STOP THE PRESSES! Marco Rubio Just Blamed The GOP For Obstructing President Obama

Who knew Marco Rubio had a spine? He has never proven to have one in the past, and yet there he was on the floor of the Senate yesterday criticizing his fellow Republicans for standing in the way of an initiative from President Obama for funding to fight the Zika virus. The President asked Congress to allocate $1.9 billion to fight the virus. But the House of Representatives only agreed to give him $622 million. This led Rubio to say:

“I support fully funding the requests made, people say the president’s request. Fine, it came from the White House. But it’s really the scientists’ requests, the doctors’ requests, the public health sector’s requests for how to address this issue.”

No doubt part of Rubio’s concern is based on the fact that he represents Florida, which has a huge mosquito problem, and mosquitos are carriers of Zika. Rubio also commented:

“Why take the chance that at some point this summer we could have a significant and serious outbreak in the United States of America, and everybody here is going to be back in their home state doing their campaign stuff or whatever you’re doing this summer, and you’re going to have to come back here and either deal with it and explain to people why, when doctors and medical experts were warning us that this was a significant risk, we decided to lowball it.”

Why? Because that’s what Republicans do: They obstruct and stand in the way no matter the crisis.

Finally, Rubio took on the House with this salvo:

“Why are we taking this chance? It makes absolutely no sense. I would also say that while I am happy that today, hopefully, the Senate is about to take action on this issue, I’m concerned about what I hear coming from the House…their funding measure isn’t even $1.1 billion. It’s $622 million. Quite frankly, that’s just not going to cut it.”

At the end of the day, the Senate passed a bill to spend $1.1 billion on the Zika virus. But no doubt you’ll see them revert back to form the next time proposed legislation from the President comes their way.

Featured Image Via Flickr available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License