This is a rush transcript from "On the Record," November 10, 2011. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: Tonight, Governor Rick Perry admits he, quote, "stepped in it."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RICK PERRY, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's three agencies of government when I get there that are gone, Commerce, Education and the - - what's the third one there? Let's see...

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) five.

PERRY: Oh, five? OK. So Commerce, Education and the...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: EPA?

PERRY: EPA, there you go. No.

(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)

JOHN HARWOOD, CNBC, MODERATOR: Seriously? Is EPA the one you were talking about or...

PERRY: No, sir. No, sir. We were talking about the agencies of government -- EPA needs to be rebuilt. There's no doubt about that.

HARWOOD: But you can't -- but you can't name the third one?

PERRY: The third agency of government I would -- I would do away with the Education, the -- I can't -- Commerce, and let's see...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my.

PERRY: I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAN SUSTEREN: Governor Rick Perry tonight trying to turn the spotlight back on the tough campaign issues of jobs, taxes and the world economic crisis. Now, we spoke with Governor Perry about it all.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VAN SUSTEREN: Governor, nice to see you, sir.

PERRY: Hey, Greta. How are you? It's good to be with you.

VAN SUSTEREN: Good. Well, I can tease you about last night, except for one thing. I've seen you answer it a million times today. Plus, I frankly -- I've had the same problem myself, so I live in a little bit of a glass house. So I'm sympathetic a little bit.

PERRY: You know, it happens. I stepped in it. I tell people, I said, Listen, I readily admit that I stepped right in the middle of it. Matter of fact, stayed in it for a while. And -- but there are a lot of people out there that -- I think, just like me. They think about an agency of government or maybe multiple agencies of government that they'd like to forget about, as well. So that was kind of what was going through my mind after my -- my tongue finally engaged my mind.

So -- but as a matter of fact, we're having a little bit of fun with it today. And you can go to my Web site, RickPerry.org, and can give us some ideas or tell us which agency of government you'd like to forget about. Matter of fact, we've already had over 2,000 hits on that site.

So you know, the seriousness of it, though, is that the debate last night had some really good things that were talked about. I had the opportunity to lay out my tax plan and my -- how to balance the budget by 2020, how to get this country growing again, so to speak, put a sign in the middle of America that says, America open for business again, and how we take that 20 percent flat tax and mortgage deduction, charitable deductions, the local taxes, get rid of cap gains, get rid of dividend taxes and take 20 percent of that and put it -- matter of fact, put it on a card this size right here.

And I'm betting even Tim Geithner can get his taxes in on time if we get this 20 percent flat tax put into place. So that's what Americans want to hear about.

VAN SUSTEREN: You know...

PERRY: They don't want to spend their time...

(CROSSTALK)

VAN SUSTEREN: I know, but you say you've bought some ideas for your website. Here's one that I might suggest to you, is that you tease the media how much more time we play -- replaying that sound bite than we do some of the substantive things last night. I fear what the results would be.

But I do have one last question on this, and then I'm going to move on. I'm curious, what did you your wife say to you first?

PERRY: Last night?

VAN SUSTEREN: Yes, after -- I'm curious.

PERRY: My wife said, "I love you" and that was...

VAN SUSTEREN: She didn't tease you? She didn't tease you?

PERRY: No, she didn't. She just said -- she said, Look, I love you. She knew better than to tease me after that, I think!

VAN SUSTEREN: All right. Anyway, OK, now, moving right along, I want to ask about some other things. Let's talk first of all what's going on in the economy. Big news in the last couple days is what's going on in Italy and the fact that it has an effect -- it has an effect all over the world. And we have felt this weird thing in the past couple days here in our economy, our market.

Now, if you were president, is there anything you would be doing right now about the economic situation in the euro zone?

PERRY: Well, the thing that you could be doing about the entire world economy, just -- not just the euro zone, is putting tax policy into place, pulling back regulations that are killing jobs in America. The entire world economy -- as a matter of fact, the safety of the world depends upon America having a strong economy.