Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) released a video on Thursday slamming President Joe Biden’s social spending plan after the White House unveiled a new framework for a scaled-back version, reducing the Democrats’ original $3.5 trillion bill to a $1.75 trillion proposal.
“The media and pundits are going to claim that this proves that Biden is this great dealmaker, bridging the divide between the big-government socialists and huge-government socialists,” Rubio said in the video posted to YouTube and other social media platforms. “It’s going to fall on those of us who know the truth and see this plan for what it is to inform the American people. This plan is not ‘Build Back Better’ … this plan is to ‘Build Back Socialist.’”
As The Daily Wire reported on Thursday, “The new bill drops family leave, but keeps universal preschool as well as child care subsidies, expands ‘affordable housing,’ and focuses on climate change policies, and expands the social safety net.”
A press release from Rubio’s office described the revised framework as “a multi-trillion socialist spending plan.”
In the video, which is nearly eight minutes long, Rubio referenced “the Democrats’ intra-party drama” and emphasized, “The whole focus is going to be on the fake top-line number.”
“The Squad wanted $7 trillion. The Democratic budget said $3.5 trillion,” he said. “But today’s deal, whether it’s $1.5 or $1.75 or $2 trillion. It doesn’t matter. It’s still socialism. It’s still ‘Build Back Socialism.’”
“Let’s be honest about what’s going on in our country today,” Rubio continued. “Inflation is raging, prices on everything are out of control because of Democrats. They’ve already poured $2 trillion this year alone, of your money, into our economy. They’ve screwed up the supply chain, and now they want to put another $2 trillion, or whatever. It’s like pouring gasoline on a raging fire.”
“[Democrats] know that once they get these programs going, it’s going to be impossible for Congress to ever get the votes to pull them back and end them. So the true cost of this is not what they say today. It’s going to be in the trillions of dollars.”
Rubio went on to warn that if the plan passes, it would result in higher inflation, increase the national debt, and create new programs that would “codify socialism and put socialism into our law.”
“This is not a plan to fix America. This is a plan to demolish it and to rebuild it into the socialist utopia that they have fantasized about for all those years at the faculty lounges of our universities and in all these other crazy places,” he continued. “This whole thing is not a divide between liberals and conservatives. This is not a divide between Republicans or Democrats. You know what this is a divide between? Normal and crazy. Between common sense and utter lunacy. That’s what the divide is.”
WATCH:
The new Biden plan is just like the old one, #BuildBackSocialist
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) October 28, 2021
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO: So we’ve all been following the Democrats’ intra-party drama over Biden’s spending plan for America. But in the end, we’re going to hear today that they’ve got some kind of a “deal.”
Unfortunately, the media, the way they’re going to report it is not what it is.
The whole focus is going to be on the fake top-line number. The Squad wanted $7 trillion. The Democratic budget said $3.5 trillion. But today’s deal, whether it’s 1.5 or 1.75 or 2 trillion dollars. It doesn’t matter. It’s still socialism. It’s still “Build Back Socialism.”
The media and the pundits are going to claim that this proves that Biden is this great dealmaker, bridging the divide between the big-government socialists and the huge-government socialists.
So it’s going to fall on those of us who know the truth and see this plan for what it is to inform you, the American people. This plan is not “Build Back Better,” as I said, this is a plan to “Build Back Socialist.”
Let’s be honest about what’s going on in our country today: Inflation is raging. Prices on everything are out of control because Democrats. They’ve already poured $2 trillion this year alone of your money into our economy, and they’ve screwed up the supply chain. Now they want to put in another $2 trillion, or whatever. It is like pouring gasoline on to a raging fire — literally that’s what it is.It’s actually more than $2 trillion or whatever number they come up with because all they have to do to get a lower number is they just take these programs and say, “instead of 5 years, it’s going to be a 2 or 3 year program.” Because that’s a gimmick. They know that once they get these programs going, it’s going to be impossible for Congress to ever get the votes to pull them back and end them.
So the true cost of this is not what they say today. It’s going to be in the trillions of dollars. This plan, if it passes, it’s going to fuel inflation, it’s going to drive up our debt. I want everybody to understand something. It’s not just about the money. What it really is about is the programs. Because the programs codify socialism. It puts socialism into our law.
Let me give you an example. It puts the federal government in charge of Pre-K and Child Care in America. Because when you become the biggest payer of it, you control it. That’s what the government becomes. And then, once you become the biggest payer of it and you control it, now you can use it to blackmail churches and religious organizations who run Pre-K or Child Care programs. The House bill already calls for it. If you teach religion or if you decide to we’re going to follow the teachings of our faith when we hire people to work at our schools, you can’t be a part of the new federal Child Care and pre-k system that they’re setting up. It’s going to gut religious and faith-based Pre-K and Child Care programs.
