Texas Republican Chip Roy denounced the legislative process for the COVID-19 relief package in a Feb. 3 House floor speech.
“Do I get to offer amendments? Do I get to say a single word about what’s in this $2 trillion bill? No, because this is fake,” Roy said. (RELATED: Republican Chip Roy Objects To Seating Lawmakers From Contested Presidential Battleground States)
Full clip of Rep. Roy’s floor speech against Democrats’ $1.9 trillion COVID budget resolution today: pic.twitter.com/rmH4TAjQti
— Rep. Chip Roy Press Office (@RepChipRoy) February 3, 2021
“We’re surrounded by fences and razor wire. We’re going through magnetometers. And I’m sitting here on the floor of the House with a $2 trillion bill, larded up for political purposes,” Roy continued.
Roy added that he and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer have discussed Congress’s lack of bipartisanship and the refusal to legislate via regular order. Regular order refers to the process of “public hearings and committee process” that can sometimes be “slow and tends to get [bills] bogged down,” according to NPR.
Now in his second term, Roy has emerged as a critic of large government spending packages. Roy also voted against the March 2020 COVID relief bill, arguing that it would “harm small business, expand government massively, put pressure on health resources, all when we don’t even know what it will cost.” He temporarily blocked a $19.1 billion disaster relief bill in 2019 due to concerns that it did not address “the clear national emergency and humanitarian crisis we have at our southern border.”