Rubio hints at stalling spending package, doesn’t act
Marco Rubio on Thursday hinted at, but did not follow through on, a threat to stall passage of the massive tax and spending package, saying it’s dangerous to not include a provision that would encourage greater scrutiny of Syrian refugees.
The Florida senator and GOP presidential candidate spoke both on Fox News and during a campaign event in Muscatine, Iowa, about the need to better vet such refugees after the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.
“If they’ve got [a] sufficient number of votes at the end, they can always ram it down our throat, but I think if we can add some days to it, the way Sen. [Jeff] Sessions is talking about and maybe some others, that process of slowing it down allows more Americans to wake up to the reality of what’s in the bill and perhaps as a result demand that their elected representatives do something to make those changes on things like the Syrian refugees we’re talking about now,” Rubio said on Fox.
Rubio has been talking up his national security credentials in recent days and trying to draw a contrast between himself and fellow Sen. Ted Cruz. As part of a simmering feud between the two ascendant GOP candidates, Rubio has accused Cruz of putting America in a dangerous position by advocating curbs on government surveillance and voting against defense spending bills. But the tactic of threatening to bog down legislation is a move more often associated with Cruz.
Rubio said on Thursday that moving more deliberately on the omnibus bill would allow more Americans to make their voices heard to their representatives. “We need to know more than we’ve ever known before about the people we’re allowing into this country, particularly if they have any markers that might indicate that they could potentially be the kind of person that ISIS is recruiting,” he said.
But quickly after Rubio made his quasi-threat while out campaigning in Iowa, the Senate moved ahead without him, scheduling a vote on the tax and spending package on Friday.