At last night's House Rules Committee hearing, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) spoke to Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) about the CR.
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NewsTranscript
00:00The gentleman yields back and now recognizes Mr. Roy for his time for questions.
00:05Thank you, Chairman, thank the witnesses for appearing.
00:10Just to clarify here, so the American people kind of know what we're dealing with, my colleagues
00:14as well as we head into this and establish the rule for the debate tomorrow, overall
00:19spending is basically frozen.
00:22Is that right?
00:23Yeah.
00:24It's $7 billion, but that's out of $1.665 trillion, you know, kind of total.
00:30So yeah, it's down a little bit, but not a lot.
00:33Effectively, statistically speaking, it's flat or frozen.
00:36It's down $7 billion.
00:37Correct.
00:38Is that a fair characterization?
00:39That's a fair characterization.
00:40Number two, defense spending is up slightly, like $6 billion.
00:43Two and a half billion.
00:44About $1.7 billion of that is pay raises that had already been committed to.
00:49Okay.
00:50And then the NDD portion is down, but that is reflective mostly-
00:55The which portion, I'm sorry?
00:56Non-defense discretionary is down, but that is reflective mostly of what I would call
01:00earmarks.
01:01Yeah, what you would call earmarks.
01:02The politically correct terms.
01:03My friend and I would call community projects.
01:06Right.
01:07So, and those, you know, congressionally directed spending or whatever the politically correct
01:14term is for earmarks, those are not a part of this, so that number is down.
01:19This is not a multi-page omnibus bill at the last minute.
01:24This is a 99-page continuation of current funding.
01:27We had, I want to be careful here, I don't want to step on any of our authorizer's toes,
01:31we certainly had lots of requests to put stuff on, and as I told my friends, don't you remember
01:37December?
01:38There was only 130 pages in that CR, in that disaster relief bill.
01:42They put a lot of other stuff on.
01:44We didn't allow that to happen.
01:46So it is fewer than 100 pages, about 99 pages.
01:49Yeah, I think it's 99.
01:50And it is a full year, if you will, continuing resolution, a full fiscal year, to take us
01:58through September 30th, which at this point is basically a six-month and change extension.
02:03It is a, it is also true, right, that we will have, we had the full 72 hours to review this
02:09tax, it was released Saturday before we voted.
02:12It is also true that the veteran spending goes up, correct?
02:16Correct.
02:18Additional funding for veterans.
02:19Correct.
02:20It is also true that there's about a half a billion dollars, a little less than, in
02:23additional support for ICE.
02:26Is that correct?
02:27That's correct.
02:28And that is critically important at this moment, while the President is trying to clean up
02:33what was a disastrous open border situation.
02:37It is also correct that air traffic control funding is up, is that correct?
02:41That's correct.
02:42It is also true that crop insurance is extended, is that correct?
02:45That's correct.
02:46In most categories.
02:48It is also true that as DOJ, through Elon, and those working with Elon, that they are
02:56identifying a waste, fraud, and abuse, and concerns in the spending process, whether
03:03it's duplicate Social Security numbers, whether it's extraordinary expenditures under USAID,
03:09such as a $32,000 transgender comic book in Peru, or a play in, I think, Ireland, or whatever,
03:16go down the list of all these expenditures, that they're identifying these things, and
03:19then, to the extent they have power through the executive branch, limiting those expenditures,
03:25or if you're, for example, the Secretary of State, ending certain contracts under USAID,
03:29while they review that spending.
03:31And to the point of the ranking member, that all of this input that we're getting from
03:35that review, through the algorithms looking at the expenditures through Treasury, we'll
03:38be able to report it back to Congress, we'll be able to take that into account in the appropriations
03:42process for FY26, which we have now six months to complete.
03:47That's correct.
03:48You know, we thought it would be too soon to do anything like that.
03:51You haven't had a chance to verify or hear.
03:54And so the appropriate place would be the FY26 bills and or a rescission package, if
03:59that was the approach that the administration and Congress chose to, you know, use.
04:04And is it not true that we are well into that window in which we need to be moving quickly
04:10to achieve appropriations for FY26?
04:13Would the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee agree that we're at that point where we need
04:17to be getting the budget from the administration, operating under our budget, and executing
04:24with the levels that you need to have in place for the appropriations process so that we
04:29can move to get to the best of our ability the 12 bills passed?
04:33Do you agree we should be moving on that with dispatch?
04:36I absolutely do.
04:37I would add, and I'd say this, and I said this when President Biden, any new administration
04:42has a hard time meeting the deadline to submit a budget, which is actually middle of February.
