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Congressional Daily Record
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June 24, 2026
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Download official House Record PDFReturn to issue contextUnder the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Roy of Texas was recognized for 30 minutes.)
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time here on the House floor. As always, I wish it was a little more filled with my colleagues involved in robust debate on the issues of our day and the issues that present our work here in the House to solve problems for the American people.
are having a lot of debates this week, and a lot of people are raising questions about bills that we are bringing up and what we are moving and what we are not moving, the President making a decision today. I want to address where we are as a country because I think it is really important for us to establish what we have accomplished under this President over the last 18 months and under the leadership of this House and this Senate.
to get into some things that I think we ought to do. But let's be very clear about the State of this country and how much we have improved the State of our Nation over the last 18 months.
Mr. Speaker, 18 months ago, our borders were wide open. Eighteen months ago, the people of Texas that I represent were in danger. Eighteen months ago, we had criminals pouring into our communities in Texas and fentanyl pouring in and destroying homes and families.
work of actually securing the border and did so. He did so with the great men and women of ICE and Border Patrol and the leadership of Tom Homan, the now two Secretaries of Homeland Security,
people that I represent, the communities that I represent, and on this entire Nation. We are no longer living in fear that more criminals are coming across so that the Jocelyn Nungarays of the world get murdered and taken from us as did Laken Riley in my friend's home State of Georgia.
and remind the American people that you can't take it for granted. You can't take good, strong leadership for granted. You can't take the fact that we now have enlistments and people that are looking to join the United States military at all-time highs. You are seeing people who want to be a part of the military because the President has removed the absurdity of the woke agenda and the DEI and all this stuff, taking their eyes off the ball of becoming the best fighting force in the world. Now people, young men and women, want to join the military again.
I know. I know my colleagues know because they talk to the men and women who want to go to the academies. They are proud to be in the United States military again. That is this President. That is this leadership. That is this Congress that is delivering that.
the terrorist organizations that they are. It is this President that took on Maduro and went after the change that needed to occur in Venezuela so we no longer had that pressure point that was facilitating our enemies in China and in Russia, that was reestablishing our footprint in the Western Hemisphere and making clear that this is an American hemisphere.
This President did that.
believes in making their Capital City safe and secure again, pretty again—things you can be proud of as we celebrate our Nation's 250th birthday.
that America is going to have a position. We are not going to engage in endless wars, but we are, in fact, going to make sure that our enemies know who we are, what we are doing, and that they are going to listen and that they are going to come to the table.
These are all things that require actual leadership.
this President, this Republican Congress, the Republican Senate, despite some of our disagreements. Yes, we have the sausage getting made where we have disagreements like we saw today. I am going to highlight a few of those things and talk about some directions that I think we ought to go.
But I want to be very clear. It is the Republicans in this body, in particular, and the Senate that had to end-run Democrats who did not want to fund ICE and Border Patrol. They preferred for political purposes to endanger the people of the country. They refused to appropriate money for the law enforcement agencies tasked with ensuring our country is secure and required us to use the reconciliation process to backdoor funding to ensure that ICE and Border Patrol would get funded.
That is what we are having to do. That is what leadership looks like.
It is not the best way to do it. We should have just appropriated it in January or February, but our Democrat colleagues refused to do it, preferring instead to endanger the American people.
Republicans stopped that. Republicans united to stop that. Republicans in both Chambers united to stop that, and I am proud of that. And I am proud of the things that I talked about and our position in the world and the secure border and the strong military. I am proud that our economy is moving in the right direction and getting stronger every day after the doldrums of the previous administration. These are all things that we should be proud of and why this election season is going to be so important.
6 months before this election and the remaining 6 or 7 months in this Congress.
signing ceremony back here in the old House Chamber, and ultimately he chose not to come. The President's rationale was that he believed that rather than coming here and signing a housing bill that he wanted to make sure that this body, the House, and the Senate knows that he expects us to pass the SAVE America Act in order to secure our Nation's elections.
believe in and trust their elections. That is what this is about. I don't know whether we will get it across the finish line by the end of this Congress or not. I was proud to author the bill 2 years ago here in the House, my friend Mike Lee in the Senate. I am proud that we have now passed it three times out of the House, and I am proud that we are continuing to have this conversation because we need to have the conversation. We need to have the fight. We need to have the discussion. The Senate needs to be forced to debate it.
people who is look blocking it, and it is not Republicans. It is not Republicans. It is Democrats who refuse roundly in both Chambers to say that very simply put, only American citizens should vote in American elections.
