REPUBLICAN UPDATE

On 2026-06-24, Representative Chip Roy (R-TX-21) delivered a floor speech titled "REPUBLICAN UPDATE" in the House.

REPUBLICAN UPDATE

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 106 (Wednesday, June 24, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 106 (Wednesday, June 24, 2026)] [House] [Pages H4238-H4242] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] REPUBLICAN UPDATE (Under 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. I want to say something quick that I think is really important as we 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. I am going to get into some disagreements in a minute, and I am going 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. The President came in and didn't need changes to the law to do the 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, [[Page H4239]] and other patriots who were working to secure the border, and they brought it to a complete standstill. That is one thing, one thing that had a measurable impact on the 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. That is something we should celebrate and recognize and talk about 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. It is this President that took on the cartels and declared them as 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. This President is reestablishing the faith in a government 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. We are reestablishing our position around the globe, making clear 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 country is immeasurably better because of the last 18 months of 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. This raises certain questions about what we do in our remaining 5 or 6 months before this election and the remaining 6 or 7 months in this Congress. Today, the President was supposed to come up here and have a bill 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. You cannot have a Republic that the people believe in if they don't 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. Democrats who refuse to pass it need to make clear to the American 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. Now, look, I voted against the housing bill yesterday, and I am going to explain why. I don't think we should be in the business of expanding government programs. {time} 1910 I don't think we should be in the business of expanding Section 8 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. There were things in the bill that I do think moved things in a 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. Today, we were supposed to bring up another bill under a rule, along 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. We have gotten in the habit here of passing bills to say we did something. I think this is another one of those. It is all well intended. I have groups of veterans coming to me that are for it and against 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. I bring all that up simply to say that we have a habit here, when it 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. I think what has made this Congress successful is sticking to our job 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 defic

Referenced legislation: HR2