Politics & Power Quote by Rick Perry

Courage is doing a lot of quiet work here. Perry frames a standard pro-business platform as a test of bravery, not ideology: cutting taxes and loosening regulations become acts of moral fiber, while anyone resisting them is implicitly timid, captive to bureaucracy, or indifferent to jobs. It’s a classic political judo move, shifting the debate from “will this help?” to “why are you afraid?”

The phrasing also tries to borrow credibility from “most people in this country,” a populist chorus that pre-emptively outvotes dissent. He isn’t arguing policy on the merits; he’s laundering it through imagined consensus. That matters because “tax burden” and “regulatory climate” are highly elastic terms. They can mean relief for small businesses and paychecks - or, depending on implementation, windfalls for the already wealthy and thinner guardrails on labor, environment, and consumer protections. By keeping the nouns broad and the verbs decisive (“cut,” “reduce,” “get”), the line promises motion without specifying trade-offs.

Contextually, this sits squarely in post-recession political theater, when “jobs” became the catch-all justification for nearly any market-friendly reform. “Get Americans working” functions as the emotional anchor: a pocket-sized pledge of dignity and stability. The subtext is that government is the drag on prosperity, not a tool for it. Perry is selling an identity - the tough executive who will “say” what needs to be said - as much as a program, betting that voters will reward certainty over detail.