CONGRESS IS BACK

On 2025-11-20, Representative Chip Roy (R-TX-21) delivered a floor speech titled "CONGRESS IS BACK" in the House.

CONGRESS IS BACK

Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 196 (Thursday, November 20, 2025) [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 196 (Thursday, November 20, 2025)] [House] [Pages H4868-H4871] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] CONGRESS IS BACK (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Roy of Texas was recognized for 30 minutes.) Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to say to the American people: Well, Congress is back. Congress is back because we were finally able to do our job after 43 days of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, our Democrat colleagues, parading around the country, acting like they were fighting for you when, in fact, they were preventing us from being able to do the work we were sent here to do. They were fighting to make worse a broken healthcare system that they have been holding you, the American people, hostage to, as they were also holding our government funding hostage. They were fighting to protect a broken healthcare system on behalf of insurance companies and regulators and to fund healthcare for illegal aliens, transgender surgeries, and abortions. Republicans said enough. We fought back, and we held the line. We funded the government through January with three appropriations bills because that is what we told you we would do. The President and the Speaker of the House deserve credit because we were able to deliver. Throughout all the headlines that this place gets, House Republicans, Senate Republicans, and the President have done a lot this year to deliver tangible results and wins for the American people. Let's just take a look at a few. On day one of his return to office, President Trump addressed many of the issues upon which he campaigned. He fought the powers of globalists, defunding UNRWA, the dollars that were going to Hamas against Israel and against our national security interests. He defunded the United Nations Human Rights Council. He defunded the World Health Organization. Each one of these were things that I had introduced legislation on and many of my Republican colleagues had introduced legislation on, but our Democrat colleagues wouldn't allow us to move. The President came in and executed on those important items to get us removed from these world bureaucrats. The President also signed a declaration declaring cartels as foreign terrorist organizations--again, a bill I introduced 5 years ago that the Democrats were blocking. The President was able to deliver. We should codify it, but we have to beat Democrats to do that. The FACE Act: The President stopped the abuses of the FACE Act against pro-life Americans and people who have the Department of Justice abusing them for carrying out their faith, and then he pardoned the pro-life activists who had been targeted and given jail time for praying and standing in defense of life. I introduced a bill to get rid of this pernicious abuse of law. The President came in, and he executed. January 6: Alongside pro-life observers, Americans who were charged and jailed, often unfairly targeted, were pardoned after the Federal Government conducted a massive sweep to openly punish thousands of Americans, including some of my constituents. Some of us had to go down to the jail to force them to release people who the President pardoned. Gender sanity: In return to normalcy, the administration removed the Gender X designation on U.S. passports, a piece of legislation I was proud to introduce that JD Vance carried in the Senate when he was there. Laken Riley Act: In March, the Laken Riley Act would ensure Federal immigration officials detain illegal aliens that commit crimes and would allow States to sue the Feds. I was proud to introduce, along with my colleague from North Carolina, Dan Bishop, the SUE for Immigration Enforcement Act, which was included in the Laken Riley Act. It will allow us to sue the government in the future when they fail to secure the border, a monumental change in allowing States to defend themselves against the abuses that we saw under Biden and Mayorkas. Speaking of the border, perhaps the most comprehensive and consequential policy achievement under President Trump has been securing our border. With the leadership of Tom Homan, Secretary Noem, Stephen Miller, the President himself, Border Patrol, ICE, all of these great law enforcement officials, despite the criticisms of leftists and Marxist mayors and cities that refused to work with them, they have brought down the flow across our border to basically zero, a 92 percent reduction from the massive flow across our border that was endangering Americans, endangering the people. Energy independence: Trump signed an executive order ending American dependence on unreliable energy sources and slashed $3 billion in bogus abuse of emergency spending that wasn't even being used for emergencies. ICE officials were given access to data for the Nation's 79 million Medicaid enrollees to be able to look at it and go find illegal aliens that were using Medicaid. The Interior Department announced today that all agency decisions related to wind and solar energy must undergo strict reviews. The Treasury Department announced today that they are taking action to ensure no tax benefits will go to illegal aliens. This year, we advanced a responsible budget, along with President Trump, to reflect our well-established goal to return to pre-COVID spending. Let's look at more. This Congress, working with the President, has held spending flat for the last 2 years, and now it is flat through January. If we honor our commitments, it will be flat through next September. By holding government spending flat and growing our economy, we are reducing the size and scope of bureaucracy. We are reducing debt as a percentage of our GDP and honoring the commitment that we gave to reduce inflation and to take our country back from the grasp of debt. [[Page H4869]] We avoided a massive omnibus spending bill twice, the scourge of this town, where you have these huge omnibus bills in December, at the end of the year. We have now stopped that twice with a mix of appropriations work and continuing resolutions. We achieved major rescissions in wasteful spending. We cut IRS funding. We gutted the Commerce slush fund. We boosted immigration enforcement and deportation operations. We set the stage for additional rescissions and pocket rescissions that the OMB Director, Russ Vought, has been able to carry out, as well as impoundments. We delivered on cutting the Federal spending that went to the badly broken PBS and NPR. I would point out, for those who want to apologize, NPR didn't utter a word. In my district, in Kerrville, Texas, on the morning when the floods were underway, they were running ads trying to fight for their own funding, but the private radio stations were going out and putting out emergency alerts to help people. The President rightfully reduced their funding. If they want to survive, they can go compete, but they don't need taxpayer dollars for, effectively, leftist propaganda. We were able to pass the big, beautiful bill, which is a monumental achievement in which we reduced taxes for the American people, ensured taxes wouldn't go up. We were able to secure over $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction, five times the original projection of $300 billion. We were able to end over half of the green new scam subsidies that were enriching the Chinese and enriching massive leftist corporations at the expense of the ability of the American people to have reliable grids and affordable energy. {time} 2040 We were able to advance welfare and Medicaid reforms, SNAP work requirements, commonsense work requirements for Medicaid. We phased down the Medicaid provider tax threshold to save money and save hundreds of billions of dollars, cracking down on States' provider tax money-laundering schemes--which were going to illegal aliens--we saved money, made the system better and going to American citizens. We were able to protect life by defunding Planned Parenthood and Medicaid. We were able to protect the Second Amendment by ending taxation for suppressors and short-barreled rifles. We were able to ensure full funding for border security, when we knew Democrats were going to shut down the government, with $150 billion set aside for continued operations for border security, as well as $150 billion for our defense, knowing that they would risk defense and border so they could try to shut down the government for political gain. We did that. We did that with the President. We were able to ensure that our men and women in uniform didn't miss a paycheck in October, because we did that. We were able to ensure that we are continuing to revamp and restore our Defense Department, our War Department now, to a fighting machine rather than a woke indoctrination machine. Now we have enlistments at record numbers, we have people wanting to go to the military academies, proud to be in the military again, and people around the world are respecting our military again. Now let's talk about this November continuing resolution: Democrats orchestrated the longest shutdown in history. They did so because they have nothing to run on, because they have nothing to sell to the American people except for hatred of President Trump and wanting to play games with your healthcare. Because they broke the healthcare system, you now can't afford either health insurance or healthcare. You can't go to the doctor of your choice. If you do get any insurance, you are told that you only have a handful of doctors and that you have a massive copay or some other kind of limitation on your ability to choose a doctor. For example, in my case, as a cancer survivor, on ObamaCare, I can't go back to M.D. Anderson, which saved my life, because ObamaCare doesn't have M.D. Anderson as an option. That is not coverage. That is fake. Democrats sold you fake coverage, and now your pr

Referenced legislation: HR2