About $400 billion of this apparently is for the IRS. What is that for? It is to hire, I don’t know, 87,000 IRS enforcers that are going to go through people’s bank accounts and businesses to see what you own, what you spend, what you’re worth. Actually, as of yesterday, they wanted to create a Federal Property Tax. A tax not on what you make, but on the property you own and what it’s worth. What they say it’s worth.
No matter what tax they come up with, they’re going to say it’s only for the billionaires. But once you set up a new federal tax, it starts with saying, it’s only on the billionaires, at least how they define billionaire. But then, when their spending requires more tax increases, they’ll just keep going down the income brackets. They’ll just keep going down to the multimillionaires, then the millionaires, then the people making more than $450,000, then the small business owners. They’ll just keep going down until they get enough money.
The other thing it does is it turns the Child Tax Credit into a welfare program. The Child Tax Credit is a way to help working parents by keeping more of the money they earn. Not only do I support that, I helped expand it in 2017, and I want to continue to expand that. This is not a Child Tax Credit. This is what they call a Child Tax Credit, because it’s popular, but what is really is is a $300 dollar a month per child check from the government, and it doesn’t matter whether you have a paycheck or not. You get the $300 a month.
People say that they miss the days when both parties worked together. Well, welfare reform in the 1990s was one of Congress’ last true bipartisan success stories. This plan basically destroys the last great bipartisan success story. It completely walks away from welfare reform, and it turns something popular and good, like the Child Tax Credit, into a welfare program.Another thing to look at is at a time of rising fuel prices, by the way including propane, which is about to skyrocket, okay, this plan puts a tax on American natural gas. We are blessed as a country to have access to natural gas — it’s one of the things we lead the world in — and what [Democrats] want to do now is put a new tax on it. And what that will do, not only will it decapitate and hurt our economy, it’s going to increase prices on everyone. It’s going to destroy at least 90,000 jobs.
They also created a $100 billion slush fund. Why? So that every leftist donor in America who started some Green Energy business can now go feed off your money at the trough.
Another thing that I really care a lot about, it turns Medicare into a slush fund, too. It uses it as a piggy bank. By promising to pay for more things, we’re going to provide more services. What they don’t admit … Biden said he admits, but doesn’t really care too much about it … is that it accelerates the day that Medicare goes bankrupt. It already spends more money than it takes in. Instead of strengthening Medicare, all they’re saying is, “we’re already borrowing money for Medicare, now we’ll have to borrow even more.” And it just accelerates the day of its bankruptcy without any accountability for what that means.
In the middle of a historic border crisis and illegal immigration surge — we have hundreds of thousands of people en route to the United States at different stages — in the middle of all that, they want to give amnesty to millions of people who have already entered this country illegally.
Every time this country has done any sort of immigration law changes, by Executive Order or by law, all it does is increase illegal immigration because people misinterpret it and they think, “There’s a new law, now I can come.” We already have a crisis at the border. And instead of spending money on enforcing the law, they’re actually inviting more people to come illegally.
You know what’s interesting? Joe Biden didn’t run or campaign on the agenda that he is now pushing. All these crazy ideas, he didn’t campaign on this stuff. You know why? Because the majority of Americans think this is complete and utter lunacy. This is crazy.
But, this is the agenda of the leftist base that now controls the Democratic Party. The agenda of the radicals who raise their money and knock on their doors. You want to know how they raise all that money every quarter? It’s for these crazies, and they’re the ones that control the party.These are the people who think America is a terrible country, that America is a country with a shameful history, a racist and unjust system, and all these ideas [are] what they have long waited for. This is what they always wanted, for the opportunity to ram through their deranged, left-wing socialist agenda. They don’t care if they lose the majority. They want to ram it through now because they don’t think that we’ll ever have the votes to get rid of it once it’s in place.
Guys, look, bottom line is this. This is not a plan to fix America. This is a plan to demolish it and to rebuild it into the socialist utopia that they have fantasized about for all those years at the faculty lounges of our universities and in all these other crazy places.
This whole thing is not a divide between liberals and conservatives. This is not a divide between Republicans or Democrats. You know what this is a divide between? Normal and crazy. Between common sense and utter lunacy. That’s what the divide is.If this plan becomes the law, the damage that it’s going to do to our country [is] hard to describe, impossible to exaggerate, and painful to think about.
Never, never in our lifetimes has our economy, our culture, our values, [and] our way of life faced such a grave risk from people in our own government. And if we don’t defeat this, the days of trauma and chaos that lie ahead are real.
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