That is the truth.
to explain why. I don't think we should be in the business of expanding government programs.
{time} 1910
housing. I don't think we should be in the business of telling local governments what they must do. I don't think we should celebrate the streamlining of permits, which are mostly on government-owned properties and so forth.
positive direction. I am glad that my good friend, French Hill, worked hard to try to do that in this difficult body.
I think the Senate made the bill worse. I couldn't vote for it. I couldn't support it. I have said why. I have a duty to my constituents to explain why. I was one of 32 Republicans who voted against it.
I don't think the bill was good enough. I don't think it should have included $200 million for an affordable housing pilot program from Congresswoman Tlaib. I don't think it should have included some of the grant programs, the PRICE program, the community enhancement for HUD, which I think goes through NGOs, which I don't trust won't be layered in fraud. That is not what I think this body should do in a limited government.
with two appropriations bills, a veterans bill. I served on the Veterans' Affairs Committee for two terms before I joined the Rules Committee. I am proud to support and work to defend veterans.
something. I think this is another one of those. It is all well intended.
it. They don't like the way some of the pay-fors impact them, some of the fees, some of the things that get transferred from one veteran to another. This is going to have a significant amount of spending. That is on top of the PACT Act, which we passed a few years ago.
gets into election season, of just moving bills because you want to check a box. I don't think we should do that. I don't think we should be doing that for housing. I don't think we should be doing that for veterans.
of fiscal responsibility. Holding our spending in check, stop increasing the debt, stop increasing the deficits, helping get interest rates down by driving down the deficits as a percentage of our gross domestic product, while the President drives up the economy, strengthening our military, strengthening our borders, doing the core constitutional functions of our Republic, that is what our job is.
My colleagues on this side of the aisle sometimes get frustrated. You cannot dare criticize because, somehow, you are undermining the party during election season.
party that wants to side with the woke agenda that is destroying our country, that wants open borders, that doesn't want to stand with our military, and that wants to undermine our President at every turn. There is no comparison of what this President and what this Republican Party have been doing for the people of this country.
We need to do better. We need to finish strong over the next 6 months of this Congress. Here are a couple of things that I think we need to do.
President's successful border security provisions. We did so in the previous Congress, under H.R. 2. It would solve the problem of the abuses of parole, the abuses of asylum, and the catch and release policies that were abused under Biden. We can pass that in this House. We can send it to the Senate.
Yes, the Senate may sit on it, like they are doing with the SAVE Act. That is up to the Senate. I don't like this phrase: It is not a legislative exercise or a law-making exercise.
Yes, it is. We are supposed to do our job in the House. We should send over the codification of what the President is doing, to address what I saw today, a bunch of immigrants and migrants in Mexico who are saying to the camera: We are going to wait till Trump is gone, and then we are coming.
That is going to happen. If there is a Democrat in the White House and if there is a weak Secretary of Homeland Security, like there was under Mayorkas, then they will let people come into our country, and then more Americans will die. There will be more Laken Rileys and more Jocelyn Nungarays.
Number one, let's fix that. Let's codify border security. Let's call the question. Let's have the vote. Let's do it here. Let's send it to the Senate.
Let's end the magnets. Let's codify the end of free healthcare and education under Plyler v. Doe and other taxpayer-subsidized public benefits for illegal aliens.
Let's defund the sanctuary jurisdictions.
