Marco Rubio’s 7 Top Achievements in U.S. Senate (Rick Santorum couldn't name even one)

[HAPPY2BME]

Following Rick Santorum’s inability to name a single achievement of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) , the media sought to answer the question for themselves. Yet many reporters appear to have come up empty handed.

As The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza writes, a “major part of the problem is that Rubio doesn’t have all that many accomplishments in the Senate.”

“When Rubio is asked to name his single greatest achievement in the Senate, do you hear crickets?” tweeted the National Journal’s Ron Fournier.

Though Rick Santorum was unable to name the accomplishments of the man he just endorsed, there are indeed several accomplishments that are quite noteworthy. Below are a few of Sen. Rubio’s achievements that Rick Santorum could have identified on MSNBC this morning:

(1) The Rubio-Schumer Gang of Eight Bill

The Washington Examiner’s Byron York has described the 2013 Rubio-Schumer bill as Rubio’s “signature accomplishment.” Although Santorum seemed reluctant to mention it, Rubio’s immigration bill is probably the first accomplishment that comes to mind when anyone thinks of Rubio’s very brief career in the U.S. Senate.

Rubio’s immigration bill would have tripled the issuances of green cards, doubled the dispensation of foreign worker visas, and granted citizenship — and, thereby, welfare access and voting privileges — to illegal immigrants.

Reports ranging from the The National Review, to the Tampa Bay Times, to the Washington Post, to the New Yorkerhave all suggested that the Gang of Eight bill would have likely not passed the Senate if not for Sen. Rubio’s tireless efforts. Indeed, Rubio was the key salesman of the Obama-backed immigration agenda. As Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker reported at the time, Rubio served as “the Gang’s official ambassador to the right,” and was able to convince prominent conservatives to promote the open borders legislation.

Lizza wrote: “[Democratic Senator Bob] Menendez told me that Rubio’s role was to ‘work over the conservative universe, particularly the conservative opinion-maker universe,’ in order to ‘neutralize them’ and, in some cases, ‘proselytize them.’ Schumer said, ‘He’s the real deal.’”

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin told Lizza, “[Rubio] has been invaluable… He’s willing to go on the most conservative talk shows, television and radio, Rush Limbaugh and the rest.”

Moreover, Rubio was also able to successfully strike down all conservative amendments to the Gang of Eight’s proposal. As Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) pointed out, ““Marco and Schumer basically had a secret deal to block all amendments.”

Indeed, Rubio joined Chuck Schumer in voting down an amendment offered by Sen. Thune, which would have required the completion of a double-layer border fence. He also successfully defeated an amendment offered by Sen. Vitter, which would require the implementation of an exit-entry tracking system in order to prevent foreign nationals from illegally overstaying their visas.

(2) Obamatrade

Sen. Rubio cast the 60th and deciding vote to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. By giving President Obama fast-track powers, Rubio essentially helped to ensure the passage of not only the TPP, but all subsequent trade pacts, which are now liberated from Senate filibuster, amendment process, and constitutional treaty vote.

This represents a significant legislative victory for the young Senator, who previously endorsed TPP and described Obama’s trade deal as the “second pillar” of a President Rubio’s three-pillar foreign policy strategy.

Moreover, Rubio was also successful in promoting foreign currency manipulation by helping to vote down a provision to crack down on the illicit practice that had been proposed by Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) .

(3) Blocking Curbs to Muslim Immigration

Rubio told Sean Hannity he’d “hate” to block funding for Obama’s refugees, and suggested that curbs on Muslim migration would be unconstitutional. This pro mass-migration offensive helped give Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) the space he needed to wave in a vast new group of Muslim migrants.Rubio further lent aid and comfort to Paul Ryan by joining a large group of Senators invoting down a proposal offered by Sen. Rand Paul to curb Muslim migration. Sen. Paul’s amendment would have suspended visa issuances to more than 30 Muslim countries with active Jihadist populations.

Rubio has been one of the most ardent champions for increasing Muslim migration. The U.S. has admitted roughly 1.5 million migrants from Muslim countries since 9/11 on a permanent lifetime basis. Yet Rubio has sought to grow that number vastly. In 2015, Rubiointroduced an immigration bill which would have allowed for an unlimited increase in Muslim migration.

(4) Enabling His Corporate Backers to Replace Americans With Foreign Workers

In 2015, Florida Disney laid off scores of Marco Rubio’s constituents and replaced them with low-wage foreign workers brought in on H-1B visas. However, before terminating their American employees, Disney forced Rubio’s constituents to train their lesser-skilled foreign replacements.

