- 6/6/2025
On the House floor, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) cast doubt that he might not support the Big Beautiful Bill.
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00:00for 30 minutes. I thank the speaker and I would recognize that today is an important
00:10day in the history of our country. As we all know, 81 years ago on June 6, 1944,
00:21we had over 150,000 Allied troops who attacked the beaches at Normandy knowing full well what they
00:36were walking into. You had 150,000 Allied forces, tens of thousands of Americans who stormed the
00:46beaches. They jumped out of boats into stormy waters, walked into a virtual wall of bullets,
00:56went through the fire, went to the cliffs, got shot out on the cliffs, scaled the cliffs to then have
01:04to fight for every yard for the privilege of then getting all the way to Bastogne to sit in foxholes
01:15in the freezing cold in Christmas of 1944 while being bombarded by Germans as they were mounting their
01:23last offensive. Now, what would cause young men from all over this country to do that?
01:34Why would they do that? Knowing a huge number of them would not make it through the day.
01:40They knew that. But they did it anyway. They knew that when they were jumping out of planes in the
01:48middle of the night that many of them wouldn't survive. I saw yesterday in social media photos of
01:53dozens of young men who didn't make it through that day. Photos from them in the lead up to it
02:00that morning and the day before in training. What would cause these young men to do that?
02:09And the reason is that they knew that this country was worth fighting for not because
02:16simply of the existence of the country, but because of what this country represents
02:21in terms of opportunity to live free and to prosper according to your own talents
02:27and to be able to live according to your own conscience under our Constitution
02:34and under the principles that were advanced in the Declaration
02:37and that are central to Western civilization.
02:41And that is what those young men did. We have 400,000-plus Americans who lost their lives
02:48to defend this country in World War II.
02:51Precious few who survived that conflict are still alive.
02:54And if you go down to the memorial here in Washington, you go down to the World War II memorial
02:58and there's 4,000-plus stars that are across the monument,
03:03each representing a hundred, a hundred young men who did what I just described
03:12or who did something similar to Iwo Jima or who did something similar in the Doolittle Raid.
03:18And again, what would cause them to do it?
03:20It is to live free.
03:23That's what it's about.
03:24Now, I've got a letter that a dear friend of mine named Victoria Coates
03:32who served in the Trump administration in the first administration
03:35from her grandfather, Howard.
03:40I want to read the letter real quickly.
03:42Jane Darling, yep, honey, it's true. Your boyfriend is in it now.
03:46I can't tell you how long I've been here or where I am.
03:49That will have to come later when I get home.
03:51It's the most serious thing I've been in during all of my life.
03:55I'm well, though, darling, and still all in one piece.
03:58As you said in the last letter I got from you, the one you wrote on Invasion Day,
04:02I'm well-trained and will take care of myself.
04:06Of course, the men come first in our mission,
04:09but I'm not taking any chances personally except those in the line of duty.
04:13Most all of our officers and men are reacting fine to these new conditions.
04:17I have my own platoon and my own headquarters out in the field.
04:20Fact is, I'm sitting in my CP now writing this letter.
04:23I have Charlie Mugford here as my executive officer, and he's very capable in the field.
04:27My staff sergeant is a boy by name of Werbach from Pittsburgh.
04:31He's Polish and a darn good man.
04:34The Germans killed his grandparents in their invasion into Poland.
04:37So you can well imagine his reaction to all of this.
04:41The morale of the men is good, and that makes the job easier.
04:44Golly, I like my little field setup.
04:46I have good radio equipment, also a nice switchboard.
04:49Then I have a Jeep and weapons carrier for my CP plus my CP personnel.
04:54We get a special dehydrated ration that requires only the adding of a little water.
04:59I haven't received the picture yet, but I'm very anxious awaiting it.
05:03For supper last night we had, as an example, baked beans, sausage, cold-packed tomatoes, biscuits, jam, and butter.
05:10Please write regularly. I need it.
05:12We haven't received any mail since coming to France, but hope to get some soon.
05:17That helps plenty.
05:18Well, darling, you're ever in my thoughts over here and are my big driving force.
