Democratic Congressman Bruce Braley was invited on the FOX News show “Fox & Friends” this morning to talk about his bill that would force the federal government to buy American-made U.S. flags.
“My ‘All-American Flag Act’ would simply require the U.S. government to purchase all flags with 100 percent American-made materials and manufactured here in the United States,” Braley said on the FOX News program. “Many of those flags drape the caskets of our veterans when we send them home and it’s important to me and many of my colleagues that those flags be truly representative of America by being made in America.”
According to the U.S. Commerce Department and the Census Bureau, the U.S. government is spending $3.3 million this year to import U.S. flags from China.
“The current law only requires 50 percent of the materials in flags purchased by the U.S. government to be made here in the United States and so I’m sure that’s one of the reasons why Chinese flags are being purchased is because it’s possible,” Braley said.
Braley’s father, Byard, was a World War II veteran who enlisted in the Marines when he was just 17 years old. Braley says when his father died 32 years ago, the flag that draped his coffin was American made.
“I think other veterans want to make sure that flag is representative of our country and made by American workers,” Braley told FOX News.
Braley and Congressman Peter King — a Republican from New York — have been co-sponsors of the “All-American Flag Act” for the past few years and they re-introduced it in the House earlier this month — on Flag Day. The bill hasn’t become law because it has passed the House and the Senate in previous years, but not in the same congress, plus the House and Senate versions of the bill have been slightly different.