Florida Sen. Rick Scott upset a lot of people in Washington last month when he released an 11-point Rescue America plan touching on everything from education to immigration to taxes.
As he noted in a Washington Examiner opinion article published Monday, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jamie Harrison even called it a “fascist manifesto.” Scott ably defended the contents of the plan in his piece, but last week, the Washington Examiner also sat down with Scott to find out why he introduced his plan now. The following includes excerpts from that conversation.
Washington Examiner: What was the inspiration for your Rescue America plan?
Scott: I think we have to change the country. I think we are in deep trouble. I’ve been up here for three years. I want to get something done. I have a plan for my office. I have a plan for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
When I was in business, I always wrote a plan, built a management team around that plan. And then you have investors and banks and people who want to lend you money — they want to know what you are going to do with it. And so the same thing with this.
This is what I personally believe, and I believe we have to be bold in what we are going to do. We have to tackle the issues.
I think with regard to the taxation, people believe it needs to be fair. We shouldn’t have big businesses not paying taxes. We shouldn’t have fewer and fewer people paying all the taxes. We have a whole lot of working Americans that are paying income taxes, sales tax, property tax. Our retirees that have paid a fortune in, and then we have other people that could work, but they are not. I don’t think that is right. And I think Americans agree with me.
Washington Examiner: How did you come up with the plan?
Scott: I have probably shaken hands with at least 600,000 people in my state. These are not new things I came up with. These are things I have been talking about for the last 11 years.
I answer to God, my wife, and the citizens of my state. I believe this plan is good for the citizens of my state. I told them what I was going to do when I came up. People aren’t surprised by who I am.
If you want big government, don’t vote for me. If you like critical race theory, I imagine you are not going to vote for me. I’m going to be very clear about who I am. I am not going to sugarcoat it, and I think that is what people want. I think they want someone who is going to bust their butt to try and get something done.
I don’t report to anybody up here in Washington. I was elected by the citizens of my state, so I am going to represent them.
Washington Examiner: What has surprised you about the Senate?
Scott: I’ve been up here three years, and I am still trying to figure out why some people make the decisions they make.
Like, I don’t get this postal bill. I don’t get it. Medicare is in trouble financially. We have an unfunded retiree benefit program on the postal side, and we are just going to move it over to another unfunded program, and we are going to call that reform.
We’re not even going to go through a committee. We are not even going to wait to get a CBO score where someone is going to tell us how much it is going to cost. That doesn’t make any sense to me.
And then, this week, they are going to try and cram an omnibus down our throats at the last minute, when nobody knows what is in it. And they are going to expect us to vote for it right before the government gets shut down.
Do you run a business like this?
I feel like Grant at Vicksburg. I don’t know what is going to work, but I am going to try an awful lot of stuff, and something is going to work.
