“The reality of it is that years and years of spending money we didn’t have has brought us to an unsustainable point,” Marco Rubio says.
In a podcast for Paul Ryan’s Prosperity Caucus, House Budget Committee chairman Ryan and Florida senator Rubio discuss what’s really behind this debt-ceiling debate.
“Everybody thinks it’s the debt limit is the problem. . . . That’s the least of our problems,” Rubio says to Ryan. The problem is “the debt and that we don’t have a credible plan in place to address it.”
“We’re facing the real-world consequences that only a few years ago people used to chuckle at and thought it was some kind of ideological argument,” Rubio continues. It’s not an “academic, intellectual, ideological debate,” he says, it’s a “mathematical” one.
Rubio reminds listeners that the president wanted a clean up-or-down vote on the debt ceiling. The president of the United States wanted to avoid the hard issues of responsible stewardship.
During the podcast, Ryan praises Rubio for being honest with Florida, a demographically older state (where Ryan’s mom lives), about the need for entitlement reform.
It’s hard not to listen to the Ryan-Rubio exchange — and watch Rubio on the Senate floor this weekend in what has become a YouTube hit — and not see a credible ticket. One or the other might reconsider their plans for this coming year.
As Rubio says during the exchange “The time is almost up” on our unsustainable ways. We may not have the luxury of letting you wait for another presidential cycle.
And it appears Patricia Heaton might second the emotion. The pro-life, right-leaning actress from Everybody Loves Raymond tweeted this weekend: “I heart Marco Rubio. That is all.”
The Ryan-Rubio conversation is an exchange worth listening to. They capture the passion, anger, and fears of the moment with a sense of responsibility and an understanding of political realities (“elections matter,” Rubio reminds us).