05:23I, like the thousands of other Americans, am doing my damn best to get this war over and get home safely to my family.
05:37What did they fight for?
05:40I can tell you what they didn't fight for.
05:42They didn't fight for a Congress to come here and continue $36 trillion of debt
05:50and mortgage their children, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren's future.
05:55They didn't come here for this Congress to run away from the fight of policy.
06:04They didn't risk everything.
06:07They didn't walk into a wall of bullets so that people in this chamber
06:10can be afraid of tweets or constituents that come in and talk about,
06:16oh, but you're cutting some program.
06:21They expected us to actually defend this country in this chamber.
06:29A trillion dollars of interest every year.
06:32We're spending more on interest than we are the entirety of our national defense.
06:38I've got to be honest with you.
06:41I don't know whether the big, beautiful bill is beautiful enough to support.
06:47I've got to be honest.
06:49I voted for it off of the floor to send it to the Senate.
06:53There are a lot of important provisions in it.
06:56And I need to level set some of those provisions right now
06:58because it is not appropriate for us to run away from the fight now
07:03that these young men 80 years ago ran into the fight to preserve.
07:09This country will not survive if we mortgage it away.
07:14And that's what we're doing.
07:16President Reagan was correct when he said that every member of Congress,
07:19when they come to this floor and they offer a new bill for a new program,
07:22should offer a tax increase to go alongside of it.
07:25Because everybody in this chamber, particularly on this side of the aisle,
07:28are all too fine offering tax cuts because it's like selling dessert,
07:34but refuse to put forward the spending cuts so that people have to eat the broccoli.
07:38And that's why we're $36 trillion in debt and growing.
07:42And that's why we have a trillion dollars of interest.
07:44And by the way, as interest rates go up, the price of that debt goes up.
07:50We're going to be at $1.5 trillion, $2 trillion of interest payments
07:53because we can't do our job correctly.
07:57Now, the big, beautiful bill, let's go through it.
08:01The bill is what I would call the good, the bad, and the ugly.
08:04Because that's the truth.
08:05And I'm not going to get into personalities and squabbles and back and forth.
08:11The president is right that we need to move a bill through here with tax cuts and spending restraint
08:16so that he can get the agenda done that he campaigned on.
08:19He's 100% right and we should do that.
08:22Elon is right that this bill doesn't cut enough.
08:26That's the truth.
08:27Two things can be true at the same time.
08:30And the barrier to actually achieving the greatness
08:33of moving the big, beautiful bill through that would achieve the president's agenda
08:37and achieving what Elon is rightly saying,
08:40which is that we should cut more,
08:41the barrier is right here in this chamber.
08:44It's right over there in the Senate.
08:46People unwilling to face their constituents and tell them the truth.
08:50Well, I'm going to try to sit here on the floor and tell the truth.
08:52I had to hold my nose to vote for this bill two weeks ago off the House floor to the Senate.
08:58Why?
08:59It does not cut enough.
09:01And it's not even close to cutting enough.
09:04My colleagues say, oh, but Chip, it's the biggest spending decrease in history.
09:08Let's be very clear.
09:10It is a reduction in future increases of about $1.6 trillion.
09:15Yes, that is the biggest amount ever.
09:19But guess what?
09:20We have sizably more debt and sizably more spending than ever.
09:24So of course it should be.
09:26But it should be more.
09:28$1.6 trillion in cuts or future reductions
09:32is really about $160 billion a year over 10 years.
09:36That's the truth.
09:38The truth is, our whole budget has grown from about $3.6 trillion a decade ago
09:44to $7.2 trillion now.
09:47It's doubled.
09:48And everybody wants to applaud themselves for $160 billion of reductions and increases.
09:55I'm sorry.
09:56I don't think that's good enough.
09:59The fact is, our budget, the budget we passed to get the big, beautiful bill through,
10:06says that we should be at $6.5 trillion for 2026.
10:12But after this bill, if it's passed this way out of the Senate, we'd be at $7.2 trillion.
10:18All right, that's a lot of numbers.
10:20You want me to tell you back home?
10:21The fact of the matter is, unless we have record economic growth for an entire decade,
10:28deficits will go up.