If Rubio had spent his political capital in 2013 trying to reform the H-1B program, instead of massively expanding it, he could have saved these careers of these Disney workers, instead of enabling their termination by leading the charge for more foreign workers. In 2013, Rubio’s aide even told Ryan Lizza that “There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, can’t cut it. There shouldn’t be a presumption that every American worker is a star performer. There are people who just can’t get it, can’t do it, don’t want to do it. And so you can’t obviously discuss that publicly because–.”

At this point another Rubio aide jumped in, asserting, “But the same is true for the high-skilled worker,” to which the first Rubio aide replied, “Yes, and the same is true across every sector, in government, in everything.”

Shortly before the Disney workers got the axe,Rubio introduced legislation in January of 2015 to massively expand the H-1B program. Rubio’s 2015 Immigration Innovation Act would have tripled the number of H-1B visas. Interestingly, the bill was endorsed by Disney’s CEO Bob Iger via his immigration lobbying group, the Partnership for a New American Economy. According to Open Secrets, the Walt Disney Corporation is one of Rubio’s biggest financial backers, having donated more than $2 million.

Unfortunately, Rubio’s success in protecting his corporate backers’ ability to increase their bottom line has gone virtually unreported in the corporate media. This perhaps explains why so few are able to list his Senatorial achievements.

For instance, Julia Preston of the New York Times has written multiple articles about the Florida Disney’s H-1B scheme. Yet Preston fails to mention the fact that Florida Senator Rubio introduced legislation to triple the H-1B program, nor does Preston like to mention that Disney is one of Rubio’s financial backers. To demonstrate, here are several stories in which Preston writes about Rubio’s corporate backer replacing Rubio’s constituents with H-1Bs, yet makes no mention whatsoever of Rubio nor Rubio’s H-1B legislation:

Pink Slips At Disney, But First Training Foreign Replacements
In Turnabout, Disney Cancels Tech Worker Layoffs
Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded To Replace U.S. Workers With Immigrants
Disney Has No Comment On The Recent Reversal of Layoffs
Senator Seeks Inquiry Into Visa Program Used At Disney [The Senator mentioned here in Preston’s story is Florida’s Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) .

In contrast to Sen. Rubio — who provided cover to Disney’s cheap-labor practices by pushing to expand H-1Bs — Sen. Nelson joined Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to propose legislation that would reduce the number of H-1Bs and eliminate visas for low-wage jobs. Preston’s story makes no mention of Sen. Rubio nor his desire to expand H-1Bs.]

(5) Blocking Food Stamp Reform

In 2011, Marco Rubio voted against a Republican proposal which the Congressional Budget Office projected would save the U.S. government $10 billion by reining in the abuse of the food stamp program. The measure was backed by almost all Republicans and opposed by virtually all Democrats. The measure, as Sen. Jeff Sessions explained when he proposed it, would have eliminated what is known as the “categorical eligibility” for food stamps, which makes people “automatically eligible” to receive government benefits even if that household has “substantial assets.” Rubio was one of only seven Republicans to oppose the measure, but his no vote helped stall momentum for food stamp reform– which remains elusive.
Rubio’s campaign did not respond to Breitbart’s request for explanation as to why Rubio voted against the 2011 food stamp reform.

(6) Benghazi

As George Will pointed out, Sen. Rubio gave his “enthusiastic support of the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton intervention in Libya.” Indeed, as the Washington Examiner wrote at the time in a piece entitled “Rubio takes the lead to support Obama’s war in Libya.”

“Rubio proposes that the Senate authorize the president’s use of force in Libya, and that the authorization state that the aim of the use of force should be the removal of the Qaddafi regime,” the piece said.

George Will notes that “Rubio supported this third adventure in regime change in the Muslim world since 9/11, perhaps on the principle that practice makes perfect.”

The destabilization and chaos that resulted from the overthrow of Qaddafi not only provided an operating ground for ISIS, but also provided the conditions that led to the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi.

