Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) on a Potential Government Shutdown: “We Have an Obligation to Do Our Jobs”

Congressman Chip Roy, Representative for Texas’ 21st Congressional District, member of the House Judiciary, Rules, and Budget Committees, and Policy Chair of the House Freedom Caucus joined the Guy Benson Show to discuss the crisis on the U.S. – Mexico Border and the potential government shutdown due to disputes over funding. Rep. Roy said that too many members of his own party are too focused on bashing, and that the party needs to focus “to do our jobs”. Guy and Rep. Roy also discussed Trump’s abortion answers in his interview with Kristen Welker. Listen to the full interview below.

Full Interview:

Roy had this to say on the importance of the republican party pushing for a budget resolution:

“I believe that that’s a path forward that honors the spirit of the speaker’s agreement and what conservatives have been fighting for while trying to get to a place where we can land a plane to actually succeed. When my border in Texas is under fire and people are dying and people are getting hurt, and we have an obligation to do our job.”

Full Transcript:

Guy Benson: We’re glad to welcome back to the airwaves Congressman Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, the 21st District. And Congressman, great to talk to you.

Rep. Chip Roy: Great to talk to you, Guy. It’s been a while.

Guy Benson: Thank you so much. I want to start with the border because we saw what, not last weekend but the weekend prior, an interview with the vice president who is still supposedly the border czar in this administration. And she was asked about the immigration crisis. She said, oh, well, we’ve made progress. It’ll fluctuate like the weather, but we’re making progress and we’ve got to get to root causes. We’ve been talking about the numbers that we’ve seen. The August numbers were terrible. September looking worse again. The crisis levels were diminished a bit in the spring and now they are roaring back. It is an element of enormous concern, I know, to people all over the country, including, hilariously, some Democrats from sanctuary cities. But as a Texan and someone who represents your state, what can you report to us about the current state of the border crisis?

Rep. Chip Roy: Well, it’s it’s pretty tragically bad, Guy. And I and I don’t say that with the hyperbole. Some get on the border like we’re living it in Texas. Right. Right now I’ve got links and pictures to all these stories. One right here from Bill Melugin. You know, obviously reports on this very well. God bless them for being out there in Eagle Pass where we have Border Patrol having 2200 people crossed since midnight just last night in Eagle Pass. I have other photos, some of the encampments all down in that region around Eagle Pass. People are flooding across. Obviously, the Darian Gap, we’re seeing all the stories where you’ve got thousands of people pouring out. I feel like stories yesterday of people getting in train cars heading for the United States. You know, we’ve got you know, I can go down the list, right? Border Patrol told Fox there was more than 20,000 counters, 20,000 encounters at the southwest border Friday through Sunday. That’s an extraordinary number. We’re looking at well over 200,000 for August being reported. Well over 200,000 in July. This is all, by the way, with the CBP one app still in process where they’re dumping people out for parole. It’s terrible. And, you know, you know, we talked about it. Fentanyl poisonings, the number of people too dangerous to be able to go in Pennsylvania, stabbed his girlfriend 28 times. I was in jail and got out. And we got the kid who died in Ohio. 11-year-old boy was killed by somebody released. It’s all over the country. You see what’s happened in New York, Staten Island. You’ve got to do something. And that’s what I’m trying to do here in Washington.

Guy Benson: And we’ll get to that in just a moment. But I want to just linger for a second on the border crisis, because I made mention of it in passing there. I think the political masterstroke of your governor, Greg Abbott, to put just a fraction of these migrants on busses with their consent and send them to sanctuary jurisdictions, be at New York City, Los Angeles, California, generally, Chicago, of course, and to see the reaction of those leaders; it has been an object lesson now for the better part of a year, probably a year plus, where at first they were indignant and saying, How could you? But we will take in these people because these are our values. And now you have in New York, for example, Democrats at each other’s throats, yelling at Washington, yelling at each other. Protests in the streets of Americans saying this is all unfair. I think forcing them to live through some of the consequences of their alleged values and watched them squeal like stuck pigs is, I know, very frustrating to them. And they still attack your governor constantly. And the media does, too. But you can’t really get around the actual outcome here. And forcing them to sleep in the bed that they and they themselves exclusively have made might be the only thing that eventually gets us some relief or some progress here, even with a Democrat in office in Washington, D.C. What do you make of that?