10:30That's the truth.
10:31This bill frontloads all of the cost.
10:38So for the first four years, 26, 27, 28, 29, deficits are up.
10:44That is, by the way, on a dynamic basis.
10:46You're going to hear a lot of people taking shots at the CBO, and they should.
10:50The CBO is biased.
10:52The CBO is left-leaning.
10:54And the CBO doesn't always get it right.
10:56But guess what?
10:57No economist ever gets it right.
10:58The fact is, we took care of that, at least in part, in the Budget Committee by assuming growth.
11:05We assumed economic growth of 2.6%, higher than the last two decades' average, lower than the historic average.
11:14Why does that matter?
11:15Because we've already accounted for what you call dynamic scoring, meaning the impact of the tax cuts on revenue.
11:23All right, so what does that mean in simple terms?
11:25It means that if you look at our analysis, even assuming economic growth and more revenue from that growth,
11:34we will still have $400 billion of deficits added to the existing $2 trillion deficit in 2026 because of the bill.
11:44Those deficits will go up even more, and it will be another $400 billion or so in 2027.
11:5328, we add to the deficits.
11:5429, we add to the deficits.
11:57Finally, in 2030, deficits go down.
12:02And if you look across the entirety of the 10 years under this bill,
12:06you are basically at somewhere around break-even on the impact on deficits.
12:11Now, again, everybody understand what I'm saying.
12:15The deficits of roughly around $1.8 to $2 trillion a year will continue.
12:21This bill will adjust taxes and adjust spending, will increase deficits for three or four or five years,
12:29and then cut deficits in the outer five years if you believe that will ever happen.
12:34Only in this town do you assume that the good things will happen in five years and accept the bad things in the first years.
12:44But that's what we're doing.
12:46Now, to be clear and to be fair, this does not account for tariff revenue, which is up.
12:53Of course, tariff revenue has to be factored into the economic impact of the tariffs.
13:00So you've got to stir all that in the pot and decide what you think is going to happen.
13:04And if you ask me to weigh all of this, I will tell you that on the simple question of whether this bill will add to or decrease deficits,
13:16I think it will add to the deficits because for the first five years, even dynamically scored, they add to the deficits.
13:26Even if you assume the current rate of about, I don't know, $250 billion of tariff revenue,
13:32which you can't assume because they change, you're still going to be adding to the deficits,
13:38even factoring in for the economic impact of growth.
13:41Okay, that's all a lot of nerdy speak.
13:43Everyone sent us here to save the country.
13:46You can't save the country if you're adding to the deficits.
13:49You can't save the country if interest rates aren't going to be able to go down
13:52because you're being fiscally responsible and the bond markets respond.
13:55That's the simple truth.
13:57But here we are.
13:58And why are we here?
14:00Why, despite what I just said, did I hold my nose and vote for the bill?
14:07Well, A, as part of the process and hopeful the Senate might work its will to make the bill better.
14:13A, probably not a good bet.
14:17The Senate rarely makes things better.
14:20Okay, B, we did get some serious reforms to Medicaid.
14:25I'm proud of those reforms.
14:27But I do have to be honest with you, they're kind of like breathing.
14:31When I tell you the reforms, you're going to be like, wait, we don't do that already?
14:34We're simply going to reverse a lot of the damage of the Biden administration
14:39and reverse a lot of the damage of the expansion of Obamacare by simply saying this.
14:45You shouldn't be on Medicaid if you're able-bodied and can work and you're not working.
14:50Now, Democrats will say, oh, you're slashing Medicaid.
14:53No, we're not.
14:54They're not telling the truth about that.
14:56What we're doing is simply saying you should have to work.
14:59Same thing for food stamps.
15:01My Republican colleagues will say, oh, my gosh, these are the biggest savings in history.
15:05This is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
15:07I'll be like, every American I talk to says, why weren't you doing that already?
15:11It's like basic business of Congress.
15:15Why would you do that?
15:16Why would you provide benefits to people who are able to work and don't?
15:20It's insane.
15:21So we're going to say, oh, my gosh, we saved hundreds of billion dollars on Medicaid reform
15:26by tightening and making sure we're enforcing eligibility and that the only the vulnerable
15:31get it instead of able-bodied.
