debate on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. We come down, and we had five votes earlier today--I think four. One got wiped off. We have four votes on two amendments.
Amendments, right? They are amendments that are offered in the Rules Committee, where the powers that be decide what we get to debate on the floor of the House.
I am a Member of the United States Congress with an election certificate for the some 700,000-odd people in central Texas that I represent, yet I have never had the opportunity to offer an amendment on the floor of the House of Representatives.
This is not the people's House. This is a House of a handful of hand-
selected individuals on both sides of the aisle who sit in a back room and decide what we get to debate about and what we get to discuss and what we get to vote on. My colleagues on both sides of the aisle know this, yet this is what we continue to do.
I gave a speech a little while back in December about the United States House of free stuff because that is what we are. Neither party has ever met a bill that they are not willing to vote for because it sounds good, right?
It doesn't matter how much it costs. It doesn't matter what it means in terms of debt, as my colleague from Arizona was just talking about in terms of debt. It just doesn't matter because we are the United States House of free stuff.
You got a bill that sounds good? You got a problem that you want to solve? Come to Congress. We will write you a bill. We will print you some money because there is no consequence to printing the money.
In what world is that a way to govern? The world is supposedly looking at us being this august institution, the people's House, and here I sit alone. My colleagues have headed off to the airport to fly home. We will come back on Monday. We will punch through a no doubt really important list of predetermined items decided by some Rules Committee people dropped on the floor and say: Take it or leave it. Vote yes or no.
Boy, that is inspirational, looking at how a bill becomes a law. Schoolhouse Rock laughs at us because there is no debate. There is no amendment. Both sides just come down here and vote to spend more money we don't have in order to buy your votes.
Well, our message to the American people is, are you for sale? Are the American people for sale by listening to every Member of this body go home and tell you all of the stuff they are bringing back home for you with borrowed money?
Well, we have a decision to make about how we are going to spend the people's money in the next 14 days.
Do we have a debate this week? Do we have a debate this week about the continuing resolution? No. That is the bill that is continuing to fund government that expires on February 18.
Did my Democratic colleagues, did the Speaker, come down and offer an appropriations package or bill and say: Hey, let's have a debate and a discussion about how we should spend the people's money and borrow more money in order to carry out the functions and our obligations. No, we haven't had that debate.
We voted on a garbage piece of legislation today that will do nothing to check China while we are sending our athletes over to bow down to the Chinese and allow them to take center stage on the world's stage. China. Never mind all the slave camps. Never mind what they are doing around the world. Never mind the espionage. Never mind the cyberattacks. Never mind what they are doing in working with Iran, working with our enemies.
Ignore all of that. Ignore the slave labor. Ignore the persecution. Ignore what they did to doctors trying to tell the truth about what happened at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Ignore the virus born in China. Ignore all of that.
Just send our athletes over there, and then pass a bill on the floor of this House that has literally no chance of checking China, holding them to account, ensuring that they no longer continue to carry out the atrocities that they are carrying out and continue to attack the United States of America on a daily basis.
No, no, no, you just pass a bill, and you go give some speeches about: Oh, we are focusing on China. Oh, but rally around the TV tonight and watch our athletes hanging out over in China.
And then have the Speaker of the House say: Oh, don't speak out. Don't say anything. Something bad might happen to you.
Where is the spine or backbone of the woman from Texas sending the message to the coach of the Miracle on Ice hockey team that said beat those commie bastards? We don't have any of that here.
In 14 days, the funding of government expires, and what will we do? We will come down here on the floor with some forced, last-minute CR, and then each side will go out and give their talking points about how the other side's priorities are wrong, and you are going to borrow more money as we have now surpassed $30 trillion.
More important than that, when Members of this body or the United States Senate vote for a continuing resolution--I want every American to listen to me. When they vote for a continuing resolution to fund government, they are voting to fund the enforcement of vaccine mandates that are causing our men and women in uniform to be forced out of service, to be discharged. They are enforcing laws against our men and women who are serving so valiantly on the front lines in healthcare, nurses and doctors that are getting forced out of service, forced out of the ability to care for people after a lifetime of work, doctors in the Defense Department daring to say they want to have informed consent getting fired, getting fired for daring to question a politicized vaccine, if you can even call it a vaccine. It is a shot for a politicized virus.
