On this date in both 2018, as well as 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published our original profile of the sitting U.S. House Representative from Pennsylvania’s 4th Congressional District, Scott Perry, who was first elected to office back in 2014 after serving six years in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. While there wasn’t really anything that Congressman Perry did to turn up on CSGOPOTD’s radar in his freshman term in Washington, D.C., in his second term in office, he has been decidedly more idiotic in the public eye.
Let’s start with his town hall from March of 2017, where when he tried arguing against EPA standards trying to stop pollution because “God pollutes, too”. No, we’re serious:
”When I was in the state house, we had a thing called the Chesapeake Bay strategy, which everybody in this room if you live in this district has to abide by. There was no law. There was no statute. This came out of the EPA, forced on the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and left some violators out. And by the way, some violators, if you believe in, if you are spiritual and you believe in God, one of the violators was God because the forests were providing a certain amount of nitrates and phosphates to the Chesapeake Bay.”
Pollution is part of God’s design, you see, so we shouldn’t do anything about it. By this logic, we also shouldn’t treat preventable diseases, but hey, let’s not give ol’ Scott anything else to use to argue against the Affordable Care Act.
Heh. No, actually, Perry’s arguments on healthcare are even dumber, and more selfish than that. In May of 2017, while the debate over the GOP’s attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a far inferior healthcare plan, the AHCA were underway, Scott Perry argued why maternity care should not be included in health insurance coverage. His reason? He was too old to have kids, and therefore, he sure as hell wasn’t paying for it:
“I don’t want maternity care. I have two children, and we’re not having anymore. I don’t want to pay for maternity care.”
An Indivisible activist pointed out that people who don’t have children or whose children are older still have to pay property taxes, which fund schools, adding that there’s a “social contract” in American society for public goods.
“Without a doubt,” Perry replied. “But there’s also personal responsibility. Some people never want to start a family. … Some people don’t want to own a Cadillac. But should we want to make everybody pay for a Cadillac?”
Babies aren’t Cadillacs, you simpleton, and comparing the two is nonsense.
Anyway, over the past few years, Scott Perry has begun spiraling into flat-out conspiracy theory nonsense, instead of just your typical conservative ideologue like most members of the House Freedom Caucus. In October 2017, in the wake of Hurricane Maria devastating Puerto Rico, he went on CNN to yell at anchor Chris Cuomo and call the reports of a massive death toll and citizens struggling to recover “fake news”. (It’s not fake, almost 5,000 people died as a result of the storm, and almost a year later, the power grid had not been fully repaired.)
By January of 2018, Rep. Perry was making guest appearances with Tucker Carlson on Fox News to try to re-write history… the Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock wasn’t a mentally ill white guy with a gun fetish gone out of control… the entire Las Vegas shooting, per Perry, was a terror attack orchestrated by ISIS. There is zero evidence outside of Scott Perry’s mouth-hole to indicate that such a statement is true, and he should be removed from his position on the Homeland Security Committee for spreading such a paranoid conspiracy theory, in our humble opinion.
With a new district map for Pennsylvania without a gerrymander set up to grant him automatic victory, Perry barely hung onto office, winning with only 51% of the vote. If you weren’t getting the feeling that he’s terrible yet, let’s take a look at his voting record:
- January 22nd, 2019: Perry cannot be arsed to bother to vote against HR 676, which would prevent Donald Trump from doing the unthinkable and walking away from our allies in NATO to appease the Russians.
- January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Perry voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history. And he definitely was enjoying it, as he trivialized government workers not getting paid as not a problem because “their pay gets caught up” when they’re over. The concept of anyone living paycheck to paycheck is a mystery to him.
- February 28th, 2019: Scott Perry votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
- March 14th, 2019: Rep. Perry votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
- April 4th, 2019: Scott Perry is one of 158 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
- June 4th, 2019: Perry votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
- July 16th, 2019: Scott Perry votes against a resolution to condemn Donald Trump for his racist statements that four people of color in Congress should “go back where they came from”.
- October 23rd, 2019: Perry is one of 41 Republicans who, while staring down the possibility of Donald Trump being impeached, stage a ridiculous publicity stunt in response by crashing a classified impeachment inquiry hearing for a “protest”.
- December 3rd, 2019: Rep. Perry is one of 71 Republicans who votes against a resolution to disallow Russia from re-entering the G7 and makes it the G8 until it leaves Ukraine.
- December 18th, 2019: Perry ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the impeachment of Donald Trump.
- May 15th, 2020: Perry votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
We’ll see if Scott Perry can hold onto his seat in Congress in 2020, but with voter turnout expected to be even higher and favor Democrats perhaps even more than 2018… he has a November match-up against Eugene DePasquale that might not go so well for him. After all, when Perry first was elected in 2012 to Pennsylvania’s 10th District, it was gerrymandered to be far more conservative than the mere +6 Republican lean it holds now. Perry barely held on in 2018, when he only won 51% of the vote… and the country seems to have only trended away from Republican philosophy in polls. The fact that at his last town hall, he admitted there is no line Donald Trump would cross that would lead him to condemn him… in the same meeting where he said he doesn’t like seeing presidents embrace dictators and complaining about former President Obama but neglecting to mention Donald Trump’s relationships with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.
In other words, it’s looking like a pretty good chance that Team Blue can snag PA-10 here in a little over three months’ time.
One Year Ago, July 28th, 2019: Scott Perry (PA)… 2019 Update
Two Years Ago, July 28th, 2018: Scott Perry (PA)… Original Profile
Three Years Ago, July 28th, 2017: Jon Keyser (CO)
Four Years Ago, July 28th, 2016: David Jolly (FL)
Five Years Ago, July 28th, 2015: Todd Courser (MI)
Six Years Ago, July 28th, 2014: Herman Cain (GA)