15:33But we're not doing anything to stop the money laundering scam.
15:36We're not doing anything to stop the fact that expansion states under Obamacare get seven
15:43times more money for the able-bodied than the vulnerable.
15:47We're going to do nothing about that.
15:49We're going to do nothing about the provider taxes that are part of that scam, that have
15:53blue states getting money to give money to illegals and to people who are Planned Parenthood
15:57and other things because they launder the money through Washington and get a multiple to give
16:01it to hospitals and insurance companies and then give them a tax break on the back end.
16:05Well-documented, well-reported, and this body is doing not a damn thing about it because
16:09they're too afraid, too afraid to take on the insurance lobby, too afraid to take on the
16:14hospital lobby, too afraid to be honest with the American people.
16:19And yet, I voted for the bill.
16:21Why?
16:23Because if we don't, we keep operating under the current system, which means we keep giving
16:28Medicaid to people without work requirements.
16:32So I'm forced with a conundrum.
16:34Do I vote for the bill so I can actually have the common sense of a Medicaid work requirement
16:40start in 2026?
16:41Or do I vote no on the bill because I think deficits are going to go up and I think this
16:46is the bare basics of reform we should do while we're not doing anything to stop the
16:50money laundering scam that will likely encourage the 10 non-expansion states to expand and cement
16:56Obamacare permanently?
16:58This is the Hobson's choice that someone like me or some of my other colleagues face.
17:04All under the bluster of what this bill does or does not do, which 90% of the people in
17:10this body can't even explain, much less the American people or anybody in the media.
17:15That's the truth.
17:17We had lots of new tax cuts.
17:19Oh, but here's the little secret that everybody should understand.
17:23All of the new tax cuts expire after four years or five years.
17:28You want to know a classic Washington gimmick?
17:32That's one.
17:34You're getting absolutely the bait and switch by Republicans in the House and the Senate
17:38by saying we're going to have these tax cuts only be applied for four years because they
17:43will expire, don't you know, in four years so you don't have to score them now.
17:50So they always say, don't worry, over 10 years, this thing, man, it reduces deficits.
17:53But they don't score the last five years because the tax cuts expire.
17:58Now, let me ask you a question.
18:00If you're watching this, all 12 of you on C-SPAN, tell me whether you think if we put
18:06in place that $500 enhanced child tax credit, I don't care whether you like the policy or
18:12not.
18:12I have my concerns with the policy.
18:14I think it's a giveaway.
18:14I don't think it's actually all that helpful.
18:16I don't think it creates economic growth.
18:18But okay, we're all in the giveaway business in this chamber.
18:21We're going to give away another $500 for every child in this country, even though it
18:26costs thousands to raise them.
18:28But we're only going to do it for four years.
18:31I'm not allowed to speak and address the audience.
18:34I have to address the speaker.
18:35But for anybody who happens to be listening in the chamber or on C-SPAN, would you go to
18:40Vegas and bet yes or no that those tax credits would be expanded in five years?
18:47You know damn well they'll be expanded in five years.
18:50But we don't score that.
18:53That's a Washington gimmick.
18:55There are seven of those, I think, or more, of these tax cuts that expire in four or five
19:01years but are not then scored for the outer five years so that everything can balance.
19:08But it doesn't.
19:10That's $1.6 trillion of additional lost revenue.
19:14Now, again, let me be clear.
19:17I support a lot of those policies.
19:20I don't think we should be taxing Social Security on seniors either at all or certainly as much.
19:27I don't think we should have taxes.
19:30Well, let me restate it.
19:31I think we should give tax benefits for moving manufacturing to the United States and give
19:36rapid depreciation expensing for those companies.
19:40I'm for that policy.
19:41And that might actually be one of the few that might pay for themselves for the growth.
19:45But all of these things.
19:46How about the auto loan tax deduction?
19:50We've got that in there now.
19:52Well, do you think that's going to pay for itself?
19:54Do you think they'll let that expire in four years when everybody's used to deducting their
19:59auto interest?
