Chip Roy spars with Fox Business host over potential shutdown

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) clashed with Fox Business host Stuart Varney over the Texas Republican’s push for spending cuts with the next government funding deadline just weeks away.

Asked by Varney if his top priority is avoiding a shutdown next month, Roy said, “I would tell you my top priority is trying to honor my commitment to the constituents that I represent.”

“And that starts with actually doing what we said we would do, which is cutting spending, reducing the size of government, making sure that we focus our defense on actually killing people and blowing stuff up, rather than becoming a social engineering experiment, and securing the border of the United States,” Roy continued.

Roy said newly elected Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) “has a lot of work to do to get appropriations bills done over the next two and a half weeks.”

Varney responded, “Reading between the lines, it sounds like you are a holdout again and that you are quite prepared to shut the government down. You are, aren’t you? Yes, you are.”

“The question here is, do you believe that we should continue to fund the United Nations that literally just stood with Hamas?” Roy shot back. “Should we continue to fund a wide open border that is endangering my constituents where people are dying from fentanyl? Should we continue to fund the World Health Organization and all of these leftist organizations and rags that have been undermining our ability to have health care freedom around the world?”

Roy said he will not “blindly saddle up and say, ‘Sure, let me write another blank check for all of America to wonder what their leaders in Washington are doing.'”

“But I do remember,” Varney replied, “Was it three, four weeks ago, the House Republicans rejected a deal that Speaker McCarthy had worked out because you said it wasn’t good enough? And we had three weeks where we didn’t have a Speaker and the Republican Party was embarrassed up and down the wazoo throughout the entire country.”

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) hammered out a last-minute deal with the support of Democrats to avoid a government shutdown at the end of September. The measure was cleared in a largely bipartisan 335-91 vote, with one Democrat and 90 Republicans — including Roy — voting against the measure.

That move by McCarthy led eight Republicans, not including Roy, to launch a successful move to oust him, citing either the national debt or broken promises. It took the GOP conference three weeks to finally rally around a replacement for McCarthy.

Roy and other budget hawks in the conference still want House Republicans to insist on spending cuts beyond what was agreed to by McCarthy and Biden as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling earlier this year.

The next government funding deadline is Nov. 17. Johnson has suggested he is open to a short-term stopgap measure to keep the government funded past that deadline, to buy time for negotiations over annual budget bills.

Varney told Roy he simply didn’t have the votes for the deep spending cuts he is demanding.

Roy said, “That’s true,” before Varney continued, “So what’s the point? Congressman, what is the point? If … you know you don’t have the votes. So you shut down the government, we’re embarrassed all over again.”

“All right, Stuart, what do you want to do?” Roy asked. “Sign up for the endless spending plan for our Democratic colleagues that’s destroying our country? If that’s what you want, then just bring Democrats on your show to continue to vomit out all of the ridiculous spending programs and my Republican colleagues who absolutely refuse to do their job and do what they said they would do.”

The Texas Republican said he is “not going to back down … not 1 inch.”

“My policy stayed the same under McCarthy and I didn’t vote to vacate him. … And I tried to move forward legislation to try to get the job done. But I’m not going to just, you know, roll over because now we have a new Speaker,” he added.

“Congressman, we admire your position and I’m glad you’re here to present it to us with a smile. We appreciate that. We really do,” Varney said, shortly before wrapping up the interview.