Texas Republican on why he opposed funding bill: ‘I wanted some sense of sanity on spending’

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said Sunday he opposed the $1.2 trillion bipartisan spending bill last week because he wanted to see a “sense of sanity on spending.”

“I didn’t want to get everything right. I mean, I wanted to, but I knew I wouldn’t get everything I wanted. But you know what I wanted? I wanted some sense of sanity on spending, some sense of sanity on the border. Some sense of sanity on any of the issues the American people actually care about, and we got none of that,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“We got a doubling down on the very thing that the people who sent me to Washington, and I believe the vast majority of Texans and Americans are frustrated with,” he added.

Roy said last week that Republicans who back the funding bill “are the ones risking the election.” The House ultimately passed the massive funding bill in a Friday vote despite opposition from hardline conservatives.

President Biden signed the bill into law Saturday morning after the Senate approved it early that morning to prevent a government shutdown.

When asked what he would have done on this legislation, Roy said he would have stuck with the bipartisan budget caps agreement struck by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Biden last year.

“I would have stuck with the bipartisan caps that were passed on a majority basis out of the House and the Senate, I would have passed the CR that would have triggered the caps. We get a constrained spending. We would have defense flat. We would have cut the bureaucracy, and then we could have got busy trying to negotiate on border security,” Roy said.