“No border security, no funding” will be U.S. Rep. Chip Roy’s rallying cry next month, which includes a promise to shut down the federal government.
Roy, R-Austin and the District 21 House representative for Texas, told the Kendall County Republican Club Thursday he will be leading a fight next month to curtail federal spending until House Resolution 2 is signed into law.
“What that means, is a shutdown’s coming,” Roy told the 100 GOP members gathered at the Nelson City Dance Hall.
HR 2 limits the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to temporarily grant entry to some immigrants into the United States. Roy, an attorney and strong supporter of conservative values, is a vocal critic of current immigration and border-control policies.
“I’m going to pick a fight in September that’s going to make the (House Speaker Kevin McCarthy)’s fight look trivial,” he said.
“It’s time. We should not spend another dollar for a Department of Homeland Security that is at war with the people of Texas, that is exploiting children and is endangering our American kids dying from fentanyl. Not one more dollar,” he added.
The congressman said the battle waged in the House in January to get HR 2 passed was a beginning, but was far from enough to satisfy both himself and fellow members of the House Freedom Caucus.
“I am not going to (support or fund) an appropriations bill, for any funding of any kind, unless we get HR 2 signed into law, which will fix a lot of the problems,” said Roy, first elected in 2019. “Every member of the Texas delegation ought to throw down with the Washington establishment because of what’s happening in Texas.”
He repeated the “no border security, no funding” mantra several times and told the audience he will not back down.
“They (Democrats) are going to come and tell you you’re not going to get your Social Security, you’re not getting your Medicare, (the Transportation Security Administration is) not going to be able to operate airports – they are going to try to shame us into saying, ‘Oh, we’ve just got to go ahead and fund the government.’” But Roy said he will not be arm-twisted into signing off on an agreement that mirrors the deal McCarthy, another Republican, cut in late May to keep the government funded.
“Come September, when we have a spending shutdown Sept. 30, I am going to have to throw everything I have at forcing Republicans to do their job, to stop (President) Joe Biden,” he said. “We’re not going to wait 18 months for the next president. We have an obligation now to stop it.”
He called the immigration situation at the border “a complete train wreck.” He also criticized the the Department of Justice for targeting former President Donald Trump “instead of prosecuting human trafficking or fentanyl trafficking. We have to stop that. I’m obligated to stop it.”
According to law-enforcement agencies, cartels are smuggling fentanyl, a synthetic opioid far stronger than heroin, across the Texas-Mexico border, resulting in hundreds of overdose deaths.
Roy cited “atrocities” occurring along the border, and in “stash houses” across Texas, where he said women and children have been held for ransom by cartel members.
“That’s happening in Texas every day — 856 migrants died along the border last year, 53 (locked) in a tractor trailer in San Antonio,” he said. “These are human beings. We’re a Christian people, and we’re allowing that to occur right here in our backyard. I think that’s unconscionable.
“I think it’s unconscionable that … six kids died from fentanyl poisoning in Hays (Consolidated Independent School District), where I live. I’m telling you all of that because we’re at war.”
Roy said his goal is to cut through the bureaucracy and left-leaning politics in Washington, D.C. “There’s a group of people who are fundamentally at war with your way of life, and it’s not the cartels, per se. It’s not China, per se. It’s leftist Democrats in this country who want to take away your way of life, take away your freedom and limit your ability to live free,” he said.
He is setting out “to fundamentally change the game in Washington,” Roy added. “We’re fundamentally changing the House right now, but it’s not good enough.”
About 90 minutes before he took the stage, Roy said he got a call from Mark Meadows, former chief of staff during Trump’s presidency, who was indicted in the Georgia election- scandal investigation.
He asked Meadows what he needed. The response? Prayer.
“I believe in revival. I believe anything is possible through God’s grace,” he said. “I went through cancer 12 years ago, and here I am. Many of you are going through those kinds of things. With God’s grace, we can do anything as a free people.”
He asked for the prayers and the support of fellow Republicans as he prepares to mount his “no border security, no funding” battle in D.C.
“I realize this is somber. I can stand up here and give a rah-rah speech, I’ve done it before,” he said. “But I want you all to know the state of affairs right now. I can’t sugar- coat it.
“I need your support and prayers, pray for me, pray for our country, pray for my family, but most importantly just pray that we seek God’s wisdom. We can't get through this without God’s wisdom.”
Roy told the crowd that life in the Hill Country “is as good as it gets.” Yet, the situation posed in the nation’s capital threatens that way of life – and he said he won’t stand for it.
“We’re turning our entire country upside down and the only thing between what we believe in this world, and that world, is you,” he said. “This is the heartbeat of this country, this is the Hill Country, this is Texas, this is Kendall County. It doesn’t get any better than this. If we lose this, what do we have left?”
He cited conservative stances taken recently by Riley Gaines, an NCAA swimmer protesting the participation of transgender women in women’s sports; Chloe Cole, a young woman who has detransitioned after undergoing gender-transition surgery; and Scott Smith, who confronted a school board after a male student wearing a skirt was accused of sexually assaulting his daughter in a bathroom.
“Those people who stood up and fought, that’s why I’m in Congress. I picked a fight in January because we needed to change the House,” he said. “I’m not willing to hand over this country to the radical leftists. We have the obligation to stand up and fight.”
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