Let's hike remittance fees. We added 1 percent remittance fees on illegal aliens last year, in the big, beautiful bill. Let's increase it to 5 percent, 10 percent, 20 percent. Why should people who come here, who are here illegally, not be paying a remittance fee, at least for the time, while we are not getting them out of our country? Let's make revenue on the fact that they are earning dollars here and not when they are sending them overseas or sending them home. Let's collect that for our purposes, because we have to spend a lot of money on this. Let's increase those remittance fees.
we are looking at what the Court does. The Court isn't the only one to make these decisions. We can. There should not be birthright citizenship for just being born on our dirt. There should be birthright citizenship for being born to an American citizen, mother or father. It is the right way to do things.
Let's reduce and reform legal immigration. Let's pass the PAUSE Act. We have 53 million foreign-born people in the United States. That is 16 percent of the population. That is the highest percentage we have ever had. We need to pause. We need to take a breather. We need to remove certain people from this country, as the administration is doing. We need to continue to do that.
into our country until we have established who we are as a country and have ensured we have the sovereignty and the cultural solidification of who we are as a nation.
Let's halt the Islamic invasion. Let's pass legislation to ensure that people who are coming here are vetted for their adherence to sharia law, which is deeply contradictory to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and the rule of law here in the United States.
Let's pause H-1Bs. Let's review, reform, maybe even repeal H-1Bs, and overhaul the entire system. They have been abused. They have been fraudulent, certainly in Texas—I am sure also in Atlanta and other places around the country. Let's formally end diversity visas and chain migration.
What is all this to the average person? I am just telling you that these are the things that are causing us to have imported 5 million people from majority Muslim countries since 9/11. That does not sound like the thing a country should do that wants to preserve and protect itself after it was attacked, in the middle of what is now a multi- decades-long war, cold and hot, of the Islamists against the West.
are waging jihad against the West. America is the prize, and Texas is the prize in America.
Let's do something about it. This body can do something about it. Stop hiding behind the First Amendment. Stop hiding behind the touchy- feely cultural stuff that we talk about in our schools, saying, oh, that sounds hateful.
country, and we should not allow people who are coming here to undermine the rule of law, undermine the Constitution, and try to Islamify a Judeo-Christian nation into something that it is not.
Let's do those things. Let's fight the rise of sharia law. Let's pass legislation that clearly bans it. Let's ban the entry of and remove foreign nationals who adhere to sharia law and undermine the rights of women. That is occurring right here in this Nation, even as we speak.
funding, which is typically hostile to our interests. We are not doing enough of that. The administration is doing a great job. We have done some of it here. We need to go further.
Let's exit and reform NATO. Let's exit and reform the United Nations. Let's codify our exit from the World Health Organization that the President unilaterally executed from the executive.
often abused against us and our allies. Let's stop foreign aid for recalcitrant countries that refuse to take back illegal aliens.
These are all things we should be doing as the people's House. There can be some debates and nuances about different pieces of these things. I am not saying every one of these is something that you just decree from on high. We are a republican form of government, of representatives.
Let's have the debate. Let's do it. Let's talk about it because this country did, in fact, pause immigration in the mid-20th century, and it was good for our Nation for a bit. It was good for us to take stock. It was good for us to ensure that we have people assimilating and becoming a part of our country rather than trying to break down our country.
and networks undermining our safety and the rule of law, codify that antifa is a domestic terrorist organization, codify that the Southern Poverty Law Center is a domestic terrorist organization, and investigate and cut off the funding that George Soros is putting forward, often, we believe, illegally, an extension of DAs that are putting criminals on our streets.
{time} 1920
Why are we allowing this to occur?
It is insane.
Let's fight for energy freedom. Let's kill the remainder of the subsidies that are destroying our grid and undermining actual energy freedom. Let's kill corporate cronyism, the grift and the regulations. Let's end the renewable fuel standard crippling American refinery production, but let's go ahead and allow year-round E15. I am good with that, E20, E25, I don't care. Let the market figure it out, but get rid of the renewable fuel standard.
want to have a bailout for farmers, and then don't tell me: Texan, you might want to have the refining capacity that we need.
Don't tell me that we shouldn't end the renewable fuel standard. Let's work together and do that. I am happy to. I want our farmers in Iowa, Minnesota, and places that want to have
E15, E20, whatever, year-round. Great. Let's get rid of that regulation, but let's get rid of this other regulation too, Mr. Speaker.