(7) Worst Attendance Record

Reports note that Sen. Rubio has amassed one of the worst attendance records in the Senate, which is quite an achievement. The Washington Post writes, “Since the beginning of the year, Marco Rubio has cast votes about two-thirds of the time he could have — the worst attendance of any senator seeking a presidential nomination.” The Sun Sentineleditorial board noted, “Rubio has missed more votes than any other senator this year. His seat is regularly empty for floor votes, committee meetings and intelligence briefings. He says he’s MIA from his J-O-B because he finds it frustrating and wants to be president, instead… But two other candidates — Sens. Rand Paul and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — have missed only 10 Senate votes during their campaigns for the White House. You, on the other hand, have missed 59, according to a tally by Politico.”By contrast, Iowa’s Sen. Chuck Grassley set the record for the “longest temporal stretch of perfect attendance in senatorial history,” as Roll Call reported earlier this month. Roll Call notes that the Senator has “not missed a recorded vote in 22 years, six months and six days.”
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Given the media’s reluctance to report on the young Senator’s achievements, it is perhaps understandable why Santorum was unable to identify any of Rubio’s achievements when put on the spot.

Although the media seems loath to report it, Sen. Rubio has been one of the most ardent and successful champions of the donor-class’s open borders trade and immigration agenda. While other establishment Republicans such as Jeb Bush, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) , or Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have been unsuccessful in promoting the donor-class’s priorities, Rubio has repeatedly demonstrated his adept ability to deliver for his donors — evidenced by his ability to win praise from prominent conservatives like Rush Limbaugh even as he pushes policies that Limbaugh and others have warned would wipe out conservatism.This perhaps explains why Rubio’s campaign has been enthusiastically embraced by some of the most powerful mass migration advocates, like Paul Singer and Larry Ellison.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/02/04/marco-rubios-7-top-achievements-u-s-senate/

[Fishrrman]

Thanks for posting this piece, which I saw earlier today.

Don't think we'll be hearing much from the pro-Rubio folks in this thread...  ;)

[HAPPY2BME]

Thanks for posting this piece, which I saw earlier today.

Don't think we'll be hearing much from the pro-Rubio folks in this thread...  ;)

===================================

A man is known by the company he keeps ..

The Ugly Truth About Marco Rubio And His Gang-of-Eight Amnesty Bill

To truly understand why so many people are angry at Marco Rubio about his Gang-of-Eight amnesty bill, you have to go all the way back to his race against Charlie Crist.

Rubio was a Jeb Bush acolyte who embraced the Tea Party and ran for senator in Florida against Charlie Crist. Crist was the popular sitting governor in the state and Rubio was thought to be a huge underdog. However, the grassroots embraced Rubio. Just to give you an example, very early on I organized a coalition that endorsed Rubio and encouraged people not to give money to the NRSC over its endorsement of Crist. I even called for NRSC chairman John Cornyn to RESIGN over his decision to get involved in the race on Crist’s behalf.

Back then, Rubio was talking very tough on immigration by necessity. Although Rubio is significantly more conservative than Crist, the conservative base would have never rallied to his side if he had supported amnesty; he would have lost in a landslide. In other words, Rubio’s anti-amnesty position was one of the central promises of his campaign. In fact, Rubio slammed Charlie Crist for being pro-amnesty and very specifically said he opposed giving illegal aliens citizenship. Back then, Marco Rubio sounded like Jeff Sessions on immigration,

I am strongly against amnesty. The most important thing we need to do is enforce our existing laws. We have existing immigration laws that are not being adequately enforced. Nothing will make it harder to enforce the existing laws, if you reward people who broke them. It demoralizes people who are going through the legal process, it’s a very clear signal of why go through the legal process, if you can accomplish the same thing if you go through the illegal process. And number two, it demoralizes the people enforcing the laws. I am not, and I will never support any effort to grant blanket legalization/amnesty to folks who have entered, stayed in this country illegally.

Unfortunately, even though Marco Rubio is only in the Senate today because he claimed to be in favor of securing the border and stopping amnesty, his position shifted 180 degrees and he became the front man for the Gang-of-Eight amnesty bill.

In a competitive primary, people understandably tend to take what pundits say about candidates with a grain of sand; so instead of my telling you how unimaginably bad this bill was, let me show you what other people said about the bill back in 2013.