04:48So we're still waiting, and we have to have that, but we're waiting.
04:51We wait on every administration.
04:53They don't have an OMB director at that point.
04:55They don't have a Secretary of Treasury.
04:57The President should have been able to count on full funding through September 30th of
05:03this year and not worry about that.
05:06But, you know, he didn't get that.
05:07He didn't get it in 2017 either, and I'm not casting stone, but that's a congressional
05:12bipartisan failure in my view.
05:14If we had gotten our work done last year when we should have, we wouldn't be having this
05:18meeting here today.
05:19We'd had a budget that was already running through, and I can heap lots of blame.
05:24I will tell you, our committee did its work.
05:27It got all of its bills out in a timely fashion.
05:30We could have voted on all 12.
05:31We voted on, I think, seven, five of them passed.
05:35Most of the money got through, but Congress needs to get its act together, and again,
05:40I'm very critical of Congress on that, on both sides.
05:42The committee didn't fail.
05:44The product was ready to go to the floor.
05:46We just couldn't get them all to the floor and couldn't get them across the floor, quite
05:51frankly.
05:52And, you know, as disappointed as I am there, I will point out on the other side, we don't
05:57get to do things by ourselves in the House.
06:00There is a United States Senate.
06:01They didn't pass one appropriations bill last year, and as a matter of fact, they passed
06:09one.
06:10We actually could have had a conference and could have opened up and dealt with all of
06:12them on that basis, but the Senate didn't kick out a single appropriations bill.
06:17Just to underscore that, this is really important, the House passed five appropriations bills
06:22in this cycle, FY25, last year, correct?
06:25Correct.
06:26The previous year we passed seven, is that correct?
06:29And the Senate, under Democrat leadership, under each of those times, now obviously this
06:34fiscal year has now transitioned to Republican leadership, but we're only a mere, what, six
06:38weeks, eight, whatever, eight weeks into that.
06:40So to be clear for the American people, we passed five bills, and do we have all 12 out
06:46of committee?
06:47Yes.
06:48We had all 12 out of committee, five off the floor.
06:49We had all 12 out of committee the previous year.
06:52All 12 before the August break, too.
06:54Right.
06:55And we had all 12 the previous year, including seven off the floor, correct?
06:58Correct.
06:59Did the Democrat-controlled Senate pass one single appropriations bill either time?
07:02You know, I can't remember the first, if they passed one or not.
07:05I know they did in the last year, but I don't think they did, but I can't remember.
07:10Well, I think that's right, and I know I'm pushing up on time, I appreciate it.
07:13I think this is a responsible step forward, and I know, look, I've got some on my kind
07:19of more moderate flank and my conservative flank that have concerns, and a lot of people
07:25say, well, you know, we're moving a full-year funding and continuing resolution, that's
07:29not how we should do business.
07:30Well, I think that the chairman of appropriations would agree.
07:33Absolutely.
07:34I would agree, right?
07:35That's not, we would like to have 12 appropriations bills, but we didn't get it done, and we didn't
07:38get it done in significant part because the Senate refused to pass a single appropriations
07:42bill.
07:43So here we are, and we're trying to clean up that mess, and now we can move forward
07:46with this bill, hold spending roughly flat, be able to advance the cause for our defense,
07:51be able to advance the cause to be able to move the appropriations bills for this year.
07:55Funding's up for veterans, we've got the extension for crop insurance, we don't have any earmarks
08:00in there for better or worse, some of us think that's a good thing, some less so, and we've
08:05got a reduction, to the best of my understanding, in some of the IRS expansion, a lot of things
08:09that are priorities.
08:10I think this is a big step forward, and we should now focus on FY26 to get the appropriations
08:14bill, and I appreciate the testimony of the chairman.
08:16I would add, if I may, we don't do this at shutdown.
08:20You tell me how that's better.
08:23Whatever your individual concerns are here or there in the bill, fair enough, but you
08:28tell me how a government shutdown, for no purpose at all, to achieve no objective that
08:34I can see, is better for the American people.
08:36I just think it's not.
08:37And to that end, I would like to name Ms. Kent to insert into the record, article in
08:41the Hill, Democrats step up talk about using shutdown as leverage against Trump with respect
08:45to Elon and Doge, another article quoting one of our colleagues, a Democrat from New
08:51York, quoted the Senate Democrats don't have the gumption to do what is necessary at this
08:55moment.
08:56I believe the House Democrats will, in the same context, in the same article, another
08:59article talking about the importance of using shutdown to try to force change among Elon.
09:05Without objection, I yield back.
09:09Documents are admitted, the gentleman yields back, and now recognizes Ms. Scanlon.