Chip Roy Brings Up Biden's Afghanistan Withdrawal In Response To Dems' Anger About War Plans Leak

3 days ago

At Monday night's House Rules Committee hearing, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) pushed back on Democrats' criticism of Republicans after the leak of war plans by top Trump Administration officials.

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Transcript

00:00I thank the chair. I thank the gentleman for appearing before the committee. We're talking

00:04about trust. And I would just ask Representative Wahlberg, I mean, I don't know if you share some

00:10of your concerns about trust. The previous administration's handling of national security

00:14when we lost 13 of our men and women in uniform in the disastrous departure from Afghanistan.

00:20But the trust in terms of leaving billions of dollars of equipment behind for our enemies to

00:24be able to use against us and documentation that demonstrates being used against us.

00:30The trust that we have in an administration that doxed U.S. Special Forces soldiers in Israel,

00:35which the Biden administration had to admit and apologize for. So if I want to hear about the

00:41trust that I have in administration, it certainly isn't the one that had us basically handing over

00:47the keys of the kingdom with respect to our enemies, with respect to China, Iran, and yes,

00:52Russia, by its foolish energy policies and putting our allies and our own nation at risk.

00:59I assume the gentleman agrees with his concerns about the previous administration's handling of

01:02national security. Certainly I do. Also getting back to the issue at hand of education.

01:10After Congress put through legislation to simplify FAFSA so that students and their

01:18families could understand what potential they had for student loans and resources,

01:25the Department of Education couldn't do that. And for three years, students went without an

01:30understanding of what they had available to them. That was part of the law already in place in the

01:36Department of Education that since 1980 has spent over $3 trillion to have worse NAEP scores come

01:43out and continue to downgrade. So if we're talking about trust, the trust isn't there.

01:48But what we're talking of here is simply saying that a professor that takes some funds, a gift,

01:57has to come under the basically same provisions as a member of Congress in what we have to report

02:02and what we receive. That's trust. That's a security issue. When we talk about $50 million

02:09or more coming from a foreign country, we ought to know about it. If the University of Michigan,

02:16I'll pick on my own, if the University of Michigan can determine what alumni or

02:23businesses are contributing to their athletic programs, I would think that the University

02:29of Michigan can determine what dollars are coming from China or North Korea or Iran or Russia.

02:38That's a simple reporting requirement. Again, if they can do it for their sports program,

02:43they can do it for this. And to be clear, this legislation garnered 31 Democrats in support of

02:48it in the last Congress. Is that correct? That's correct. And we're addressing issues, for example,

02:53that American colleges and universities have disclosed $40 billion in foreign funding since

02:571981. Is that correct? That's correct. Including $1.1 billion in foreign payments in 2021 alone.

03:04And specifically, for example, a congressional investigation of certain research universities

03:09of making clear that $40 million in unreported research contracts with the Chinese Communist

03:16Party. Is that correct? That's correct. So all we're trying to do, again, with 31 Democrats

03:20in agreement in the last Congress, is point out the extent to which we have our own enemies and

03:24our own adversaries funding our own institutions of higher education, which is undermining not

03:29only our national security, but the education of our youth. Is that correct? That's correct.

03:33So pretty straightforward piece of legislation. Chinese sources have participated in donations

03:38or contracts worth more than $426 million to U.S. universities since 2011. Does that sound about

03:43right? That sounds about right. Maybe not quite enough. Exactly. It's probably more. And we

03:48wouldn't know because there's a lot of anonymous sources that we can't track. And 117 wasn't used

03:53in the last four years. So for all of our constituents out there listening, we simply

03:58just want to know whether your taxpayer dollars or borrowed money, how that's being used to set

04:03up universities that then have foreign money coming in to have massive influence on what

04:07your children are being taught and educated, and whether that's undermining our own national

04:11security. That's what we're trying to do here. And the IP that is taken. And there should be

04:15nothing partisan about that at all. Correct? Shouldn't be. This is a bipartisan bill.

04:19Yeah. And the last point I'll make, and I'll yield back, is on the other matters,

04:23of course, they're unimportant. For the average small business owner who's having to deal with

04:26regulations and walk-in refrigerators or whatever it might be, it's really important. It's really

04:31important for a small business that wants to try to operate and not have to deal with the rubric of

04:35regulations that the administration, the previous administration, is piling on to small businesses.

04:40I mean, I introduced, I just had to introduce a piece of legislation to try to unwind the

04:45complexities around a gas can. Literally the Gas Can Freedom Act. So you can actually undo that

04:51the United States government has messed up a gas can. And you know what? The people that I worry,

04:56I see my colleagues have been kind of shaking their heads. This is unimportant. You know what

05:00it's important to? All the guys that I work with around my district who are just beside themselves

05:05frustrated that they literally can't just go buy a five dollar gas can built with gas and pour it

05:09into their freaking tractor without having to go through all the gyrations of a highly regulated

05:13device, supposedly for their safety. The American people are sick and tired of it. That's why they're

05:18backing the president. That's why they're backing an administration that's trying to undo the burden.

05:23Meanwhile, when we're spending seven trillion dollars with five trillion dollars of income

05:26coming in, with 36 trillion dollars of debt and counting, maybe, just maybe, there are some

05:32bureaucrats we can find to fire and some regulations to cut. I yield back. Thank you.

05:39I would yield to Mrs. Scanlon from Pennsylvania. Thank you and I yield a minute or two to my

05:45colleague Mr. McGovern. Just briefly, you know, maybe in your district the number one issue is

05:51gas cans or refrigerators, but in my district people are worried about social security. They're

05:56worried about Medicaid. They're worried about Medicare. They're worried about whether

06:00their kids can afford to get a college education. And all those things are under attack right now

06:05and you can deny it all you want, but this administration has made clear where it's coming

06:09from. And in terms of national security, again, let me just read this slowly so that it sinks in.

06:15The Trump administration accidentally texted me its war plans. This is according to

06:21Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic Magazine. U.S. national security leaders included me in a group

06:28chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn't think it could be real. Then the bomb

06:34started falling. So I get the gentleman from Texas. He's okay with, you know, with the

06:40administration texting their classified war plans to a reporter on an unsecured phone. Boy, that

06:47makes a lot of sense. I mean, we heard for five years about Hillary's emails. Not a peep when they

06:53put classified National Security Council war plans on an iPhone. Give me a break. Nobody's

06:59concerned about that? That's not a national security issue? I mean, we're talking about

07:04this bill that somehow all these foreign countries are going to have to infiltrate our universities

07:09to be able to figure out what's going on, you know, with our most sensitive national security

07:14issues. You know, our enemies, all they need to do is just read our text messages from the National

07:19Security Agency to get all the secrets. This is a real problem. And I would, I hope

07:28some on the other side will recognize that. But the people who are running this show, quite frankly,

07:33are not qualified. I yield to the gentleman. We don't want to eliminate the, we don't want to

07:41lose the fact that any gift that has the possibility of influencing a college is already

07:48reportable. This just brings the threshold down to zero for a list of countries that nobody knows

07:54what's on the list. So if I get a cup of coffee, that has to be reported. That makes a lot of

08:00sense. Talk about excessive bureaucracy.

Chip Roy Brings Up Biden's Afghanistan Withdrawal In Response To Dems' Anger About War Plans Leak

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