Sen. Rick Scott: McConnell Gave Schumer & Pelosi a Win

CLAY: Joined now by Florida senator Rick Scott. You just heard me talking about the $1.7 trillion bill. Senator Scott. I’m down in your state, Key West, pretty fantastic down here. Buck and I both spend a lot of time in the state of Florida. So we thank you on some level for repping us, as well as many people that are listening across the state of Florida right now. But I got to ask you right off the top, Mitch McConnell said yesterday, “the top priority for Republicans,” in his mind is giving $45 billion to Ukraine. I don’t know any Republican whose top priority right now in the country is Ukraine. Do you?

SEN. SCOTT: No. The top priority ought to be taking care of American citizens. We’ve got to get inflation under control. We’ve got to get rid of this debt. We’ve got to make sure we have a lethal military. We’ve got to make sure we get crime down. I mean, those are the things that people care about. Look, I support making sure that we can help Ukraine be able to defeat Russia with lethal weapons. But it’s not the most important thing we should be doing. And, by the way, it’s a lot of money, and in this bill… We got this bill at 1:30 yesterday morning. It’s three times the size of the Bible. They want to vote on it today. No one — there will not be one person who votes for this bill that — will know what’s in it. There’s no way. You can’t read the Bible that fast in three times the size of the Bible.

CLAY: Now, it’s a perfect example.

SEN. SCOTT: What we do know is there’s a lot of bad things.

CLAY: So, this is what’s so crazy to me. You come from the world of business, and a big part of being successful in business is negotiation — and a big part of success with negotiation is leverage. Tell me what I’m missing here when the Republicans are going to take the House in a couple of weeks. I know you’re close in the Senate at 51-49 or however you want to classify it, depending on how you define Sinema and when Manchin decides to make a switch, potentially. But why in the world would you agree to this bill right before the House comes into the hands of the Republicans? What am I missing from a negotiation strategy here? How would it not be much better for Republicans to control one half of Congress and negotiate something new next year?

SEN. SCOTT: Well, I ran against Mitch McConnell to be the leader of the Republicans in the Senate for this reason. Quit giving in, caving in to the Democrats. Why wouldn’t we want the leadership in the Republican House to negotiate this bill when you consider this is a Democrat bill?

CLAY: Yeah.

SEN. SCOTT: This is a Pelosi-Schumer bill. That’s what this is. It’s not a Kevin McCarthy bill. I mean, he didn’t have any control over it. He’s not going to vote for it. He doesn’t want us to do this. So, 7,500 earmarks, another $1.1 trillion of debt. This is going to cause more inflation. There’s no wins for us. Are there some things that we would vote for in here? Sure. But this is wins for Pelosi and Schumer. That’s who it wins for, not for the American public.

CLAY: So, why in the world is this happening? You… I presume, based on all the coverage I’m seeing — barring something crazy — a lot of senators are going to go along, Republican senators with Mitch McConnell. This is going to pass. They’re going to ram it through the House with a Democrat majority. Why in the world is this being so rushed and are Republicans so eager, so many of them, to sign on here in your mind?

SEN. SCOTT: Because it’s right before Christmas. “We got to get home! You know, there’s a storm coming in the Midwest. We got to get out of here. Don’t worry about voting. Don’t worry about reading things.” This is all orchestrated. This has been orchestrated since I’ve been up here. I’ve been up here for years. Republicans did it; Democrats are doing it. They organize this right before Christmas. “And by the way, if you don’t go along, you know, you must… You know, you’re going to make us all say a prayer up through Christmas. It’s really bad.

“And by the way, government will get shut down right at Christmas!” No, it doesn’t have to get shut down. This is all orchestrated. We should not be doing bills we’ve never read. This should not be… This was negotiated by three people. I mean, not even House Republicans were part of the negotiation in this. So, this is all orchestrated. When McConnell was majority leader, he did the same thing and they tried to cram it down our throats. “Because if you don’t go along, you’re shutting down government!”

No. All we have to do is do a continuing resolution. This should have happened. This is a budget. It’s not the way you would do a budget, but this is their budget. All right? This should have been done before September 30 when the fiscal year started, where a continuing resolution, which is stupid, I mean, it’s saying, “Oh, we’re going to just spend what we spent last year on programs. Maybe we don’t even want to keep funding them.” But why wouldn’t we do a continuing resolution until we get a new Republican House and let them pass whatever spending bill we need?

CLAY: No doubt. And, Senator Scott, what would you say? Because I think there’s a huge majority of my audience and Buck’s audience out there listening right now that is fed up with basically the representation that they’re getting from the Republican Party right now. Coming right out of a midterm where obviously things didn’t go as well as we wanted, but at least we won the House, do we have two political parties here right now when we got an acquiescence essentially to a $1.7 trillion budget? What would you say to people out there who are listening right now that are fed up with basically what they see in terms of Republican opposition against this Biden administration?

SEN. SCOTT: Well, we’ve got a Republican Party outside D.C. We need to have a Republican Party in D.C. We need to have people, when they get up here, do what they said they would do when they run. How many people go home and said, “Hey, look, elect me because I’m going to vote for things I’ve never read before?”

CLAY: (laughs) Yeah, right.

SEN. SCOTT: Nobody does that! “I’m going to vote for things that’s going to raise the debt by $1.1 trillion.” No! “I’m going to cause more inflation.” No! So, what you have to do as a voter is hold people accountable. If I do, you know, I tell people, “This is what I believe in. So, if you voted for me, this is what I plan on doing. And if I don’t do it, you should call and yell at me. So, you’ve got to hold people accountable.

CLAY: So, this passes in your mind, I’m assuming. And then basically, when is the next time that Republicans have any kind of impact on the budget in any kind of substantial way? We’re basically punting for a year, right?

SEN. SCOTT: Oh, no. They’ll do it next year. Here’s the conversation: “Oh, we’re not going to ever do this again. This has got to stop.” And guess what? Next December, we’ll be doing it again. I mean, there’s nobody… I mean, what’s the pressure point? It works. Schumer’s getting what he wants. I mean, Schumer, Pelosi won with this! We didn’t win. They won. All right? So, there was, there’s no pressure point to do this.

I mean, the next big fight is going to be when we raise the debt ceiling, and here’s what they’re going to say to us. “Oh, you have to raise the debt ceiling.” No! Let’s stop spending money and balance our budget and start paying down debt so we don’t ever have to raise the debt ceiling. I did it when I was governor. I balanced the budget every year, all right? I actually paid off a third of the state debt. They hadn’t done that. They didn’t pay off any debt in 20 years when I became governor! You can do these things. We got to just start doing it.

CLAY: Amen. Florida senator Rick Scott, Merry Christmas, appreciate you joining us.