Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said one his first acts if elected president would be to rescind any negotiated agreement President Obama works out on Iran’s nuclear program and said Mr. Obama has not demonstrated sufficient leadership in departments like the embattled Veterans Administration.
“I’m going to be a busy guy on day one,” Mr. Perry said Tuesday during a question-and-answer session at Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s Economic Growth Forum in Orlando. “From the time my hand goes off the Bible until you come to the inaugural balls, there’s gonna be a lot of work being done.”
“One of the first things I would do is obviously, I would rescind any agreement that this president will have made with Iran,” he said.
Mr. Perry is currently running near the back of the pack in early polling on the 2016 GOP field, but has been laying the groundwork to move past his short-lived 2012 presidential campaign. He’s scheduled to announce his 2016 intentions on Thursday.
“If it is a regulation that is a disincentive to work, they need to be done away with,” he said. “You need to bring men and women to office with you — you need to bring men and women who are committed to this concept that you can’t over-regulate, you cannot put regulations in place and change the rules in the middle of the game.
“And it really starts at the top,” he continued. “We have a Veterans Administration today that is not serving the men and women that have put themselves in harm’s way. And I will suggest to you because the president of the United States does not get up every day and say, ’What are you doing today to make sure that that agency is delivering the proper health care and the proper support to those individuals?’ “
The same thing needs to be true at the IRS and the EPA, he added.
“You need people who are dedicated and committed philosophically, that hire men and women to come in at the next levels down and at the end of the day, if you get agencies that are not dealing with these issues the way that you should, I suggest you have a reorganization and you reassign some people to some really interesting places around the country. That’s how I would deal with it,” he said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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