Let's rapidly develop nuclear power.
Let's pass strong permitting reform.
expiration, number one: I would like to take a bet from anybody about whether they think our government is still conducting warrantless surveillance even though FISA has expired. I assure you they are, Mr. Speaker.
Number two: Shouldn't we continue to do something about it?
country and government and the corporate use of technology to target and spy on Americans. Let's ensure warrant protections when we are talking about FISA.
central bank digital currency. If you don't know what that is, Mr. Speaker, if you don't know what a CBDC, a central bank digital currency, is, it is the government being able to monitor and control your currency, your spending, and your dollars electronically and being able to say: Oh, no, you can't buy that gas now. Oh, no, wait, we don't like guns. No bullets, you can't buy bullets.
Of course, we are.
killing the kill switch where we have mandated technology going into cars making them more expensive so they can monitor you and monitor your face while you are driving, Mr. Speaker.
automobiles mandated by the government?
Ban the funding of block cameras and other government surveillance.
Let's stop it.
Mr. Speaker, I am a security, law and order guy. I was in the United States Attorneys Office.
Do you know what makes my job easier as a prosecutor?
surveillance data in the world to know exactly what everybody is doing and be able to go put them in jail.
Nevertheless, Mr. Speaker, do you know what I like?
It is freedom. I don't want the government monitoring everything we are doing.
Let's not forget why we are sitting at $40 trillion in debt to reduce deficits and debt. We did a great thing in the big, beautiful bill by enforcing reforms to Medicaid and making sure that illegal aliens couldn't get welfare benefits in Medicaid. We had significant reductions in waste, fraud, and abuse. We did some good work, and we held discretionary spending flat for 3 years.
I didn't mention that earlier as one of our great accomplishments. Under this President and under this Congress, for 3 years we held discretionary spending flat. I don't know when we have ever done that. That is an extraordinary piece of work that we have done, but we are not denting the debt yet. We are not denting the interest that is piling up around the ears of our kids and our grandkids.
Let's continue to reduce or hold discretionary spending flat. Let's eliminate programs plagued by fraud and let's have reforms to eliminate fraud. Let's ensure any reconciliation package is actually deficit reducing.
reconciliation. My perspective is dollar for dollar, year for year, spending pay-fors match the spending—no gimmicks, no games, no 10-year out-year savings for up-year 1-year spending. That is not hard. It is just something we ought to do.
Let's further reform welfare mandatory spending benefits. Let's pass a balanced budget amendment. Let's do the work we need to do to get spending down and keep it going in the right direction.
bill because of Iran for $87 billion with an E15 mandate in it. I am not going to vote for that.
Are we going to pay for it?
How are we going to pay for it?
We used to pay for our wars. Yes, we racked up debt after World War II, but we also did a lot of war bonds, we did a lot of rationing, and we had a lot of tax increases to deal with the war. I am not for tax increases.
modernize our defense and replenish our stockpiles. We should do all of that, but we should pay for it. Guns and butter is a novel concept. We have been doing a good job. Let's not break from it. Once we start breaking from it, it gets real easy. We should hold the line.
Let's ban congressional stock trading. Oh, my gosh, oh, the wailing and the gnashing of teeth.
Mr. Speaker, there are only 435 of us. If you don't like it, then leave. I am going to be leaving at the end of the year after four terms. I think this is supposed to be a body where you come up, you serve, and you go home. I am not, by the way, trying to diminish anybody who has been here for five, for six, or for eight terms. I support term limits, but whatever.
My view is, though: Why are you here day trading and engaging in the active trading of stocks when you are voting on the very thing you are supposed to be doing for the American people and not yourself?
I am open to ideas on how. I am not open to it being an option. A majority of this body wants to do it. We just haven't done it. It is overwhelmingly popular with the American people, and I think it would give great confidence that we are in this for the right reasons.
Let's make America healthy again. Let's provide real American healthcare freedom. Employer-provided health subsidies should go to health savings accounts. They shouldn't have to go to Aetna or shouldn't have to go to Blue Cross. Let those employer-provided funds go directly to you, Mr. Speaker, and allow you to go use those for direct primary care or to health sharing ministries. Let's shake the system up.
hospitals that are running this town. Seven times more is spent on healthcare lobbying in this town than on defense. It is by far the biggest industry in this town.
