A Republican lawmaker and member of the House Freedom Caucus expressed his disappointment with the party’s leaders for, in his view, failing to take an opportunity to outflank Democrats in their handling of spending bills in order to avoid a government shutdown.
In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) argued that Republicans could have sent their version of a scaled-back budget to the Democrat-controlled Senate and forced the opposition party to explain their positions.
“I put forth a proposal that would cut spending, secure the borders of the United States,” Roy told Hannity. “That’s where I think we ought to go. We ought to be beating the heck out of Democrats over what they’re doing to open borders and their spending. We had a way to do it, and unfortunately, we didn’t take that path, so now I’m down here working, trying to figure out what’s next.
“We should, as Republicans, have already passed 12 appropriation bills that would deal with all those policy issues you just described and cut the overall spending level,” he continued. “That is what we should done. We have not done that, so now we are sitting here in September, and we’re trying to figure out what we need to do next.
“Today, unfortunately, we voted down a Department of Defense appropriation bill that would have cut the abortion tourism, cut transgender surgeries, cut diversity officers, cut Diversity Equity Inclusion because of the great work we did trying to force conservatives onto appropriations committees,” Roy added.
“Similarly to the question just asked we put forward a bill that would have cut spending to all of the non-defense, non-veteran bureaucracy by 8 percent and attached to it H-2 the strongest border security bill we’ve ever passed try to check Joe Biden’s open borders. We wanted to tell Democrats you should either shut down the border or you’re going to deal with a shutdown of government,” the Texas Republican continued.
“Unfortunately, now we are in danger of turning over home field advantage to the Democrats and giving Democrats power to make the decisions next week rather than doing our job.”
He added: I think that’s a mistake. Some of my colleagues in good faith, including the one about to talk who is a friend of mine, I think we made a bad choice this week. I think that we could have moved forward. Now we’ve got to figure out how to set a top-line number and try to move appropriations bills like we should have done in July.”
Roy then talked about a strategy moving forward.
“Right now, we are in a position where I’m literally in the Capitol. I’m going to go back downstairs, try to figure out a top-line number that will get 218 Republicans united to move forward with appropriations bills,” he told the host. “It’s a bit of an uphill climb because I do think there are members of the Republican conference who are on the verge of working on a deal with Democrats in which we end up with a Continuing Resolution that funds into December at the Pelosi levels and we may end up with Ukraine funding or emergency spending on top of it.”
He concluded: “We’ve got to fcus like a laser. The American people sent us here to actually stand up for them against the Biden-Democrat machine. We’ve got to send bills out of this House that represent our spending levels and policy priorities.”