Rep. Chip Roy: Well, I think you said it very well. You know, watching the I hate to use the word irony, right, because it’s actually it’s at a human level it’s so tragic. What we’re seeing happen right now, you’re seeing these people are living in streets or on top of each other. They are being shoved into various quarters in New York, LAX. They don’t have places. And, you know, Eric Adams and everybody in New York are all like, oh, come on, sanctuary city. Not just that. Right. I mean, we saw the people in Martha’s Vineyard. You’re like, Oh, great to have you here. Here’s a sandwich. Get out.

Guy Benson: And one day.

Rep. Chip Roy: Right? One day. And that’s the reality of what we’re dealing with, Right? And meanwhile, at the border, right, you read story after story about we’re dealing with taxes in terms of our schools and our hospitals, the bailouts, the ranches, the livestock getting out. How overwhelmed, everybody. Is law enforcement overwhelmed? Texas has spent $10 billion to deal with this over the last couple of years trying to stem the tide and then manage it and then deal with what you just said, sending people around the country. And then what do we get? We get sued by the federal government. Abbott gets sued for putting the barriers in the river Advocates challenge for distributing people around the country. So did Ron DeSantis, by the way. And so these are all things that I think both of those two men led, and it’s basically calling the bluff of these leftist cities around the country. But that only those does so much, right? Like, great. Okay, Now we’ve called their bluff and they’re feeling the pain now what? Right. Where Republicans have to grab the mantle. But you’ve got a nationwide recognition of a human crisis that is endangering the American people, killing our own kids and killing migrants. And we better damn well do something about it instead of having a bunch of conservative movement phonies fundraising on crisis in this city rather than figuring out how to fix it.

Guy Benson: All right, So. I think a big part of fixing it will require Republicans in charge in Washington, D.C., because the Democrats, even despite what you just described, they have no appetite for it. They are beholden to their identity driven activists on this broad issue set. And only elections can fix that. And then action. But right now, we’re in the middle of a divided government, which the American people gave us last year in the midterm elections. There is this government deadline, this government funding deadline at the end of the month where we are staring down the barrel of a partial government shutdown ahead in the coming days unless something gets done. And I know that there are a lot of people shouting in different parts of the party, different parts of Congress, of what should happen between now and October 1st. You definitely have a strong point of view on this. What is it?

Rep. Chip Roy: Well, my strong point of view is that the founders gave us the power of the purse and that we should use it when we had the speakers debate, fight engagement, whatever you want to call it, in January. The purpose was to try to rejigger things so that we could navigate through this year trying to be unified. When we’ve been unified, we’ve been successful. We passed H.R. two the most accomplished and strong border security bill that we’ve ever moved through a National Defense Authorization Act that was strong and conservative. The limit gave Grow bill, which was a strong bill until, unfortunately, we abandoned it on Memorial Day weekend. So here we sit and we’re here heading up to September 30th. My view as a Texan and as an American is that we fundamentally must put border security in the top of the decision matrix on what we view as a victory in terms of funding. If we’re going to fund government, they’ve got to change what they’re doing at the border. There are other things that should change, but we shouldn’t be funding the continuation of what this administration is doing to the people. So my view is and what I’m supporting right now, and I don’t know whether we’ll have the votes or not, because I’ve got a lot of conservative friends who like to beat their chest and thump around going, Oh, this isn’t pure enough, okay. Well, what I’m talking about and what we’re trying to advance is a bill that would for 30 days cut funding for the entire federal bureaucracy, 8%, while funding our defense, paying for our troops, paying for our veterans, and then forcing H.R. 2, the border security package we passed in the spring to be passed along side of it with spending riders forcing enforcement of H.R 2. Our point being secure the border ,fund our troops, cut the bureaucracy 8% including the weaponized DOJ, and send that over to the Senate and then message in what is invariably going to be a shutdown because of our disagreements with Schumer and the president. But some of my colleagues are saying that’s not good enough. No, we’ve got to be able to do it at a different level or we need to make sure we’ve got something further on DOJ in there. I just disagree. I think we’ve got to secure the border and I think we’ve got a pretty good win here with the Freedom Caucus members who we sat down and negotiated with the Main Street caucus and others to get an 8% cut to the federal bureaucracy, including DOJ and H.R. 2 border security, the strongest package we’ve ever passed attached to it. We should send that to the Senate. I don’t know if my colleagues will go along with it or not.

