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Senator Rubio: The REFUND Act Allows States That Refuse Federal Money To Use It Instead To Pay Down The Debt

Senator Rubio: “The REFUND Act is basically in response to a few things that we’ve seen lately, the latest was the high speed rail debate in Florida, where Florida got offered $2 billion to do something and the state of Florida turned it down, and then the money went to somebody else. And so, the argument always is it’s deficit spending, and we shouldn’t be for it, but if someone’s going to get the money, it might as well be us. Well, the REFUND Act basically says that if you turn down this money, they can’t just take it and give it to some other state. You’ve got to use it to pay down the debt. And what it does is it prevents the kinds of things that we’re seeing now, where the administration gleefully goes around bragging about how all these other states got the money instead of us, which they’re basically encouraging people to do—to take the money and to actually lobby on behalf of deficit spending. It’s very similar to what you saw with the stimulus plan as well. You had all this money available, and then the administration and supporters of the stimulus plan would taunt people like Florida and say, ‘Alright, well I know you guys are against the stimulus, but do you want the money or not, because if not, we’ll give it to somebody else.’ Our answer is that we should have the option of saying, ‘No, you can’t give it to somebody else. Take that money and use it to pay down the debt.’”