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ICYMI: Rubio on Fox and Friends

May 6, 2020 | Press Releases

Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined Fox and Friends  to discuss America’s food supply, state bailouts, and Representative John Ratcliffe’s (R-TX) nomination to be Director of National Intelligence. See below for highlights and watch the full interview below.

On tightening of America’s food supply:
 
“Unlike other supply chain issues, this has nothing to do with anyone overseas. This has to do with how many people can you make work inside one of these processing plants — they’re all very close to each other and there’s a public health risk. So there’s been disruptions there. I know people are working hard to get that resolved. In the meantime, I guess we’ll have to go a little vegan, right?”
 
On potential bailout of state pension plans:
 
“We should not be paying for their debt. So whatever problems they had coming into this thing, this is not an opportunity to get that stuff paid off. If we’re talking about loss of revenue — they were going to generate a million dollars this year and instead they only generated half a million dollars — there is something I’m willing to talk about. And I’ll tell you why, because ultimately what you’re going to see affected is garbage pickup, police officers, firefighters, essential services. And your local governments, we are counting on them to provide a lot of these services in the front lines of some of this response, and those workers shouldn’t be the ones paying the price.
 
“I think there is a difference between bailing out states who have debt because they didn’t manage their investment funds and retirement funds, and helping them with loss of revenue so they can continue basic government operations — there’s a big difference between the two.
 
“We’re not talking about bailing out states that have debt problems, pre-existing debt problems, but if we’re talking about revenue replacements for local governments for essential services, I do think that’s a valid area of conversation because we can’t respond to this pandemic without firefighters, police officers, and all the other things that local government is responsible for.”
 
On challenges facing restaurant industry and next steps for the Paycheck Protection Program:
 
“I was with a group of restaurant owners yesterday, and they are four weeks into the eight weeks now — if you got their loans at the beginning of this deal — and there is no way they are going to be up and running. So we got to start talking about that.”
 
On Ratcliffe nomination and partisanship in the Senate:
 
“Here’s what’s funny: there are people out there being discussed as potential running mates for Joe Biden — to be one heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States — who have absolutely no experience. Some of them haven’t even won a major election yet. They lost a statewide election and somehow that propels you to being discussed as one heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States… 
 
“[Ratcliffe] is way more qualified to be the DNI than some of these people being talked about being vice president… There isn’t a human being on this planet that the Democrats would support if nominated by Donald Trump for this position, or virtually any position at this point. So you may as well nominate someone who is smart, who is hard working, and who the President trusts and will listen to. I believe John Ratcliffe will do a great job as DNI.”