Guy Benson: But see, yeah, they might not. They’ve got other Republicans saying and not without reason. A shutdown is not a good idea. Let’s try to avoid that completely. Even if we can’t get some of these priorities through. So there’s this whole spectrum of where Republicans stand and how they’re thinking about these issues. What worries me is just strip away some of the specific concerns that you just mentioned. Not that they’re unimportant, they’re very important. I’m just saying the Republicans have control of the House. The Democrats are eager to say, look, these people can’t govern. Ultimately, they’re in chaos. McCarthy can’t get all of his ducks in a row and they say, well, we need regular order. And then they can agree on their own appropriations bills. So they’re not passing them. But then they say they hate a C.R. because that’s the wrong way to do it. And so they’re not going to support that. And then, of course, they hate the big omnibus spending bills, which we all hate for good reason. But they’re against everything, right? They’re not for anything. They’re against all of the things, even some of their own ideas. They can’t get on the same page. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable concern for people to have. Out here in the country, voters, but especially inside the halls of Congress, you guys have a very slim majority. That’s tough, right? That that’s a difficult challenge. But part of the job is like manning up and being adults and getting something done as opposed to being against everything, especially when you’re at least nominally in the majority in the chamber where this stuff has to originate.

Rep. Chip Roy: So, Guy, my perspective is we have a duty to use the power of the purse to force this administration to change. Okay, that’s my threshold. My perspective speaking as Chip Roy, is that what we have accomplished this weekend in getting to an agreement to cut the federal bureaucracy 8% and secure the border along with a strong, non-war mission, first Department of Defense funded. That’s what we’re doing in a package and sending it over to the Senate. But unfortunately, some of my colleagues don’t think that’s good enough. They want to hide behind some other rhetoric they want to hide behind, oh, we need to do more on DOJ or do more on this so that the other. There’s no Ukraine supplemental, there’s no disaster emergency supplemental; there’s simply a strong bill that would do what we need to do to ratchet back to the federal bureaucracy that’s been at odds with the American people and force their hand on the border, which is a strong national message. I think that’s a win. I think that’s a place to go push to force the Democrats to have to react. I’m already hearing there are Senate Democrats who either wouldn’t love to deal with that or stated more positively would be willing to sit down, at least to figure out what we might be able to do on the border. My point is, I believe that that’s a path forward that honors the spirit of the speaker’s agreement and what conservatives have been fighting for while trying to get to a place where we can land a plane to actually succeed. When my border in Texas is under fire and people are dying, people are getting hurt, and we have an obligation to do our job. So I’m partially agreeing with you. And believe me, we’re putting forward a plan to try to accomplish that. I don’t know if we’ll get everybody on board or not.

Guy Benson: And the clock is ticking toward the end of the month, and I suspect we’ll be hearing quite a lot of yelling and screaming and carrying on from both sides of the aisle between now and then. Outcome undetermined. So I guess. Stay tuned. Speaking of staying tuned, when we come back, Congressman Chip Roy, I want to ask you about an exchange that aired on national television yesterday on NBC with the former president of the United States, Donald Trump. Asked about abortion, he said a few things that are raising eyebrows that we addressed at the start of today’s show. I want to get your reaction. I know you’re a two Santos supporter in this race. We’ll play you the audio and get the response as soon as we come back. It is the Guy Benson show. Don’t go anywhere.

(INTERVIEW CONTD.)

