Rubio: “Well, you know what happened is that we come into the New Year and I kind of had a chance to reflect on my first year in office.  And it is just startling to me that nothing has happened on the national debt, except a lot of bickering, but not a real serious effort. And look, I’m not saying Republicans are blameless in this. I said when I got elected that Republicans helped create this debt, but we’ve never seen anything like the last three years in terms of the growth of the debt.

“And I think what is even more startling is that the budgets that the President is proposing grow that debt even more. And so right now, the debt is about to, or has already, exceeded the size of our economy. And I want people to think about that for a moment. Our debt is larger than our economy.

“This is not a partisan thing. A year has gone by and the President hasn’t done anything. He’s ignored his own debt commission. He’s offered no plans to reform Medicare, which is the biggest driver of the debt right now, nationally. And he’s got no plans moving forward other than beating up on anybody who dares to offer any ideas.  Instead of matching their ideas, he just basically beats them up using political rhetoric.

“So, I got frustrated about it and I wrote a letter because obviously I don’t expect that he’s going to respond to my letter, although I’m sure his cronies will.  But the truth is that you can’t solve an issue of this magnitude without serious and significant executive leadership, and the President is not providing it. If it was a Republican, I’d be probably even more frustrated about it. So, we have to deal with this issue. Because just as we start to see some glimmers of hope and the economy might be turning around, nothing will bring that to an end quicker than a sovereign debt crisis, than a debt crisis like what you’re seeing in Europe today. And I think that is what we’re flirting with here if we don’t begin to do something that shows the world that we are serious about bringing the debt under control.”