On Wednesday, I unveiled our first campaign ad of the season, titled “The Game.” In it, I am playing baseball with my son, Charlie, and I describe the dream that comes with being a Texan. That dream revolves around our independent Texas spirit, our shared love of this beautiful state, and our unbound belief in what we can achieve when left free to do so.
Nine years ago, when I was battling cancer, I pledged to do everything in my power to fight to save that dream for my children and grandchildren. Now, in Congress, it is my job to fight to save it for your children and grandchildren, too. To do that means that I must reject the game played in Washington every day, the very thing that makes it “the swamp.”
Playing the game in Washington means dancing to the tune of party leadership, lobbyists, and major donors. It means you don’t play across the aisle. It means doing as you are told. It means you are perfectly fine with the status quo, even if that means voting on legislation that spends trillions of dollars of taxpayer money when you have less than 24 hours to review, let alone debate it. It means staying quiet and abandoning your principles.
I refuse to play that game.
In rejecting this way of Washington, I was able to work with a freshman Democrat in May to pass the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act. I did so by ignoring all the people who said we couldn’t do it. I set out instead to get it done and focused not on K Street, but on the “Main Street” businesses and workers in Central Texas who so desperately needed help. I rejected the $3.4 trillion “HEROES Act” that Nancy Pelosi decreed was the only option in the House, despite the fact it had no prayer of passage in the Senate. Instead, I worked on a seven-page bill with another freshman and demonstrated power with outside forces (the hardworking, patriotic people of our nation) to get it to a vote.
The rejection of the status quo in Washington led to real results for Central Texans. Because of the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act, a bipartisan effort to put people over politics, 18,404 small businesses and 511 nonprofit groups in the 21st Congressional District of Texas received much-needed assistance. Roughly 90,919 jobs in my district were supported through the Paycheck Protection Program. All of that was possible because a couple of freshman members didn’t play the game.
Meanwhile, Pelosi embodies the game as it is played in the swamp, and her political action committee is now disingenuously attacking me for refusing to play along.
Pelosi and my opponent, Wendy Davis, are trying to attack me for voting against a bill affecting Gold Star families. First of all, I voted against the bill, the Secure Act, due to eleventh-hour IRA rule changes and tax increases, as well as the removal of provisions affecting 529 education savings accounts. If Pelosi and Davis actually cared about tax relief for Gold Star families, they could have called for a standalone vote last year on the “Gold Star Family Tax Relief Act,” which I co-sponsored with 172 Democrats and Republicans. In reality, Pelosi used Gold Star families as political cover in a bill with last-minute changes that would have increased taxes on many people, including Gold Star families. Even more sickening, now, she’s using it to attack me falsely in the name of those families, who have already suffered unthinkable amounts.
That is Pelosi’s game in a nutshell.
Pelosi is fine with only allowing the House to work 19 out of the past 180 days since the country shut down in March. She’s proud of the fact she’s allowing members of Congress to delegate the nondelegable (their vote) and pass legislation without a quorum, which the Constitution contemplates is necessary to conduct business (I led an effort to file a lawsuit against Pelosi, challenging the constitutionality of this rule). She is proud she refused multiple offers from Sen. Tim Scott to bring up a police reform bill, which she described as “trying to get away with murder.”
If Pelosi wants to come at me with ads? Bring it on. I will stand with the people I represent. I will stand up for America. I will stand up to keep that Texas dream alive.
Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican, represents Texas’s 21st Congressional District.