And we all know it is a sham, just like all the mask mandates, sitting here on the floor of the House Chamber, are a sham, just like all the mask mandates on our kids in schools are a sham.
They are forcing our kids into the corners and forcing kids out of their schools and causing mental health issues and causing health issues and causing suicide rates to go up, all of which was entirely predictable.
And this body cowers in fear, running around here. If you dare walk down the hallway not wearing a mask, people say: Get away. Get away.
What kind of a country are we? Putting our children in the corner in masks when there is zero science to back up that it in any way, shape, or form is good for them or their families or the teachers that are allegedly teaching them.
God bless the woman at Prince George County, Virginia, who yesterday took the school board to task for their duplicitous lies about masks, blaming the Governor. And now you got a new Governor. Now you have got a new Governor who has changed the law. And what is that school board doing? Finding every reason in the world to force those kids to be masked because that is what this is about. It is about power and force.
Well, the American people have had it. Parents across this country have had it. They have had it with school boards that are forcing critical race theory on their kids. They have had it with school boards that are forcing their kids to be masked. They have had it with the inability to get healthcare and the inability to get treatments when they know full well there are treatments that will help people, and we refuse to allow them to exist.
We have the FDA shutting down monoclonal antibody treatments in Texas and in other parts around the country when there is no basis to do so when you have the omicron burning through with very reduced lethality, with very little indication that it would impact our children. You have study after study demonstrating that the risk for our children of dying from the virus is so statistically insignificant relative to the need for a so-called vaccine and/or the dangers posed by a vaccine in kids.
Then everybody throws back and says, oh, Chip, we have had vaccine mandates forever. Hold on a second. We have never had a Federal vaccine mandate like this administration is cramming down the throats of the American people.
Show it to me. We haven't had a vaccine that was adopted across the country even by local governments and school boards that didn't have exceptions or didn't have a significant amount of time, science, evidence, and studies behind it. That is the truth.
My dad had polio. He got polio in 1949 before the Salk vaccine 5, 6 years later.
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Go study how that vaccine got rolled out. It didn't get rolled out crammed down by the Federal Government in less than a year. People figured out to adopt it, take time, roll it out. And by the way, we rolled out this vaccine exponentially faster than the polio vaccine.
And all those people would come and say, Oh, Chip Roy would cause polio to come back. These are all lies. They are all said to create and intimidate and cause fear. I am not going to play the, Oh, I am going to tell you absolutely I love the vaccine, go get vaccinated. I just don't want a mandates' game because that is all my side wants to do because they don't want to take this issue head-on.
This is about power, and this is about limiting freedom. This is about undermining the ability of the American people to make choices for themselves. And it is causing harm. It is killing people by taking away our ability to focus on therapies and treatments because we have gotten so focused on a vaccine and cramming that vaccine down the American people. And it is political. And we should be ashamed of ourselves. And we shouldn't fund it.
We should not fund a government enforcing vaccines on the American people. We shouldn't force them on our doctors. We shouldn't force them on our nurses. We shouldn't force them on our students. We shouldn't force them on our brave men and women in uniform. We shouldn't force them on Border Patrol--all of whom, having these forced mandates, are causing some of them to lose their job, lifetime public servants; people that have served their country honorably for years.
We are standing here in the House Chamber, and I am looking up at the 13 stripes, the 50 stars, in a country that says, ``the land of the free.'' And yet, this government, through the power of government, is forcing people to get vaccinated against their will when we know it is absolutely true that natural immunity is real, that natural immunity, if you had the virus, is every bit as strong or stronger than vaccine immunity. So you are forcing an individual to take a shot, even if they have natural immunity, or lose their job, in America.
I, for one, will not abide that, and I am going to take every step I can in the next 14 days to make everybody up here in Washington understand, if you vote to fund this government without stopping the vaccine mandates, you are voting for those vaccine mandates being applied to doctors, healthcare workers, our men and women in uniform, Federal contractors, Border Patrol--all of those people that are serving publicly and trying to serve their country.
I see the gentleman from California here.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa).
