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Rubio Calls Out Trump, But Skips 60 Percent of Foreign Policy Hearings
Monday, February 22, 2016 04:24 PM
By: Joe Schaeffer
Sen. Marco Rubio on Sunday challenged GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump to "step up and outline his foreign policy vision," but a review shows the Florida senator has skipped a whopping 60 percent of congressional hearings on the issue.
"It can't be that he relies on experts he won't name," Rubio said of Trump on Fox News's "Fox and Friends." "I mean, presidents have to know on day one about the difficult issues that confront this country on the global stage. And presidents have to be uniters.”
Yet a review last week by Alex Leary of the Tampa Bay Times shows Rubio "has missed 60 percent of Foreign Relations hearings since joining the Senate despite making his committee experience a centerpiece of his qualifications for president."
And that's not the whole picture.
"A new, sweeping review of all committees Rubio has sat on since taking office in 2011 paints a bleak picture of participation in the day-to-day responsibilities of the job," Leary wrote Thursday.
"Rubio is on the Foreign Relations, Intelligence, Commerce and Small Business and Entrepreneurship committees. The Florida Republican has missed 68 percent of hearings, or 407 of 598 for which records were available.
"His skipped 80 percent of Commerce hearings and 85 percent of those held by Small Business, records show."
Leary writes of the review that:
"The figures are through November 2015, and Rubio's absenteeism has only worsened as he has hit the campaign trail full-time. He already has the worst missed-vote record of any current senator."
