Rep. Roy: GOP Fighting Came Because Need to Change 'Dysfunctional' House

Rep. Chip Roy, whose deal ultimately flipped up to 15 votes to get House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's win, said Sunday that some of the fighting between members of his party was necessary to change how the House has been "dysfunctional," and now that the deal has been reached, the push will be on to make sure that the rules changes are approved.

"Going back last to summer, we wanted rules to open this place up," the Texas Republican said on CNN's "State of the Union." "We wanted more transparency, wanted more openness, more ability to add amendments to the floor."

Further, Roy said that the lawmakers were trying to stand up for House rank-and-file members, and he was glad for the CSPAN cameras documenting the fight.

Too often, he said, "bills are cooked up with a handful of people, jammed through, put on the floor, and you have to vote yes or no. The American people are tired of that. We need to see some of the stuff we saw…it's a good thing to see the inner workings. This isn't just a shirts-and-skins, red-and-blue, two-team thing. This is history because this hasn't happened in the last hundred years. But understand why that's so. Two-party entrenchment has made it so we don't have a good back and forth to sit at the table and try to accomplish anything."

Meanwhile, Roy insisted that he has not been promised anything in connection with the deal that was reached, including being put on a specific committee.

"Does that mean I'll end up on the Rules Committee this year? Maybe, if that's what my colleagues want. We still have to go through that practice."

But still, Republicans have extracted promises from McCarthy that there will be "ideological diversity of representation on the committees," said Roy.

One of McCarthy's promises was not to raise the nation's debt ceiling without accompanying spending cuts, and although the debate on this issue is still a few months away, it's time to work on that now, said Roy.

"Let's figure out how we're going to fix this," he said. "The American people are sick of us not doing our jobs."

One part of that will be figuring out how to keep defense spending protected and how to put limits on spending, said Roy.

"We need to put limits on spending and get to the table," said Roy. "If we don't stop spending money we will never sit at the table."

But the debt issues can't be fixed if lawmakers keep pushing through $1.7 trillion omnibus bills like were passed in December without debate on the floor, said Roy.

However, he said he refused to play "what-if" games where McCarthy is concerned, including a new rule to allow one member of the majority party to call for the speaker's removal, but insisted that Americans are "tired of the status quo."

"Let's do our part to balance the budget, do our job, and put everything on the table for everybody to sit down and do the work of the American people," said Roy.