20:01Maybe it's fine policy, but shouldn't we pay for it?
20:05Shouldn't we have more spending reductions or are we going to keep up the fiction that
20:09we can continue to do these policies?
20:11And all my Republican colleagues go, Chip, they all pay for themselves.
20:15Are you a tax raiser?
20:17That's what they do.
20:18They go, Chip, you're out there.
20:19You're saying we've got to raise taxes.
20:21There's a reason, as I said a minute ago, Ronald Reagan said, if you come down here with a
20:24new idea, you ought to have a tax increase attached to it.
20:27Because everybody in this chamber cannot say no to the Farm Bureau when they come in and
20:32they want more money, when the ALS people come in and say they need more research, when
20:36the cancer people come in and say they need more research.
20:39I'm a cancer survivor and I tell them no because, damn it, we don't have any more money.
20:45But everybody in this chamber just says, okay, we're going to authorize more spending and
20:51I'm going to go do a tax cut because, oh, that's your money.
20:54You get to keep your tax.
20:55I agree.
20:56Let me be clear.
20:57They're all going to sit there.
20:58They're all going to go play some clip, Chip Roy's, for tax increases.
21:01It's all crap.
21:03But the truth is, everybody in this chamber says every tax cut pays for itself.
21:09What if I cut taxes to 1%?
21:13Do those all pay for themselves?
21:14No, they don't.
21:17And we owe $36 trillion.
21:19And everybody watching this, your kids, your grandkids, your great-grandkids are holding
21:24the bag because you wanted all your free crap.
21:27And as I've said before in a speech, this is always the United States House of free crap.
21:33And that's what we do.
21:34We just write checks.
21:37The Inflation Reduction Act, the Green News scam.
21:40I'm going to tell you the one reason I voted for this bill.
21:43One.
21:45Yes, I like the Medicaid work requirements.
21:47Yes, I like a lot of the extensions of the tax cuts.
21:49Yes, I like some of the policies that stop funding Planned Parenthood.
21:53Yes, I like some of the policies that stop funding transgender surgeries.
21:56All of those are good.
21:58But in my opinion, we needed more spending restraint if you want to be honest about deficits.
22:03But I voted for this bill for one reason.
22:06And this is why I'm on the floor today.
22:07Because I need the United States Senate to hear this as clearly as I can say it.
22:13We got restrictions on the Green News scam to ensure that about 55 or 60 percent of those
22:20subsidies that are going to enrich billion-dollar corporations to put money in the pockets of
22:25the Chinese to undermine our grid with unreliable energy and undermine natural gas and undermine
22:29nuclear, all while bolstering wind and solar, which is littering our fields and littering our
22:35landscape, all to provide unreliable energy.
22:38We fought like hell to get restrictions on that, to get 60 percent of the Green News scam
22:44basically terminated.
22:46The President campaigned on terminating all of it.
22:49But this weak-ass Congress and Senate are going to not do that because, oh, we can't disrupt
22:54the existing flow of the $400 billion of subsidies going into the pockets of all those big companies,
23:01raking in the money so they can get free money while you guys all subsidize.
23:06They're getting rich.
23:07And your grid gets weaker.
23:10This Congress is going to do that.
23:12And we fought like cats and dogs to get that 60 percent.
23:16And everybody in town, the K Street lobby, are freaking out.
23:20Oh, no.
23:20We're not going to be able to have our subsidies to build more wind farms and solar farms.
23:24We're not going to have more giveaways because their energy won't compete.
23:29So that is the one reason I voted for this bill.
23:32So my message to the Senate, this will get clipped.
23:35It will get sent to the Senate.
23:37I'm looking at you, Tom Tillis.
23:38I'm looking at you over there in the Senate.
23:40You backslide one inch on those IRA subsidies, and I'm voting against this bill.
23:46I want the White House to hear it.
23:47I want the Senate to hear it because it is the only reason I voted for this bill because
23:52those God-forsaken subsidies are killing our energy, killing our grid, making us weaker,
23:58destroying our landscape, undermining our freedom, and I'm not going to have it.
24:03So you do what you want to do in the Senate, House of Lords, have your fun.
