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Senator Rick Scott On Senate Democrats Holding America Hostage

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Florida Senator Rick Scott joined me this morning:

Audio:

03-24hhs-scott

Transcript:

HH: Joined now by United States Senator Rick Scott of Florida. Good morning, Senator, thank you for joining me again.

RS: So I need to go back to the, I’m out of quarantine now, I need to go back and deal with these Democrats, that they’ve clearly shown they don’t care about the Americans that are getting hurt by this. I mean, nothing they’ve done so far to say they care…

HH: Senator…Senator, let me just set the context. I have been on the air since 1990. I have broadcast through national crises like 9/11, Katrina, the 2008 financial crisis. And I broadcast through political 9.0 earthquakes like the Thomas and Kavanaugh confirmations, the deadlock in Florida in 2000, the ’16 Election. Those two tracks, crises and political meltdowns, have never intersected until today. I have never seen a political party hold America hostage like today. Never.

RS: They don’t care. This is why they should never, the Democrats should never, ever be in charge of anything, because they don’t care about the American public. They care about their liberal agenda, and they’re going to do everything they can do, they’re going to do exactly what Rahm Emanuel said. They’re not going to let a crisis go to waste. And they’re going to try to, you know, put on Americans a whole bunch of their liberal policies.

HH: Now Senator, I’m also the CEO of a small foundation, the Nixon Foundation. I’ve got employees who are working from home. I’ve got no revenue – no admissions, no events, none. I’m like every other small business in America. What the hell are you doing, America, Congress, to make up revenue, whether it’s in a loan that will be forgiven, or whether it’s…what are you going to do to make up revenue interruption? And the Democrats are talking about diversity on corporate boards? What in the hell are they thinking?

RS: So think about it. There’s two groups that we’ve got to quickly help. We’ve got to help the people that have lost their jobs. And a lot of it are the hourly workers. A lot of it are the tip workers. A lot of it are the Uber drivers, all these people. We’ve got to quickly help them. They’ve got to put food on the table. I remember what it was like for my mom when there was, if my mom was alive, I said what would she do if just went, because she never had any money, when there’s no money, just no money. What is she going to do? And we’ve got to help our small businesses that employ most of Americans. And so and they went from revenue to no revenue. And they clearly want to take care of their employees. But let’s quickly get something done here. We don’t have to break the bank. I mean, we can still be fiscally responsible. But why are we going to bail out big companies? Let’s focus on the small employers, and let’s focus on the people that, the people like might work with you that are hurting right now.

HH: And by the way, I think everyone who gets laid off this week can thank Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. If people have no hope, if they have no revenue, I heard your colleague, Susan Collins, talk about a diner in Lewiston that have never closed. They’ve closed, because we have not delivered relief.

RS: No, Hugh, the stories that I’m hearing from small businesses, you know, that they had six restaurants, they were building great businesses, and they just went to nothing. I talked, I mean, there’s so many stories of these little companies, and these people are distraught. And so, and I mean, your heart just goes out to them, because when you have no money, I mean, you’ve got kids, golly, it’s a tough life for these people right now. And then you watch the Democrats. They don’t care. We’ve got some liberal stuff we’ve got to get done here, so we’re going to hold everybody up. We don’t want to help people.

HH: Business interruption insurance is something that’s valuable for small businesses, but it does not insure against a virus.

RS: No.

HH: The government can step in as effectively a business interruption insurance agent. Is that part of the plan?

RS: Well, and the way to do it is let small businesses, I think the right way of doing it is lend money to small business. They’ll figure out how to spend the money the best way. And then make sure, we already have a robust unemployment system. If we need to expand it, expand it. When I left as governor of Florida, we had $4 billion dollars in the bank. Employees have already paid into this. And so let’s use that. We should expand it. If you lose, you know, your hours are cut, your pay was cut, we can expand it that way. We have a system, and it can operate faster than any government program. So I think we ought to be doing those things as quickly as we can.

HH: On the business side, revenue interruption is the metric that makes sense to me. If you can show me in March of April of last year you’d have $20,000 dollars a month, and this year, you’re doing nothing? Then I think we ought to loan you $40,000 dollars for those two months. That is, to me, simple and elegant.

