As the primary season heats up, there’s a lot of talk about various candidates’ records -- what they’ve done in office, what it means about what they value. I wanted to give you a quick primer on Marco’s record of accomplishment and what it says about him.
First off, in office, he’s always been unabashedly conservative: At all three levels of government, from the West Miami city council to the Senate, he’s stood up for free markets, property rights, and conservative values.
In the Senate, he’s distinguished himself from some other conservative senators by achieving real legislative results, not just grandstanding. The most prominent example is the fact that he led the charge on the most successful thing Republicans have done to undermine ObamaCare: blocking the Obama Administration’s attempted bailout of insurance companies. Marco’s effort has saved taxpayers billions, and, because insurers are losing so much under the law, it may unravel entirely without the bailout. One conservative health care expert summed it up this way: Marco “has done more than pretty much anyone to actually push back against Obamacare.”
He is a highly regarded leader on foreign policy issues, and has successfully pushed through new sanctions on Hezbollah and Venezuela -- in the latter case, against strong opposition from the Obama Administration. He led the passage of the Girls Count Act, which will combat sex trafficking by using U.S. foreign-aid know how to help ensure women and girls in poor countries are registered at birth.
Marco’s record as Speaker of the Florida House was impressive, too: He balanced the budget both years without raising taxes, and earned a 100 percent rating from the Florida Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business.
And he got a lot else done: He won the speakership on a platform of 100 ideas that he gathered from talking to Floridians across the state, and dozens of them eventually became law. The victories included things like encouraging innovation in schools, moving to pay health care providers based on value provided, privatizing parts of the state’s transportation system, modernizing hurricane insurance, and more. When the Supreme Court’s infamous Kelo case massively expanded the power of governments to seize private property via eminent domain, Marco led the successful effort to curtail eminent domain power in Florida, protecting people from abuse.
That’s a whole lot of policy talk, I know -- and as Marco’s said, the most important accomplishments he has, and will have, come not from his work as a politician but as a husband and a father. That’s the most important job he’ll ever have.
But I’ll sum it up this way: No one in the Republican field has dealt a blow to ObamaCare like he has, and no one in the field has demonstrated better understanding and judgment about foreign affairs at a dangerous time for America.
If you’d like to learn more about Marco’s stance on the issues and Marco’s record of getting things done on them, check outMarcoRubio.com.
Thanks for reading, and thank you for your support,
Jonathan Slemrod
Policy Director
Marco Rubio for President