Deficit hawk and Texas Rep. Chip Roy believes the budget battle for President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is a moment of truth for the nation and demands spending cuts that “meet the moment.”
Roy joins Peter Schweizer and Eric Eggers on the latest episode of The Drill Down and provides an inside look at the righteous fight to “cut the crap out of spending.”
Roy backed Trump’s bill, yes — but only reluctantly. “It doesn’t cut as much as I would prefer,” Roy admitted, but he fought for wins like Medicaid work requirements and stripping the “Green New Scam” of $600 billion in subsidies.
Congress can — and has to — do more, Roy says; “We’re addicted to spending.”
“Congress, we’re not doing as much as I’d prefer,” Roy says. “We have a three, four, five-seat majority in the House, a three-seat majority in the Senate. And we are doing a lot of good things. We passed the Save Act to try to preserve our elections. We passed some other good bills. Now we’re passing a reconciliation package that I had to hold my nose.”
Schweizer pressed Roy on defense spending. How can we afford a 13% increase while drowning in debt? Roy’s answer was sobering. He helped carve out $150 billion in targeted cuts for military funding with the White House, while demanding the Pentagon cut DEI programs, bloated brass, and unused assets.
“The Pentagon’s got to go find the waste,” he said, urging Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Elon Musk’s DOGE team to turn bold talk into real rescissions.
Roy didn’t hold back about his own party either. “The religion is getting stronger,” he said, referring to Republican concern over deficits, “but they’re still looking at the church from outside.”
Schweizer pushed Roy on the soul of Congress — do they really care about debt? Roy’s answer: they’re waking up, but slowly and far too late.
A trillion in annual interest is unsustainable. Roy compared runaway federal spending to a parasite devouring livestock in Texas, calling it a metaphor for what Congress is doing to the budget. “Sometimes you got to three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust it down the field,” he said.
The Congressman also sounded the alarm on buried budget surprises: a stealth federal car tax on EVs and hybrids, and a provision that would block states from regulating AI for 10 years. Roy blamed powerful corporate players like Palantir.
“We should be careful about that… states should be able to regulate [AI],” Roy said.
And then there’s DOGE.
Schweizer and Roy circled back to Elon Musk’s government waste-hunting team, asking if those promised rescissions—$9.4 billion and counting—will amount to real change. Roy was cautiously hopeful but realistic.
“Historically, Congress has not done well on rescissions,” he said. Still, he praised the White House team’s work and called for more. “Cut the crap out of spending, reform Medicare and Social Security the right way… and get out of this mess.”
It was a clarion call for a righteous fight—and Peter Schweizer couldn’t have agreed more.
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