Texas conservative Rep. Chip Roy said he voted against the $1.2 trillion appropriations package to keep the government funded through the end of the current fiscal year because he “wanted some sense of sanity” when it came to government spending, The Hill reported.
In a March 24 interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union,” the fiscal conservative said he knew the spending package wasn’t everything he wanted, explaining that what he wanted was “sanity” in spending and “on the border.”
Roy said he also wanted “some sense of sanity” when it came to the issues the American people cared about and suggested that none of those issues were addressed in the massive spending package.
Instead, Roy said the spending package was a “doubling down” on the things that frustrated the American people.
When asked how he would have handled the appropriations package, Roy said he would have gone with the budget caps that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden agreed to last year that were passed with bipartisan support in both the House and Senate.
He said he would have preferred that the House had passed the continuing resolution that “would have triggered the caps” that “constrained spending” and “cut the bureaucracy,” so that Congress could get to work on negotiating a border security measure.
When Tapper asked if he supported Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motion to vacate the chair to oust Speaker Mike Johnson over the spending package, Roy described the motion as “palace drama” and said he was more focused on delivering for the American people.
Roy said the House should not vote on the Senate’s supplemental foreign aid package to provide funding to Ukraine and Israel until the House could agree on legislation that would ensure that the border is secured and the additional funding is paid for.
The Texas Republican reminded Tapper that he opposed the motion to oust former Speaker McCarthy, which he described as a “mistake.”
