This week, the New York Times published a letter sent to their editor from Florida Senator Rick Scott (R).
In the letter, the Florida Senator slammed support for the federal government bailing out blue states, arguing that “Gov. Andrew Cuomo and liberal talking heads continue to misuse data to distract from the poor fiscal management of states like New York, Illinois and California.”
In response to the Florida Senator’s letter, Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R) shared his own thoughts on the matter during an appearance on the Hugh Hewitt Show. Rubio showed his support for the former Florida Governor's words, but he did note that the issue is more complex.
To begin with, Senator Rubio made a distinction between “two separate things,” detailing that “number one is the money you owe, liabilities you have because of mismanagement and bad decisions.” Because of that, “we should not be bailing that out.”
Second “is a sort of basic baseline of revenue that you need to pay firefighters, garbage pickup people, the sanitation department, and your building and code division, and your firefighters and police officers.” In turn, “there’s a baseline revenue there that we can’t allow to decline.”
He explained that “that system of federalism relies on local governments providing these basic services,” and “there’s a difference between funding those basic services, which they may need some help on, and extra money to help them service the debt they took on because they mismanaged their pension fund.”
The Florida Senator concluded by saying that “it would be terrible precedent to use this crisis as an opportunity to allow them to come here and get bailed out for bad decisions on the pension side.” However, he stressed that “there is a baseline of operation revenue that local and state governments need to provide essential services, and that we cannot allow to collapse.”