24:07But if you mess up the Inflation Reduction Act, Green New Scam subsidies, I ain't voting for that bill.
24:17We have a duty to actually honor 81 years later.
24:21All these colleagues of mine, both sides of the aisle, they'll go out.
24:24You watch.
24:26Today, D-Day, there'll be a tweet from everybody.
24:29June 14th, the 250th birthday of the Army, there'll be a tweet from everybody.
24:33July 4th, they'll get in their parades.
24:35They'll walk around.
24:36They'll flag.
24:37They'll kiss babies.
24:37Yay!
24:39What do they do on Veterans Day?
24:40What do they do on Memorial Day?
24:43But what are we doing to actually honor the memory of those who gave the last full measure of devotion,
24:48who walked into the wall of bullets, who died for this country,
24:50so we can be $36 trillion in debt,
24:53so we can subsidize the Green New Scam,
24:56so that we can run away from the fight of having a tough conversation with constituents,
25:00that there, in fact, is no more room in the end,
25:03that we are out of money?
25:05Because I've got to tell you,
25:07this bill does not meet the moment.
25:12I voted for it because I believe strongly in stopping those Green New Scam subsidies
25:17and for a variety of other good provisions,
25:20but we ought to do better.
25:22The Senate ought to do better.
25:24And if the Senate weakens it, shame on the Senate.
25:26And if the House just takes it, shame on the House.
25:31The President of the United States campaigned on terminating the Green New Scam.
25:36We should terminate it.
25:37The President of the United States said that we should get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse of Medicaid.
25:41Well, we should, including the money laundering scam,
25:45enriching blue states at the expense of red states,
25:48expansion states at the expense of non-expansion states,
25:51and enriching the able-bodied at the expense of the vulnerable.
25:57The President campaigned on tax relief.
25:59We should deliver it.
26:01But we should have the commensurate spending cuts
26:03to go alongside of it to ensure that deficits go down
26:06to do what the President also campaigned on,
26:09which is balancing the budget of the United States.
26:11I do not believe this bill yet will do that.
26:18We'll see what the Senate does over the next week.
26:22But we will do a disservice to the memories of those that we are celebrating today
26:26on the 81st anniversary of D-Day.
26:29And we'll do a disservice to the memory of all those that came before us
26:32that fought and died and bled for this country.
26:36But more importantly, we will do a disservice to their ancestors,
26:40a disservice to our kids and our grandkids
26:43who are the ones left holding the bag of rampant inflation
26:46and high interest rates
26:47and a bond market that is teetering on the edge of a knife's edge
26:50because we refuse to do our job.
26:59We have an obligation to do.
27:03And I hope the Senate will step up and make this bill better.
27:07If they leave it the same, they can send it to the President's desk.
27:11If they leave it basically the same and they send it back,
27:13I guess a lot of us will hold our nose again and say,
27:15well, I guess that's the best this Congress is capable of doing.
27:20It's like General Patton's quote in the movie.
27:25Well, what did you do during the great WW2?
27:29Well, you won't have to say you shoveled crap in Louisiana.
27:36What is Congress going to say that they did at this moment in time in history
27:40to save this country?
27:43I hope the Senate will listen, make this bill better,
27:47make it deserving of the President's campaign and mandate,
27:51and deliver for the American people.
27:52But they better darn well not backslide.
27:57Because frankly, it was hard to hold my nose to vote for that bill in the first place
28:02because I'm over the barrel trying to actually make Medicaid work
28:05and try to make these subsidies get repealed
28:07and try to do the job that the President campaigned on
28:10while we are too inclined to want to have giveaways that don't simply add up.
28:16This is a moment for us to rise up and deliver.
28:21I hope the Senate will do it, and I hope the House will follow.
28:23And with that, Mr. Speaker, I will yield back.
28:27Members are reminded to address the remarks to the Chair
28:29and not to receive viewing audience.
28:32The question is...
28:33What purpose does the gentleman from Texas wish to be recognized?
28:39Mr. Speaker, I would move to adjourn.
28:42The question is the motion to adjourn.
28:44Those in favor say A.
28:45Those in favor say no.
28:49The A's have no.