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Washington, D.C. – In the latest installment of Marco’s Constituent Mailbox video series, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) addresses the top issues concerning constituents: Russia’s interference in U.S. elections, the Senate health care bill, and offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
A downloadable broadcast quality version is available for TV stations here. A partial transcript of Rubio’s remarks is below.
“I am a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the Senate Intelligence Committee has been working on this issue in a bipartisan way. And I encourage you to look at some of the things my Democratic colleagues on the committee are saying about our work. And so I spend literally hours a week focused just on this issue in the hopes that we can create a product that is bipartisan but also thorough and fair, and puts out the facts to the American people on the fundamental questions of, did the Russians interfere in the U.S. elections? Was there collusion between the Russians and any presidential campaign? And related to all of this, what about the intelligence community, has it behaved appropriately either in identifying this or in the way they handled the information once they got it? All of these things are within our purview.
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“I assure you of this – there is no one in the United States Senate that has worked harder or taken more seriously the threat that Russia has posed to our elections and our political system in this country. And number two, I am going to go wherever the truth and the facts lead us, irrespective of party. That’s what I’ve always said. But, we need to finish our work.”
“The second obviously leading issue over the last few weeks has been the reforms to health care. So let me back up and say that the House product, I know they worked hard on it – that is not the Senate bill. The Senate is going to do its own bill. The second thing is what we are talking about here. We’re not talking about the commercial plans, because by and large, most Americans, including many of you, get your health insurance from the place where you work. This does not really impact you in terms of the premiums going down hopefully. But none of these things that we’re talking about impact people that are getting insurance from their job.
“It also doesn’t impact anyone that’s getting insurance from Medicare. Medicare is not being touched in all of this. So what we’re primarily focused on are two things – Medicaid and the individual market place. That is a small percentage of the overall population, but it’s a significant number of people, millions of people.
“So what are my goals? Number one is I want Florida to be treated fairly when it comes to Medicaid. I want to make sure we are not penalized because we didn’t expand. And I want to make sure what other funding formula there is for Medicaid treats Florida fairly but allows it to continue to operate in an innovative way so that we don’t just get more coverage for people but that we get people coverage that actually is better for their health, gets better outcomes.”
“I think the oil spill in 2010 reminded us of the impact that [offshore drilling] could have. Here’s the truth: whether we like it or not, there’s going to be offshore drilling. Maybe not right off the coast of Florida, but if there is a spill off the coast of Louisiana or off the coast of Cuba for that matter, it’s going to impact Florida. That is just a fact. And nothing we do here will be able to stop that now.
“I have filed a bill that extends the moratorium – that extends the moratorium on offshore drilling. And that’s a unanimous position basically of the entire Florida delegation. The difference between my bill and other bills is that my bill would allow Florida to participate in revenue sharing – meaning the money that is made from that drilling, even though it was not in Florida waters, Florida would be able to get some of that money. The reason why is even though we are not drilling, if there is a spill it’s not like the oil spill is going to stop at our territorial borders. It’s going to continue to move into our waters if it hits the Gulf Stream or anything else. And so are we taking on the same risk as these other states, but we’re not getting any money in return. And so this would be revenue, if it ever became available, that would be available to states like Florida even if you are not drilling. So we probably aren’t going to get as much as the other states, but to be able to get some revenue to pay for the many needs that we have in our state.”
Rubio encourages constituents to continue writing letters and sharing their concerns via his official website, rubio.senate.gov.