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U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined The Ryan Gorman Show to discuss the importance of American manufacturing, the Democrats’ avoidance of real issues, and his efforts to counteract inflation. See below for highlights and listen to the full interview here.
On the importance of Port Tampa Bay:
“One of the biggest issues we now face in our country is supply chains, both getting stuff into the country and then our export markets. Our ports are critical to that. It’s a strategic advantage for Florida. For Tampa Bay, it’s critical. We’re blessed to have a number of really important ports.
“Port Tampa Bay in particular stands to benefit greatly from the expansion of the Panama Canal. I hope we can see more supply chains move to America, so we can be the ones sending stuff out. But if we can’t have them in America, I hope we can bring more of those supply chains to the Western Hemisphere.
“Instead of having all these factories in China, we’re probably better off if they were in Honduras, Haiti, or Guatemala, so people there would have jobs and not have to illegally immigrate to the United States. Ports are a big part of it. It’s a great advantage for Florida. We look forward to talking about the future of the port and what we can do on the cargo side there.”
On creating a strong manufacturing workforce in the United States:
“We [members of Congress] write the rules and the players play the game…. We need to write our rules so that we have more manufacturing in America. One of the key things to manufacturing is energy costs, which obviously are very high right now. But the cheaper the energy, the easier it is to build someplace.
“The second is taxes and regulation. What are we going to tax these companies at or how are we going to regulate them? Because those are costs to manufacturing….
“The third is the workforce. Are we training people to be able to do these things? Why aren’t we graduating more kids from high school ready to work? Instead of sending everyone to college to get a degree that sometimes doesn’t lead to a job. I went to college, and a lot of people go to college, but for some people, they want a job [where] you can make a lot more money.
“This is really the one that I think really has changed a lot. I think we’ve realized that international trade and commerce is great, but there are things that we have to be able to make in America. We have to be able to make them, even if it’s cheaper to make somewhere else. These are critical things for the future of our country. We have to identify what those industries are and do whatever it takes to make sure we still have that capacity either here or close by with one of our allies.”
On Democrats avoiding real issues:
“Democrats, Republicans, independents of every race, background, etc., what are they worried about? What are they talking about this morning? I can assure you it’s about inflation. It’s about gas prices. It’s about crime. It’s about the border. It’s about what schools are teaching or not teaching your kids. That’s what they’re worried about. That is what 90 percent of the people think about 95 percent of the time.
“What do we spend 90 percent of our time on here [in Washington, D.C.]? The Green New Deal or elements thereof. A voting rights crisis that doesn’t exist that they made up. Transgender rights. You name it. Everything except the things that matter to people….
“I don’t understand how you have a country where 90-something percent of the people are worried about five or six really important and bad things [and] we spend no time on those things. Then any time these [fringe] issues come up, these people [Democrats] want to have a vote on it. There’s no issue here.”
“It’s a waste of Congress’s time. I’m not going to be a part of this political charade. The reason why they do this is because there’s this two percent of America, these highly educated, affluent liberals that live in all these big cities and watch MSNBC all day. That’s what they care about. Those are the donors. Those are the activist base of the Democratic Party. Their agenda dominates the Democratic Party. Their priorities dominate the Democratic Party. I’m not going to be a part of that charade that they keep playing here.”
On Rubio’s efforts to counteract inflation and high gas prices:
“We are going to try to continue to use the Congressional Review Act to get rid of some of these regulations that banned more exploration of oil and natural gas. I’ve been a part of legislation that makes it illegal for the federal government to tell banks and others that they can’t do business with oil and gas companies.
“One of the problems we have is we have no refineries. The refineries are closed and no new ones are being built. You talk to bankers, they’re being pressured into not giving loans or even giving banking services to oil and gas companies. Who in their right mind is going to invest in an industry that’s being told by the leaders of the federal government, ‘We want to put you out of business in ten years, but will you please ramp up operations right now?’
“It’s not just oil. We don’t put oil in our car. We put gasoline in our cars. Gasoline is refined oil. We have no refineries that are being built in America. China is building a bunch of them, by the way. We have legislation that addresses [that issue] and gas prices at the core of it.
“We should never have spent that additional money that the Biden Administration pumped into our economy because you have a supply chain crisis, a supply shortage, and then you increase demand. So we hit it two ways, less supply, more demand, because of all that government money that was flushed in the economy. And they wanted to spend another two trillion on top of it. Yet we’re able to stop that. But they already did spend 1.9 trillion right before it.
“So absolutely, we work on it every day and I’m willing to do more. You just can’t get a vote on a single one of the things because they [the Democrats] are too busy dealing with issues that matter to the two percent.”