Photo: Getty Images
Q&A of the Day – Is Marco Rubio a RINO?
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Gettr, Parler & Twitter: @brianmuddradio
iHeartRadio: Use the Talkback feature – the microphone button on our station’s page in the iHeart app.
Today’s entry: Good afternoon Mr. Mudd, I hear you every morning going after Pres. Biden about his fiscal policies causing inflation. And I agree with your analysis. But it seems to me the bite of inflation has happened under Senator Marco Rubio's stewardship as well! How many big spending bills has Sen. Rubio voted against since 2011? How many principled stands on overspending has the Senator taken over the years? I don't recall any! America is in this state not just because of bad leadership from the left, but bad leadership on the right as well. The more we give the guys with an "R" next to their name a pass for failing to lead and fight the more we are culpable of the state of affairs today. My opinion Sen. Rubio has not earned my vote, and so he will not be receiving it in November. Sen. Rubio spends five years being a Miami Mitt Romney then in an election year the PR team floods the zone on rightwing media and he wins in a landslide. Probably will again...
Bottom Line: Ever since Rubio’s original immigration reform failure in 2013, questions about whether Rubio is a RINO, or Republican in name only, have emerged. As Rubio’s up for reelection this year, the crux of your complaint seems to center on that premise – with the context being spending and specifically the impact on inflation. While it’s your business whether you think Rubio has earned your vote or not, what you have presented and the specific questions you’ve asked do have quantifiable answers. So, let's dive in. Is Rubio a fiscal RINO?
Your initial assessment was that inflation issues have resulted from fiscal decisions contributed to by Senator Rubio’s votes. Between 2011 (Rubio’s first year in the Senate) and January 2021, Republicans held control of at least one of either the House or Senate, during that time the average US inflation rate was 1.75%. That’s not only below the historic average – it's a near perfect rate of inflation according to the Federal Reserve which has a 2% inflation rate target. What’s more, the inflation rate the day Joe Biden became President, with a Democrat-controlled Congress was 1.4%. Whatever one’s view of what fiscal responsibility means (we do live in a world in which all elected Democrats aside from Senators Manchin and Sinema wanted to literally spend trillions more through the passage of the BBB last year), its demonstrable that since Rubio’s time in the Senate began, during which Republicans had at least some control over federal policy, he nor they contributed to inflation issues. He, and they as a matter of fact, contributed to slightly below average inflation which remained the case at the time Democrats seized total control last year. Respectfully, your first assessment tying Rubio and Republicans to inflation issues is demonstrably false. Again, that’s not an effort to justify any specific spending, it’s simply a factual assessment of political policy impact on inflation. That takes us to Rubio’s votes since Biden became president and the specific inflation catalyst which proved to be the American Rescue Plan which passed in March of last year.
Rubio, nor any elected Republicans supported the Democrats’ near $2 trillion American Rescue Plan. Therefore, the specific record spending inflation catalyst, lies solely at the feet of elected Democrats. Now, there was an additional spending bill which passed last year and has further contributed to inflation issues. That was the so-called “bi-partisan” Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. That bill did gain 13 Republican votes in the House and 19 in the Senate, however, Rubio wasn’t one of them. In fact, his statement was telling in the context of this conversation: I support investing in roads, bridges, broadband, and efforts to mitigate against sea level rise, and I hoped there would be a bill I could vote for. But this bill was negotiated in secret, rushed through the process without meaningful opportunities to have input, and adds a net increase of $350 billion to the national debt. I can’t vote for a bill like that. It was being used as a carrot to get the stick passed of the Build Back Socialist Plan, which would run up our debt over $2 trillion.
Rubio's votes under the Biden administration were against the inflationary policies and his words are certainly in line with the fiscal conservatism. The bottom line is that, relative to inflation, there’s no factual argument which can be advanced suggesting that Marco Rubio is a contributing factor to our inflation issues. It's just the opposite actually. It can be argued that the Republicans which did choose to vote for the Infrastructure Act last fall bear some responsibility – though none of them are from Florida.
You made a comparison between Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio. From a conservative perspective the FreedomWorks scorecard has long been used as a barometer of overall conservatism. Mitt Romney’s lifetime FreedomWorks score is 56%, which illustrates Romey’s record of a right-of-center moderate. Rubio’s lifetime voting record nets a 75% from FreedomWorks, which is the 9th highest rated score in the United States Senate. This means Rubio has been one of the ten most conservative Senators, by way of voting record, in the United States Senate. I don’t view my role as carrying water for any political candidate, but the facts are clear, and they don’t align with the perception you’ve outlined. What’s more, if fiscal conservatism is your goal, Rubio’s likely challenger in November – Val Demmings, has literally voted 100% of the time in line with Joe Biden’s positions since he became president. As always there are two sides to stories and one side to facts.