Mr. ISSA. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
The passion with which you speak is the passion that the American people feel right now. One of the things that you said in the mandate that particularly I have seen for the men and women in uniform, for my chief warrant officer, who after 23 years is being forced out, for my Lutheran minister, who has 16 years and they will not accept his religious exemption--what I am seeing, though, that I think the American people need to understand is, it is not going to change the number of people who are vaccinated.
Firing somebody simply means they go from being an employed person to an unemployed person, a productive person to somebody less productive. We are literally making, as you and I speak, our military less productive at a time in which the Russians are at the Ukrainian border prepared to snuff out a democracy.
So your passion is the passion of the American people. You must continue for the next 14 days. We cannot fund this kind of a power play, particularly when, as you said so eloquently, it doesn't reduce the spread of the virus. It is dubious as to whether it actually reduces the impact when you get it. And lastly, if you don't get it, what they do is they choose to fire you, fire our first responders, fire our military people, and it is not going to change anything. Because if somebody believes it is either unhealthy for them, or for religious reasons doesn't want to, firing them isn't going to change it.
What it is going to change is it is demoralizing our military, it is demoralizing our police, and it is creating a situation in my own district in which our hospitals are saying that they cannot treat the patients. But the reason they can't treat them is people are sitting at home, and they are sitting at home, even if they are vaccinated, because it isn't working.
So keep it up. I just wanted to come to the floor and say nobody could be more proud of what you are doing and more in belief that these are dubious how they're working. The vaccine now has become more about a religion of power than anything else, and I want you to just know that you have the entire Republican Conference behind you.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California. That means a lot coming from him and his great service here in this body, as well as his experience in the private sector, working in the healthcare industry, a great expertise that I don't have. My expertise is mostly on the other end of that as a cancer survivor and watching my dad deal with polio and those other issues.
But I find it astonishing, whether you are talking about people getting fired from their job--or using a slightly different example--if you look at the vaccine mandates that are being applied at our Nation's capital in the seat of liberty, here in the United States of America, if you are in the District of Columbia and you go to a restaurant and you show them that you took a test that afternoon and are negative for COVID but you are not vaccinated, you can't go in. But if you are vaccinated and you are positive for COVID, you can go in.
In what universe does that make sense? But that is what we are doing. We are turning logic and common sense on its head. And we are doing so because--I agree with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, by the way--we politicize the virus, and we politicize our response to it.
Our friends in Japan, they put out their public policy as: There is a vaccine. We think it is good. We think you ought to consider taking it or strongly encourage you to take it. There are some risks that we are studying. We are not going to mandate it.
And their vaccination rates are higher than ours. Now maybe they are a more compliant society. There are all sorts of reasons behind it; we are bigger. But it tells you something. Why is that not our position as a country. Right? Encouraging people.
My dad is 79 years old and a polio survivor. I wanted him to get the vaccine; I wanted him to get the boost. He is particularly vulnerable. My mom. But it ought to be up to us. We ought to be able to decide for our families. I assume the gentleman agrees.
Mr. ISSA. Not only do I agree, but I just want to share something about this body.
You know, you and I get into elevators and sometimes our colleagues get out of the elevator, particularly if we are not wearing a mask. One of those people, one of my dear friends, Sara Jacobs had two shots, the booster, she always wears two masks and she is extremely careful. And she is at home with a positive on this virus.
So one of the things that we just have to ask ourselves is, Are we mandating to the United States military, where there is a 99 percent vaccination rate, are we throwing out 1 percent because it is going to make a difference? Or are we throwing out 1 percent based on some theory that an order is an order from the Commander in Chief, even if it no longer makes any medical sense whatsoever?
So keep it up. Fight for our men and women in uniform, and you will have us at your side. I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California. I am just going to wind down here and say this is our time to lead. It does not matter who is the majority in this body. This is the people's House, and this is the people's House whether the Democrats are in charge or the Republicans are in charge.
And we have a question before the body, and the Senate will have a question before that body: Will you continue to fund the enforcement of mandates and vaccines in a way that is causing the best among us, of our public servants, in our military, in our hospitals to lose their jobs with no basis in science for continuing to do so?
If this is the land of the free, then let us stand up. Let's stand up for freedom and let us reject these mandates.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 168, No. 23
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