RS: Hugh, the fastest way we can get money to them, I’ve been talking for a week and a half, is to give them a moratorium on their financial payment – their rent, their mortgages, their car payments. And give it to small, anybody impacted – small businesses, individuals. That’ll be the fastest money. It’s way faster than anything government can do. So maybe they don’t pay their credit cards for 30 or 60 days. You don’t let them off the hook, but you say we’ll postpone that. I was talking to one of the banking institutions yesterday, and they’re doing that. They’ve already done it to, they said 115,000 customers. I mean, that’s, I mean, thank God there’s some wonderful people, wonderful companies out there that are helping people like that. But we ought to do a moratorium for 30 or 60 days on financial transactions – mortgages, rents, car payments…

HH: I think that’s great, but Senator Scott, that will not help the Lewiston diner Senator Collins, I know you weren’t in the chamber yesterday. You’re out of quarantine today. Senator Collins said they’ve never been closed. I assume they own their own real estate, they own their own physical process. All they need is revenue. And revenue replacement is what everybody in the country needs revenue replacement of about, the equivalent of 8% of GDP, by my calculation. It’s a hell of a lot of spending. But it will restart the engine of the American economy right away.

RS: Well, we’ve got to figure out how to get money to small businesses quickly. But on top of that, we’ve got to figure out how we get the Coronavirus behind us. I put out a report yesterday that showed how fast it’s growing state by state. So let’s look at who’s doing what, who’s doing, who’s stopping the growth of this faster in other places, and let’s start doing what they’re doing. If you look at the state of Washington, it’s not growing as fast as New York. So what is the state of Washington that’s driving down the growth rate there versus New York? And let’s do it. More testing. And you know, we’ve go to figure out what’s working better. Are they, do they have, are they using drugs differently? What are we, what are they doing to stop this faster?

HH: Best practices, I’m going to talk to the Surgeon General next hour. I’m going to talk to him about best practices. But I want to stay with you for a legislative moment, because I’ve been trying to persuade a couple of your colleagues offline. There are trillions of dollars in retirement assets, liquidity, that people cannot get to because they are prohibitively expensive. 10% penalty if you’re not 60 and older.

RS: Yeah.

HH: And then regular income…

RS: Yeah, we should allow them to do that.

HH: Take it out at 10% flat tax.

RS: We could, yeah. We’ve got to create liquidity right now. We’ve got to get people, if it’s their money, let them spend it.

HH: Yeah, let me get this harpoon into you.

RS: I mean, this is a crisis.

HH: Just an unlimited withdrawal at a 10% flat tax. You’ll raise money, everyone will use it. We will flood the country with liquidity.

RS: Right.

HH: But Congress is the, it’s where new ideas go to die.

RS: Right. Well, because the Democrats, it’s all politics for them. They’re not focused on the American public. It’s all politics. Everything they do is about politics.

HH: Well, when do you return to the chamber, Senator?

RS: Today. So I’m done…

HH: Okay.

RS: So we’ll get a, I’ll get a briefing on what happened overnight. And we’ll hopefully get something, I mean, look, my goal is we’ve got to get something done.

HH: Do not hold back. I thought Senator Collins being shut down by Chuck Schumer was a low point in the history of the Senate. I thought Sherrod Brown insulting Tom Cotton who has carried a rifle when Sherrod Brown has only carried a briefcase for the last 40 years, was, he insulted him on the floor of the Senate. What the hell is happening to the Senate?

RS: Oh, let me tell you. It’s dysfunctional. People don’t get along. I mean, the Democrats, you know, a lot of them don’t even, they won’t even talk to me because I won’t agree to their stuff. I mean, it’s just liberal politics. They don’t, they don’t care about the public anymore. They’ve lost it.

HH: All right, talk to me a little bit about Florida, Senator. I think Ron DeSantis is doing a great job, but we obviously still have social distancing issues with some people who are using the beach. I know you were famous, along with Chris Christie for hurricane preparedness. What do we have to do to get through to these people?

RS: First off, we all have to keep talking to them. We have to talk to everybody, and we’ve got to explain. What you just did might kill your grandmother. What you did might kill a coworker. And what you just did might hurt somebody else. And so you’ve, we’ve got to be very direct at what these individuals are doing, and hold them accountable.

HH: And do you think that’s effective? Is it being effectively communicated by the President in his press conferences?

RS: Well, look, I think the President is out there talking every day about what we ought to be doing. I put out a plan of how to get, we’ve got to give people some hope. I’m very, I believe in this country. I believe we’re going to get past this. But we’ve got to give people hope. I put out a plan last week that said if we do social distancing, if we quarantine everybody that’s either tested positive or been around somebody that’s tested positive, we can get a robust testing system, we shut down the airports, shut down the borders, get people and doctors the ability to use whatever drugs have been approved by FDA, I think we’re going to get past this pretty quickly, because it has to go, it has to go through a body. It’s, the virus, if you don’t get it, you can’t give it to anybody else. So stay home if you can, but we’ve also got to keep this economy going. People cannot just go with no money.

HH: I agree. Senator Scott, good luck today. Remember, liquidity resides in those retirement accounts. Let people use them. They’d rather make up their retirement later and save their business today. Thank you, Senator.

RS: I agree.

End of interview.

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