Engaging in Debate
Floor Speech
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Texas, for bringing up this subject.
Each one of us feels maybe differently. I don't know whether people know this or not, but there is actually a United States Flag Code. There is a decorum that we are supposed to follow when displaying the flag: how you wear it, if you wear it. The flag is not supposed to be festooned. The flag is not clothing.
The flag, the standard of America, the standard of freedom, and the standard of liberty recognized around the globe, is second to no other flag at all. To have it fly flanking the Pride flag on the White House--my friend said he was at a loss for words. I too am.
I communicate home every day. Just this morning, I talked to my wife. I let her know I love her. We get on with our day, and we reconnect in the evening.
This morning, I reminded my children--not thinking about what was going to happen at the White House, having no clue--but I reminded my children that tomorrow is Flag Day, make sure you get up early, get the flag, and fly the flag in the front of our House because it is important that America and my community know that their Representative respects what our country is about and its standard.
It is a new low every single day. My friend from Texas has talked about it as appropriately and as particularly as anybody can, the destruction of this country, evidenced in so many different ways. Every day you wake up, you turn on the TV, you open a newspaper, you listen to the radio, or you talk to somebody, and you say to yourself: I can't believe this is happening in America.
Every day you think we have reached the apex of the nadir, the lowest of the low. Every day the left takes us to a new place of a new low of a new disrespect of a new destruction of the country that we love.
So I am very, very proud to stand with my friend, the gentleman from Texas, to say that there is an urgency to saving and to restoring this Republic.
We always stand up speaking of the flag and pledge allegiance to the flag, and we say: ``to the Republic for which it stands.''
Most people, I would guarantee you, Mr. Speaker, don't know what a republic is. I am going to school you really quickly here: A republic is a place where the individual citizen is supreme and is sovereign, and their views, represented by the people they elect, are supreme and sovereign.
I ask you, Mr. Speaker, in a country where there is some agency-- where no one was elected and there is no accountability--that says: You are not going to be able to drive the car you choose and you are not going to be able to buy a stove to cook your family meal unless the government approves, is that a republic?
I would argue that it is not. I would argue that it is not, unfortunately.
So I am proud, I am happy, and I am gratified to stand here in the people's House with my good friend from Texas and say that I, too, understand the urgency. I too, will not accept any more. I, too, will withstand the ire of some of my colleagues here if it means defending the people at home who sent me here to defend them from the tyranny that emanates from this town, this building, and this institution by the uniparty or by the establishment or whatever you want to call them that feathers their nest with the hard-earned dollars of the people whom I represent at home who can't afford their groceries, a new house, a new car, or to send their kids to school.
I am sick of it. I'm going to do everything I can with the moments that I have every single time I have a moment so that I don't have to look back and say: I wish I would have.
I am not going to do that.
Every single moment of every day where there is fight in me and there is a fight to be had, I am going to be in it supporting those folks and defending those folks back home from Pennsylvania's 10th district and, quite honestly and quite literally, across the great United States of America.
I will stand by.
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Mr. PERRY. Well, as you know, I am in the same position as you with the bill. We never thought--look, we got together, this House, Republicans stood united, passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act. We stood united, and it was supposed to get us in the room.
We knew it wasn't going to be perfect. We always knew that. We never expected to get everything we wanted. We understand that President Biden didn't want any of it. We understand that Chuck Schumer couldn't pass any bills over there and wasn't going to agree with any of it, but we thought we would get something from it, something.
It was $1.5 trillion for a date certain, a number certain for said policy. We lost on both ends of the deal. It is $4 trillion, uncapped spending, and none of the policies. The REINS Act, to stop the unbridled regulatory state, that is not there. Work requirements that would actually save us money, not saving us money. Rescissions, where we took money and were going to send it back to the Treasury, that didn't happen. We rescinded it, but we are going to spend it. That is not saving money.
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