‘You Don’t Have the Votes!’ Exasperated Laura Ingraham Not Sold on Chip Roy’s Reason for Voting Against Funding Bill 

Laura Ingraham mixed it up with Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) on Thursday night after the lawmaker voted against a bill to avert a government shutdown this weekend.

The House failed to pass a short-term funding bill 174-235, with 38 Republicans voting against. It required two-thirds to pass because Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) fast-tracked the bill by bypassing the House Rules Committee. Given Republicans’ small majority, it needed dozens of Democratic votes to pass. Instead, it got two.

The bill would still need to be approved by the Senate, which will remain under Democratic control until early January, thus giving Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and his conference some leverage should they choose to exercise it.

A day before, Johnson scrapped a much larger resolution that Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump opposed. On Thursday, Trump urged Republicans to vote for the new bill, which includes a provision to raise the debt ceiling, which limits the amount of debt the federal government can incur. Before the vote, the president-elect blasted Roy as an “obstructionist.”

Roy, who opposed the resolution, joined The Ingraham Angle on Fox News shortly after the vote.

“Now, Congressman, you voted against the bill,” Ingraham said. “Of course, Trump comes out for it. Musk, [JD] Vance, [Vivek] Ramaswamy, many others. But thought it was a dereliction, ultimately, of congressional duty. Explain that.”

Roy praised Musk for tanking the previous bill, which clocked in at 1,547 pages, as opposed to the 116-page one the House voted down on Thursday.

“We got a lot of wins,” he said. We got a lot of bad stuff outta there. But you can do a lot of the damage in 116 pages. And this 116 pages still continues to spend $110 billion, unpaid for. It adds that much more to the debt. Importantly, increases the debt ceiling… for two years, something on the order of $5 trillion with no structural reforms to reduce spending… We need to have structural reforms if we are going to increase the debt ceiling. I agree with the president. We need to get the debt ceiling–”

“But Congressman,” Ingraham interrupted. “I get you, but again, if the House can’t pass anything, then Schumer has all the leverage here. I’m always about what– the art of possible, what’s really possible? You’re right about this. This is a scam… The fact that it keeps happening is a complete fraud upon the American people. However, you don’t have the votes!”

She added that Republicans have played out similar shutdown scenarios in the past, but nothing substantive gets accomplished.

“Has the budget deficit gone down?” she asked. “Has the debt declined? No and no. So, right now, by defeating this, aren’t you all giving Schumer the leverage here and then perhaps even, perhaps, hurting the incoming president, who will have his hands tied if this debt ceiling, which I hate, too, is not lifted for a period of time?”

“Well, look, I certainly think we ought to be able to reach an agreement,” Roy responded. ” I spent all last night into the night and this morning meeting with my colleagues. We put together some solutions we thought would work. We believe we can move a debt ceiling increase on a reconciliation package.”

Watch above via Fox News.