Senator Marco Rubio, Fox News' "Fox & Friends"

Senator Rubio: The President’s Speech Set Us Back…

Senator Rubio: “Well, first of all, the President's plan is not a debt reduction plan. The President is basically saying he thinks instead of raising the debt over the next ten years by $12 trillion, we should only raise the debt by $8 trillion, so that's the first thing I would tell you. The other two things we learned from his speech is that everything that's wrong in America is George Bush’s fault, according to Barack Obama, and that the problem in our country is that people aren't paying enough in taxes. But the speech was not a real serious public policy effort. I actually think that it sets us back in terms of solving the problems that we're facing here in this country.”

Senator Rubio: Budget Deal Takes Us In The Wrong Direction…

Fox News’ Peter Johnson: “Will you vote against the budget deal?”

Senator Rubio: “Yeah. I think it takes us in the wrong direction and I’ll tell you why. I've only been here four months now, but that's just long enough to realize how deep this problem is. I don't know what's wrong with people around here, but this thing’s not going to solve itself. This is getting worse every day and we're running out of time. We're either going to solve this problem or we're not, and right now, we aren't doing anything to solve this problem. This budget deal that was cut doesn't help solve the problem.”

Senator Rubio: I Will Vote To Defund Planned Parenthood…

Senator Rubio: “First of all, no program can be untouched. This notion by some of my colleagues here that this program can't be touched and somehow it can’t be on the table is absurd. I don't care what they do. There’s no program in our budget that should be off the table in terms of looking at it and understanding whether it's justified or not. Second of all, we simply can't afford to continue fund things like this. We are adding $12 trillion to our debt over the next ten years. That's outrageous. I'm going to vote to defund it. Third, I have problems with what Planned Parenthood does and ultimately what the aim of their organization is. And it's not their stated aims, it's what they actually do.”

Dear Member of Congress:

On behalf of the 362,000 members of the National Taxpayers Union (NTU), I urge you to support legislative efforts that would require the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to rescind money from certain unobligated balances of discretionary appropriations. The “Decrease Spending Now Act,” introduced as H.R. 1111 by Representative Price (R-GA) and as S. 726 by Senator Rubio (R-FL), is commonsense legislation that allows us to apply unused taxpayer dollars to pay down our deficit.

Nearly every federal department ends each year with billions of dollars in unobligated funding. This is money that Congress has appropriated to agencies but has gone unspent, often for years at a time. A recent report by the OMB found $703 billion in unobligated federal money gathering dust in department coffers waiting to be spent. Research conducted by Senator Tom Coburn’s office estimates that more than $82 billion of these funds are between six and 20 years old.

Needless to say, at a time of record deficits, the very existence of a glorified “slush fund” amounting to $703 billion is simply unacceptable. Despite the enormous unspent balances, year-after-year Congress has borrowed billions more dollars to increase funding levels for programs. It is a sad indictment of Washington’s budgeting habits that Congress has been appropriating money far faster than even our voracious bureaucracy can spend it. At a time when many families are watching every penny of their own finances, such gross mismanagement of taxpayer dollars must stop.

Both parties are now locked in heated debate over the size and substance of reductions in government expenditures. Even the modest cuts being proposed, which make a nearly imperceptible dent in the budget deficit, are being unjustly impugned as harmful to core government functions. Even at this decisive moment in politics, Washington should be able to agree that using unspent federal funds for deficit reduction is far wiser than forcing taxpayers to pay for unneeded departmental funding increases or continuing to add to our $14 trillion debt. It is therefore encouraging that 81 Senators, including 34 Democrats, are already on record as having supported a similar proposal as part of S. 223, the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization bill. Accordingly, we hope your colleagues maintain their backing of this commonsense legislation and make passage of these proposals a priority.

Sincerely,

Brandon Greife
Federal Government Affairs Manager

PDF of letter can be found here.