Chip Roy Rails Against Nancy Pelosi’s ‘Broken’ House

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) railed against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “broken” leadership, suggesting on Friday that Congress’s lower chamber continues to pass legislation with little thought or debate.

Congressman Roy led the first objection to Pelosi’s unanimous consent to a $19.1 billion disaster aid bill, which would have passed without a recorded vote if Roy had not led the fight to object to the vote. On Tuesday and Thursday this week, Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and John Rose (R-TN) subsequently asked for a recorded vote on the legislation, which did not pass because there was an insufficient number of congressmen in D.C. to pass the bill this week.

In an interview with Breitbart News, Massie railed against Pelosi’s actions, calling them “legislative malpractice.”

Roy contended in an op-ed on Friday that Pelosi could have easily passed the bill last Friday, the day after the Senate overwhelmingly passed the legislation with more than 80 votes. However, Roy said, the “speaker adjourned midday rather than ensuring members were in town to vote.”

The Texas conservative said the $19 billion disaster aid bill is “unpaid for” and would have accounted for 1.4 percent of the nation’s discretionary spending “with only 3 of the possible 435 members of Congress present in the House chamber.”

Roy asked rhetorically, “The American people were working, why wasn’t the People’s House in town to vote? The simple but sad answer is that it would have disrupted their Memorial Day recess plans.”

However, it turns out Pelosi might have had to adjourn the session early and avoid the disaster aid vote to hold fundraisers and go to other events in the past week.

On Friday, May 24, Pelosi spoke at the Humphrey-Mondale Dinner. On Tuesday, May 28, she gave the commencement address at San Francisco State University. On Thursday, May 30, Pelosi hosted a fundraiser with Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn.

Roy contended that the bill needed more debate to figure out how to spend more reasonably by offsetting the disaster aid funding and to discern if supplemental funding for border security and humanitarian relief to address the border migrant crisis should be included.

Roy said:

If we want a functional Congress, we need more debate, not less. We need more action, not less. On this disaster spending bill, we should have the opportunity to offer an amendment or otherwise offer a responsible alternative that would be paid for. We should concurrently debate and pass a border supplemental bill to address the humanitarian crisis at our border. Now that Republicans and Democrats seem to agree there is a crisis, why don’t we fund beds, judges, asylum officers, and otherwise deal with said crisis? Why not now? It’s our job.

The Texas conservative added that Washington has become “broken” because lawmakers continue to pass legislation with hurry and with little forethought.