Guy Benson: Congressman, I want to ask you about President Trump, the former president’s interview on Meet the Press. They covered a lot of issues that spanned well over an hour, if you’ll watch the whole thing online. A lot of people commenting and I opened the show talking about the back and forth, almost 10 minutes on abortion. And I thought that Kristen Welker, who’s the new moderator, the new anchor of Meet the Press, was basically carrying water for abortion activists in the Democrat Party. The way that she was framing issues, the way she was trying to factcheck in some cases, I think wrongly things that President Trump was saying. But there was a moment that’s gotten a lot of attention among pro-lifers in particular. Just listen to this roughly one minute exchange from yesterday. Especially toward the very end. Cut 35.

Kristen Welker: Mr. President, I want to give voters who are going to be weighing in on this election a very clear sense of I think.

Donald Trump: And I think they’re all going to like me. I think both sides are going to like me. Let let me let this have to happen is you’re going to have to listen, please. You’re asking me a question. What’s going to happen is you’re going to come up with a number of weeks or months. You’re going to come up with a number that’s going to make people happy because 92% of the Democrats don’t want to see abortion after a certain period of time.

Kristen Welker: If a federal ban landed on your desk, if you were reelected, would you sign it at 15?

Donald Trump: You’re talking about a complete.

Kristen Welker: Ban, a ban at 15 weeks.

Donald Trump: People people are starting to think of 15 weeks. That seems to be a number that people are talking about right now.

Kristen Welker: Would you sign that?

Donald Trump: I would. I would sit down with both sides and negotiate something and we’ll end up with peace on that issue. For the first time in 52 years. I’m not going to say I would or I wouldn’t. I mean, Desanctis was willing to sign a five week and six week.

Kristen Welker: Bet you support that.

Donald Trump: You think that? I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.

Guy Benson: Okay. So he plans to negotiate a settlement on the issue. Not clear exactly what that would look like. And then on the heartbeat laws, not just as a cudgel against the Santos in Florida, but you expand it out to all the other states that have enacted such laws. And their governors got reelected sometimes by record margins after having done so. He says that is a terrible thing, a terrible mistake politically. What is the pro-life movement to make of this and Republican voters to make of this Congressman?

Rep. Chip Roy: When someone tells you very specifically what they believe, you should believe them. You should take them at their word. And when the former president says that in a very specific term, by the way, about the mistake supposedly, quote unquote, that it was for Governor DeSantis or similar governors to go down the path of protecting life at that stage and the pregnancy in Florida or other states, then we should believe that that’s what he believes. It’s not like he’s sitting down making a hardcore constitutional case about federalism and about whether the federal government should be involved in the state level in terms of regulating this issue. No, that was it was a reaction from a political standpoint of saying that that was a mistake. And, look, I don’t think it’s a mistake for the babies whose lives are being saved or for the people who supported it and fought over the popularity the governor has, even in the wake of having passed that legislation or particularly because of it. And so I think you should believe that. But it’s not the only issue. If you believe you should believe and look at track records, right. When you give an award to the guy who gave you the advice to shut down the biggest economy in the history of the world, you should take that as a sign, right When you when you when you’re looking at someone who, you know, sat down at a table in the White House talking about what we might be able to do to get the gun or then passes a, I don’t know, bump stock ban that set the stage for a pistol brace man. Maybe you should believe it. Maybe you should believe somebody who spent $6 trillion leveraging up the debt of our country. Maybe you should believe that that’s a good incentive into what you’re going to get. So this is why I think the primary matters. This is why I think we ought to have a full and open debate. No one gets coronated in this country and nobody should be choosing princes over principles. And unfortunately, a lot of the conservative movement are doing that right now, even in the context of this spending debate right here in Washington. That is the blanket laying over everything that we’re dealing with.

Guy Benson: Chip Roy is a congressman from Texas. He represents the 21st district in the Lone Star State. Congressman, we always appreciate your perspective. Agree or disagree? We always appreciate your time on this program. And we very much look forward to our next conversation here.

Rep. Chip Roy: Great to be on the show, Guy.

Guy Benson: You bet.