Republicans are poised to take back the U.S. House of Representatives . That is a good thing: Being in the majority offers oversight power and a powerful check, currently absent in Congress , on an administration recklessly wielding executive power.
Still, most observers expected a larger margin. Granted, it was going to be a big lift to increase the majority dramatically after picking up seats in 2020. Still, despite rampant inflation on groceries, food, fuel, and healthcare, an open border, China on the march, and a woke, weaponized government targeting Americans, we nevertheless left seats on the table.
Why that happened is not just an academic question for cable news talking heads — it’s central to charting our next steps.
The “People’s House” was designed by our founders specifically to speak for the people; that’s why we are limited to two-year terms and vested with the “power of the purse.” For us to earn the people’s support requires more than the pursuit of money, power, and reelection for the sake of it.
Words are not enough. We have to stand for something. We have to fight for something.
Doing so requires a willingness to take on real political risk to fight for the people. It requires taking the kind of political risk Gov. Ron DeSantis has unapologetically taken in Florida — a key to why he crushed his Democratic competition.
We, congressional Republicans, have taken no such political risk thus far. Our leadership has not demonstrated the willingness to use all the tools at our disposal to check a radical White House and fight for the people suffering from its policies. Vaccine mandates continue; rampant spending continues; and blank checks fly out to Ukraine with no accountability as quickly as Congress can write them. Our energy industry continues to suffer and wither. Our borders remain wide open, while American children and adults continue to die from fentanyl poisoning in record numbers.
What has been our response? Where was our fight?
Moreover, what did we even campaign on? Mitch McConnell (R-KY) refused to offer an agenda, even panning the effort by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) to do so and committing the Senate to running on an anti-Biden platform. Meanwhile, the House “leadership” play, from top to bottom, was to offer an eleventh-hour, tepid, and weak “Commitment to America,” which few people knew about, much less cared about, and which said both everything and nothing. Perhaps well-intentioned to involve rank-and-file members through “task forces,” the leadership failed to produce the kind of concrete plan and bold strategy the moment required.
Still, these unforced errors need not define us. Now, we have an opportunity to paint with bright, bold colors and lead. It’s time.
It’s time we demonstrate resolve to restore common sense to national leadership and demand that we actually change the broken ways of Washington. It’s time to get back to basics, embrace expansive federalism, and radically empower the people so that we can agree to disagree and not constantly be at each other’s throats.
First, we must restore regular order in Congress with basic rules changes. That means single-subject bills, limiting the size of bills, appropriating for balanced budgets, allowing rank-and-file members the ability to amend and time to read all legislation before voting on it (we’ve not had the ability to offer an amendment in open debate on the floor since May 2016), and, of course, ensuring that members of Congress vote in-person.
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Second, we should restore trust in Congress by restricting, in particular, members’ buying of securities and stocks. We should also consider limiting fundraising by members until they’ve at least done their basic job of passing a reasonable (10-year) balanced budget and have passed spending bills in line with that budget.
But most of all, Congress must actually do its job on issues that directly affect the people.
We must stop spending money we do not have. Period. It’s causing inflation, weakening our security, and selling out our children’s inheritance. It’s funding a federal bureaucracy that strains our differences, worsens our tensions, and erodes our God-given liberties. We can’t just promise it; we have to stop it.
We must end the politicization and weaponization of government against Americans in advance of radical woke ideology. Consider the NIH and CDC pushing lockdowns and giving immunity to giant corporations; the FBI targeting parents who question school boards or gender surgeries; the IRS looking to target people in the name of revenue. Again, all of this is fueled by rampant and reckless spending of money that we do not have.
We must restore sovereignty and the rule of law — beginning with a strong, secure border for both the well-being of Americans and the migrants who seek to come here, but, more importantly, because the rule of law matters. Open borders empower China and cartels while destabilizing our economy and the entire Western Hemisphere. We can and should stop that by demanding we turn away and detain rather than simply encounter and release.
We must end the assault on reliable American energy, both fossil fuels and nuclear power, in the irrational pursuit of unreliable energy — all of which drives up the cost of goods and services and hamstrings our national security and economic resilience.
We must restore our military to full strength, end woke governance and social engineering at the Pentagon, and unequivocally stand up to China.
We must end the meddling by government in the lives of Americans — lockdowns and mandates, and, in particular, the COVID-19 vaccine mandates causing people to lose jobs for daring to want to care for their own health.
These are the existential baseline questions that our nation must address both to be strong and to co-exist as a free people.
We must do more than merely hold oversight hearings. We must have large-scale Church Committee-style hearings to expose brazen abuses of power from NIH to FBI and everywhere in between by so many in this administration. We must not just expose that abuse of power, we must address it.
And oversight is still not enough. It is our duty to use the power of the purse boldly to force the Biden administration to the table to make changes. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 58: “The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose, the supplies requisite for the support of government …This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people.”
Right now, Republican leaders are running around whipping votes for new leadership positions. Will they use the power they have right now to hold up the December vote on the National Defense Authorization Act, to force changes to vaccine mandates? Will they demand changes at the Department of Defense to end woke indoctrination and accountability for spending in Afghanistan or Ukraine? Will they allow a long-term debt ceiling deal or a lame-duck omnibus spending bill that does not limit runaway spending, tackle the border, or unleash American energy? Will they allow a full debate of rules changes to empower rank-and-file members or continue to empower a handful of power brokers?
We must only support leaders who trust us to do our jobs as elected members of Congress, are clear about where they wish to take us, and who have demonstrated the resolve to take us there.
We cannot afford to choose leaders who will not change the way of this town, who will not stand up for the people who sent us here to change it.
Leadership is not a title; it’s an action. It’s something demonstrated and followed.
Chip Roy is a Republican representing Texas’s 21st Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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