Mr. Speaker, do you want to know why we can't solve healthcare?
That is why. It is the money.
Let's stop subsidizing sugar drinks. We had a vote on this over here, and we couldn't pass it.
Mr. Speaker, how can you not pass something saying: Stop subsidizing sugar drinks?
I don't even know what the argument is against it. Drink water. It was good enough for a millennia for human beings.
Why are we using taxpayer dollars to say you should drink a Coke?
Protect Americans from poison in our food, air and in the water. Let's protect children. Let's defund abortion and Planned Parenthood like we did in the big, beautiful bill and transgender surgeries.
literally hundreds of thousands of unborn babies. Let's defund and limit that mifepristone.
Let's not empower government to police speech.
preempting States. Let's ensure we protect our rights while we protect our children. We have done it for every other scourge on our kids. Let's do it on this disaster that is technology in the pockets of our children. We can do that. It is not partisan. Let's just do it.
let's pass a constitutional amendment for term limits. If we can't pass a constitutional amendment for term limits, then why don't we just say we are not going to provide pay for Members after a certain period of time?
We don't need to amend the Constitution to do that. I introduced a bill to do that.
I am not saying these are all 100 percent the right thing to do. I am not saying my bill on banning congressional stock trading is the only way or the right way. What I am saying is: Let's do it.
We sit around a lot, and we talk about these things. That is the nature of a legislative body, but we have been talking about some of these things for way too long.
We have talked about term limits for a long time. Let's do it by means of an amendment or by statute.
We have talked about reducing spending. We are starting to do it a little, but we haven't touched mandatory spending.
secure our border. Let's codify it. Let's do it. Let's not just depend on the President so that we are in this yo-yo every 4 years or every 8 years.
Let's have clean nuclear, and let's have clean natural gas.
{time} 1930
Let's have a strong military that has the tools that it needs. I am 100 percent on board for that, but you have to pay for it. Stop pretending that you don't have to pay for things. Stop running around, as Republicans, saying: Supply side, supply side, can't touch taxes, but, man, I can sure spend a lot.
Great. I am for supply side and I want to cut taxes, but stop spending.
You can't have your cake and eat it, too. We, Republicans, can lead this country. We can inspire them to show up and support us to guarantee we have the strongest Congress, alongside this President, to defend this country and to ensure that we carry forward in the right way, but we have to do it.
Can we start with something like codifying border security? Can we ban congressional stock trading? Can we tackle the issue of healthcare and a Reconciliation 3.0 product? Can we fund defense, but pay for it?
These are all basic things the American people expect us to do. Let's do it, and then let's carry forward this country for our kids and grandkids.
Mr. Speaker, I don't know if I will get a chance to get back down on the House floor next week before we celebrate our 250th birthday, but that brings up two things for me to recount in my last 2 minutes.
Country that suffered under the devastating floods last year. You have been an example to all.
what could be done differently and so forth, but the amount of money that was raised under private dollars—almost $150 million—record numbers that were given out and then distributed in a sober and appropriate way, a community that rallied around their faith, stood up and defended—they didn't come here.
I didn't have constituents coming here, begging: Chip, come introduce a bill. We have got to have some big Federal Government bill to save our bacon.
We did what we thought was right. FEMA was there. They helped, and then we tried to do it the right way. I am so proud of that community. I am praying for them. I am praying for those who lost their lives and their families as they hit this 1-year mark. I ask the rest of this Nation and the rest of my colleagues to do the same.
country and all the sacrifice of all of our forefathers who bled, died, and fought for it that we have an obligation to do the same for our kids and grandkids, or we will lose it. That is the one thing that our Founding Fathers understood better than anybody.
but we are celebrating the 200th anniversary of the death of both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on that July 4, 1826, when Adams died saying Jefferson lives not knowing that Jefferson had passed away just a few hours before.
founding, then think about that, that those two men died 50 years to the day from July 4, 1776.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.