Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), a member of the House Freedom Caucus and initial detractor to Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) attempts at securing the House speakership, is advocating members of Congress to get in a room now to discuss debt-limit concerns looming in the future.
“The fastest way to guarantee that we have debt rating problems is to keep spending money we don’t have and keep piling up debt, and that’s what we’re doing,” Roy told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday night’s State of the Union. Tapper spoke of the concern over the recent House speaker drama and how it delayed legislators from doing their jobs. Roy, however, struck a more optimistic tone.
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“Are we going to have this kind of conflict going forward? I hope so! But we started this now. It’s January. So the debt ceiling debate is going to be in a few months. Let’s do it now guys. Let’s get this out there. Both sides of the aisle, everybody within each party, let’s figure out how we’re actually going to fix this because the American people are sick of us not doing our job,” Roy said.
The Texas conservative also once again spoke harshly of the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill and how there was “no debate on the floor” for the bill. At the time, some GOP lawmakers strongly opposed the 4,000-page bill on the basis that they had little time to read it and that it contained earmarked spending. McCarthy threatened that the 18 Senate Republicans who voted for it would get no help on their legislative priorities from the new Republican majority in the House.
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Roy was one of 20 Republicans who initially denied McCarthy the votes he needed to become House speaker. Eventually, Roy gave the California GOP leader his vote, but not before securing concessions, including that a single member of Congress can call for a vote to oust a sitting speaker. Tapper made note of this, asking Roy if he would vote to vacate the speakership if McCarthy offers what the Senate Democrats want of the debt ceiling bill.
“I’m not going to play the what-if games on how we’re going to use the tools of the House to make sure that we enforce the terms of the agreement,” Roy said. “But we will use the tools of the House to enforce the terms of the agreement.”
