Wednesday, during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) rejected any efforts by local governments to use a federal government coronavirus response as an avenue for a bailout for pre-existing debt.
The Florida Republican said there should be a distinction made between debts incurred from the pandemic and those from mismanagement of funds before the pandemic.
“Even as we begin to think about the next phase, which is recovery, when it comes to states and local governments, I would say this. If a local government — we should not be paying for their debt, right? So whatever problems they had coming into this thing, this is not an opportunity to get that stuff paid off. If we’re talking about loss in revenue — you know, they were going to generate a million dollars this year and instead they only generated half a million dollars, there is something I’m willing to talk about, and I’ll tell you why — because ultimately, what you’re going to see is — affected is garbage pickup, police officers, firefighters — essential services,” Rubio said.
“And your local government, we are counting on them to provide a lot of these services in the front lines of some of this response, and those workers shouldn’t be the ones paying the price,” he continued. “So I think there’s a difference between bailing out states who have debt because they didn’t manage their investment funds and some retirement funds and helping them with loss of revenue so they can continue basic government operations. There’s a big difference between the two.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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