Creating more than 30 million new immigrants, including 11 million former illegals, and supplanting their numbers with another 20-odd million guest workers is from a sociological and demographic point of view quite radical: 30 million is roughly a tenth of the current population of the United States. How we handle immigration is of fundamental importance to questions ranging from national security to economic growth to the character of our nation itself. That we cannot get a couple of small-time performance benchmarks written into the bill suggests that this issue is not being treated with the intelligence and the prudence it deserves. — The Editors at National Review

Instead of cracking down on the Administration’s abuse of power, S. 744 places unprecedented new restrictions on interior enforcement–making the current situation much worse and much more hazardous. It is as if S. 744 were explicitly written to handcuff law enforcement officials–binding their hands while giving virtually unchecked authority to executive branch officials to prevent future removals, including removals of criminal aliens. — ICE Council president Chris Crane

Almost every requirement in this bill can be waived by Janet Napolitano: for instance, the time limits on when people can be legalized, the requirements on criminal activity or even the enforcement triggers. Those basically don’t mean anything if any of them is held up in court, still. …The litigation over the 1986 bill didn’t end until just a few years ago. The ACLU has been quite clear that it intends to sue to stop mandatory e-verify and probably sue to stop a bunch of other things. If, for instance, mandatory use of electronic verification is still in the courts 10 years after the bill passes, it’s entirely possible the Secretary of Homeland Security can just give everybody Green Cards on her own – and there are hundreds of other examples of that kind of discretion. It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that this 1,000 page bill after all of the amendments could be boiled down to, “We trust you, Obama; just do the right thing.” — Mark Krikorian

Okay. So what does that mean, republic is at stake? This is ball game. I remember people saying that about Obamacare. Now they’re saying it about immigration reform. And they’re both right. In the case of immigration reform, it effectively wipes out the Republican Party. — Rush Limbaugh

Now, I can’t quite agree with Rush there. Marco Rubio’s Gang-of-Eight bill wouldn’t have wiped out the Republican Party; it would have just insured that no Republican to the Right of Arlen Specter would ever be elected as President again after it demographically flooded conservatism out of existence in America.

Getting beyond the Gang-of-Eight bill, as late as June of this year, Marco Rubio was openly saying that he wanted to make illegal aliens citizens. However, today he tries to muddy the waters about the subject by merely saying he thinks illegal aliens should eventually be able to get green cards. Of course, people who have green cards are allowed to apply for citizenship; so it’s the same difference over the long haul.

Rubio also now claims to oppose his own Gang-of-Eight immigration plan. During the last debate, he said, “Here's what we learned in 2013: The American people don't trust the federal government to enforce our immigration laws, and we will not be able to do anything on immigration until we first prove to the American people that illegal immigration is under control.”

The funny thing about that is it’s very similar to what John McCain said back in 2008 when, like Rubio, he was running for President after his comprehensive immigration bill failed.

As the recent immigration debate demonstrated, Americans have little trust that their government will honor a pledge to do the things necessary to make our border secure. As president, I will honor that pledge by securing the border, thus strengthening our national security. …Once we achieve border security, we must ensure that we approach our remaining immigration challenges with constructive dialogue and solutions that reflect a compassionate approach and the needs of our economy.

Of course, that’s what “straight talk” John McCain said when he was trying to win an election. However, when the Gang-of-Eight bill rolled around, the Republicans involved were Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio AND John McCain. Furthermore, you cannot forget that many of Rubio’s establishment backers are behind him specifically because they are expecting him to break his word again and back an immigration plan similar to the Gang-of-Eight bill.

That’s all worth keeping in mind because Marco Rubio wants to be President and he’s promising to get tough on illegal immigration. If he’s telling the truth, he might be a decent candidate. If Rubio’s lying, it doesn’t really make much of a difference over the long haul whether you elect him or Hillary because his immigration policies would permanently cement liberals in power without securing the border or doing anything of significance to stop illegal immigration.

Put another way, if Marco Rubio becomes the President of the United States, the future of our republic depends on Rubio telling the truth this time after he already lied about the same thing to people who walked over broken glass to get him elected.

So now, are you ready to walk over broken glass to get Marco Rubio elected? Choose wisely because if Rubio becomes President and he’s lying about immigration again, it will be the end of the road for conservatism in America.

http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2015/12/19/the-ugly-truth-about-marco-rubio-and-his-gangofeight-amnesty-bill-n2095418/page/full

[Formerly Once-Ler]

Unadulterated hogwash.  I don't have time to correct all the misinformation here so I'll just pick TPP.  Only 4 Republicans joined almost all the rats and voted "no" on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.  One was arch conservative Susan Collins.  Rubio was one of 60 Senators who approved it.  Calling Rubio the deciding vote is moronic propaganda that only the dimmest of intellects could fall for.