U.S. Rep. Chip Roy says “it’s time for Texas to lead again,” focusing on the Texas Legislature’s inability to pass conservative priorities in recent years—and lambasted the idea that Republicans in Washington, D.C., would place Democrats in leadership positions, much like Texas Republicans do in the state Legislature.
Ending the practice of giving Democrats committee chairs in the Republican-led Texas Legislature has been a hot topic in the Texas GOP, with delegates poised to potentially make it an official legislative priority of the party.
Those who oppose having Democrats serve in leadership positions in the Texas Legislature argue that conservative priorities are often killed by placing the minority party in charge, while supporters like House Speaker Dade Phelan have said it is a traditional courtesy that the Democrat Party extended to Republicans while they were in charge before 2003.
Roy laughed at the idea that such a phenomenon would happen in U.S. Congress.
“I can say with clarity: In D.C., you would never give the gavel to Democrats in D.C. It would be insane,” said Roy. “I mean, is Jim Jordan gonna say, ‘Hey, you know what, I don’t want to be judiciary chair. Here you go, Jerry Nadler.’ I mean, are you out of your mind?”
Roy stopped short of calling for the practice to end in Texas, instead putting the spotlight on the issues he wants to see come out of the state Legislature.
“Let’s go set the marker: ‘You are going to give us school choice, you are going to hold schools accountable, you are going to put cops on the street, you aren’t going to let Austin become San Francisco, you are going to secure the border, you are going to cut property taxes,’” said Roy. “I want Texas to be as strong as we pretend it is. We should actually be standing up and leading this country. And that starts in the Legislature, and it requires us in Washington to do our part to get Washington out of the way. But it is time for Texas to lead again.”
In the interview, Roy also talked about the growing invasion of illegal aliens on the southern border.
“The border—however bad you think it is, it’s worse. We just got the numbers from May, and you’ve got almost quarter of a million apprehensions. We’re now over 800,000 known got-aways. We had another 1,200 pounds of fentanyl intercepted, but that’s what’s intercepted; that’s not the fentanyl that’s getting through,” said Roy.
“Why are we just allowing Mexico to just keep sending traffic up and make money on our dollars coming up through [Interstate] 35? And why are we allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to go from people in America to be sent back to Mexico? Let’s constrain that and force them to the table.”
Roy was first elected to Congress in 2018 and is currently serving his third term.
