On this date in 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “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 year, 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 the power grid has still 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.
At a town hall in 2020, Scott Perry chillingly 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 the 2020 elections, Perry managed to win re-election with a modest 53% of the vote. If you weren’t getting the feeling that he’s terrible yet, let’s take a look at his voting record:
- 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 first 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.
- October 2nd, 2020: Scott Perry votes against a resolution is presented in the House to condemn the Qanon conspiracy theory after its followers started to make death threats against Democratic Congressman Tom Malinowski.
- December 10th, 2020: Perry signs his name to an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, begging them to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The same election that he won re-election in.
- January 6th, 2021: Scott Perry votes for the objection to the electoral college’s votes in the 2020 election, a failure to send any sort of message that he wasn’t intimidated or sympathetic to those who attacked the Capitol to attempt a violent coup.
- January 13th, 2021: Rep. Perry votes against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, because the Republican Party no longer feels like they should be accountable for anything, including failed coups that result in the deaths of both their participants and police officers.
- February 4th, 2021: Scott Perry votes to keep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments.
- February 25th, 2021: Perry votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
- March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Perry votes against HR 1, a bill created to prevent the corruption of money in politics, and protect voter access to the ballot box.
- March 3rd, 2021: Scott Perry votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
- March 10th, 2021: Perry votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he feels people deserve to die in poverty during a pandemic.
- March 17th, 2021: Rep. Perry votes 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).
- April 14th, 2021: During a hearing on Central American migration in Congress, Rep. Perry begins espousing white nationalist “replacement theory” on the floor of the House, saying, “For many Americans, what seems to be happening or what they believe right now is happening is, what appears to them is we’re replacing national-born American, native-born Americans to permanently transform the landscape of this very nation.”
- May 19th, 2021: Scott Perry votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.
- May 20th, 2021: Perry is one of 63 Republicans who vote against the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act.
- June 15th, 2021: Rep. Perry is one of twenty-one Republicans who pick a side to have rooted for in the failed coup attempt on 1/6/21 and votes against awarding Congressional gold medals to members of the Capitol Police who bravely defended members of Congress during the attack.
- July 22nd, 2021: Perry is one of 16 Republicans who vote against HR 3895, the Allies Act, which was passed without his support to raise the amount of visas offered and to expedite their issue to Afghan translators and their families to honor our promise to protect them against the Taliban after U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, thus feeling we should go back on our word and leave them to die.
We’re at the point where seeing Scott Perry cling to Donald Trump like a life preserver keeping him afloat when in reality, Trump is a lodestone tied around his neck is perplexing. Hearing him talk about “replacement theory” like he was re-reading a Tucker Carlson monologue is downright unsettling. So we’re watching intently to see what the makeup of the Pennsylvania Congressional map in 2022 will look like, especially with the state having one less seat overall when the mid-terms hit in eighteen months. Hopefully the gains Democrats are making in the suburbs continue to trend in their direction, and Perry’s fevered loyalty to Trump’s insurrection are constantly brought up between now and then.
One Year Ago, July 28th, 2020: Scott Perry (PA)… 2020 Update
Two Years Ago, July 28th, 2019: Scott Perry (PA)… 2019 Update
Three Years Ago, July 28th, 2018: Scott Perry (PA)… Original Profile
Four Years Ago, July 28th, 2017: Jon Keyser (CO)
Five Years Ago, July 28th, 2016: David Jolly (FL)
Six Years Ago, July 28th, 2015: Todd Courser (MI)
Seven Years Ago, July 28th, 2014: Herman Cain (GA)