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Rep. Chip Roy On Today's Spending Bill

September 19, 2019

WASHINGTON--Rep. Chip Roy released the following statement Thursday regarding H.R. 4378, "Making continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2020, and for other purposes."

Today, we passed a short-term CR designed to time out right before Thanksgiving to maximize pressure to rack up more debt.

I wish I could say I am surprised, but this is Washington, where members of Congress have made it a habit to shirk their responsibility to balance the budget and put our nation on a path towards fiscal sanity. Congress does this consistently, despite knowing that our nation is $22 trillion in debt and racks up an additional $100 million of debt per hour. It was done again today. It is insanity. It should end.

This bill is horrendous. It trades potential small savings of $5-6B when compared to the could-have-been spending levels if Congress had done its job and appropriated for the next full fiscal year to the disastrous budget deal levels that we struck this summer in exchange for extensions in unamended, broken federal programs like the Export-Import Bank and Commodity Credit Corporation.

This bill also continues to hamstring our military. Regardless of the funding level, our men and women in uniform need stability to plan and enter into contracts to protect our nation and ensure our future lethality. With money for only 51 days, they can't even begin to do the jobs we ask of them.

I also have serious problems with how this bill was rolled out. The audacity Speaker Pelosi and Democratic leadership showed by forcing a vote on this bill less than 24-hours after members were able to see the text is truly astounding. The text of the bill wasn't finished being drafted until 6 p.m. on the 18th. My staff couldn't review it until late last night. This isn't the sort of decision making the folks back home sent us to Washington to make. How can we be good stewards for our nation if we aren't afforded the time to review and debate serious legislation? The truth is we can't.

My team and I haven't given up. We are working on legislation to restructure how Washington budgets, so we can avoid these missteps in the future. Between now and Nov. 21, I am committed to working with my colleagues to bring about at least a modicum of fiscal sanity. We should be doing a better job for the American people.