IN CASE YOU MISSED IT… Sen. Rick Scott in the Tampa Bay Times: Inflation costs Florida families $1,000 a month. Congress must cut spending to fix it

January 23, 2024

I’m Sen. Rick Scott, and here’s what we need to do to get things under control.


TAMPA, Fla. – In case you missed it, Senator Rick Scott wrote an op-ed for the Tampa Bay Times slamming the Biden administration for its reckless tax-and-spend agenda, which has caused inflation to skyrocket and is costing Florida families an extra $1000 per month. Senator Scott has a plan to get inflation under control to give families the relief they are desperately seeking, and that includes cutting the reckless spending agenda this administration continues to push on Congress and the American people.

 

In the op-edSenator Rick Scott wrote, Inflation now costs Florida families $1,069 a month more than when President Joe Biden took office, according to the congressional Joint Economic Committee Republicans’ state inflation tracker. It has erased $11,400 in buying power. America’s massive debt and reckless spending caused this, and Floridians are rightly furious that so-called leaders in Washington are fueling the problem. It’s time to be honest about why that’s happening and how we solve it.

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It now takes $117.40 to buy what $100 could when Biden was inaugurated three years ago...

 

There is a massive disconnect from Wall Street, Washington and the media, and how the American people feel. Floridians in the real world aren’t buying the Biden administration’s claims that ‘inflation is cooling.’

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The national debt is more than $34 trillion. That’s $7 trillion more than it was when Biden took office. Here’s an even more disturbing figure: In just the last year, the national debt has grown by more than $2.5 trillion. This explosion of America’s national debt is a grave threat to the stability and security of our country — and it’s not going to stop unless we force change.

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When I took office as governor in 2011, Florida was in economic turmoil. Spending was out of control. We turned Florida around by going through the budget, line by line, and figured out what wasn’t providing a good return for Florida families. When families are struggling to make ends meet, they don’t dig themselves deeper into debt. They look at their expenses, see what matters and cut spending. That’s common sense, and the federal government must do the same.

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I believe that we can fully fund the things that matter in government while getting rid of the waste that has caused the problems before us. If we truly intend to protect and preserve these programs and the core responsibilities that the federal government is charged with providing to American taxpayers, we must act.

 

This is why I’m fighting to pass my Protect Our Seniors Act to safeguard these programs from the impacts of reckless spending. I’m also working to rein in waste and require a supermajority vote of Congress for any tax or fee hikes to make sure that your government can’t easily force you to pay more to foot the bill for its spending addiction.

 

While Democrats, and plenty of folks who claim to be Republicans, will scream about what I am proposing as the greatest evil imaginable, we know that’s not true. I believe that we can fully fund the things that matter in government while getting rid of the waste that has caused these problems.

 

As someone who grew up in public housing and watched my mom struggle to put food on the table every day for our family, I am especially furious at just how much the spending in Washington hurts hardworking families in Florida and across the country.

 

This is the truth about what’s happening to our economy. I will never let your government lie about what every family is facing thanks to its failures. That’s not how I operate; I will always fight back against even those in my own party. It’s a tough fight, but I won’t stop until we have a balanced budget and fiscal reforms that make Washington work for you.”

 

Read the full op-ed in the Tampa Bay Times HERE.

 

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