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Marco Rubio on Families & Children

 


Answers lie with family and our faith, not politicians

In the short time I've been here in Washington, nothing has frustrated me more than false choices like the ones the President laid out tonight.

We don't have to raise taxes to avoid the President's devastating cuts to our military. Republicans have passed a plan that replaces these cuts with responsible spending reforms.

In order to balance our budget, the choice doesn't have to be either higher taxes or dramatic benefit cuts for those in need. Instead we should grow our economy so that we create new taxpayers, not new taxes, and so our government can afford to help those who truly cannot help themselves.

And the truth is every problem can't be solved by government. Many are caused by the moral breakdown in our society. And the answers to those challenges lie primarily in our families and our faiths, not our politicians.

Source: GOP Response to 2013 State of the Union Address , Feb 12, 2013

Better life means your kids accomplish what you never could

[My parents] emigrated to America with little more than the hope of a better life. My dad was a bartender. My mom was a a maid and a stock clerk at K-Mart. They never made it big. And yet they were successful. Because just a few decades removed from hopelessness, they made possible for us all the things that had been impossible for them.

Many nights I heard my father's keys jingling at the door as he came home after another 16-hour day. My Dad used to tell us: "In this country, you will be able to accomplish all the things we never could." My father stood behind a bar in the back of the room all those years, so one day I could stand behind a podium in the front of a room. That journey, from behind that bar to behind this podium, goes to the essence of the American miracle--dreams that are impossible anywhere else, come true here. We are all just a generation or two removed from someone who made our future the purpose of their lives.

Source: 2012 Republican National Convention speech , Aug 30, 2012

Better life means your kids accomplish what you never could

to accomplish all the things we never could." My father stood behind a bar in the back of the room all those years, so one day I could stand behind a podium in the front of a room. That journey, from behind that bar to behind this podium, goes to the essence of the American miracle--dreams that are impossible anywhere else, come true here. We are all just a generation or two removed from someone who made our future the purpose of their lives.
Source: 2012 Republican National Convention speech , Aug 30, 2012

Elian Gonzalez should stay in US & father should join him

In 1999, a 6 year old boy and his mother boarded a small, crowded aluminum boat with a faulty motor in the hope of escaping oppression in Cuba. The mother and ten others perished on the journey when the motor quit. The boy, Elian Gonzalez, survived and was found floating on an inner tube by 2 fishermen.

The INS placed him in the custody of relatives in Miami. Elian's father, with the support of the Castro regime, demanded his return to Cuba. Elian's Miami relatives refused. The vast majority of the Cuban exile community, including me, wanted Elian to remain in the US, and his father to join him here. The notion that he be forcibly returned to a regime his mother had given her life to rescue him from was unfathomable to us.

To most other Americans however, reuniting a motherless child with his father was obviously the right decision. The Elian Gonzalez saga polarized Miami and much of the nation. In some quarters, support for his father's custody rights took on a distinctly antiexile undertone.

Source: An American Son, by Marco Rubio, p.112-113 , Jun 19, 2012

Even single mothers see their hopes & dreams in firstborn

In a speech to the House, I told a hypothetical story of a young woman: "Today, somewhere in Florida, a young single mother will give birth to her first child. Maybe she comes from a broken home. She's probably grown up in poverty. But, today, her life has changed forever. Today, she held her firstborn child in her arms for the first time. Today, when she looked into the eyes of her child for the first time she saw all the hopes and dreams she once had for herself. And in her heart burns the hope that everything that has gone wrong with her life will go right for that child, that all the opportunities she never had, her child will."

All of my advisors had opposed using it, worried it made me sound like a Democrat. Only one person had felt strongly I should keep it in the speech: Jeanette. I wanted to remind the members we had an obligation to use our time in public office to make a positive difference in the lives of the people we served.

Source: An American Son, by Marco Rubio, p.142-143 , Jun 19, 2012

Improve state-provided services for kids with disabilities

The most difficult issue we addressed that year concerned the treatment of children with autism. The advocacy group Autism Speaks had targeted Florida as part of a national campaign to mandate insurance coverage for autism. I knew very little about the disorder before 2008, but that changed when Jeanette and I began to meet families of autistic children. We met with parents who couldn't afford the expensive early intervention their kids needed.

I impaneled a special committee charged with improving the services the state provided to children with disabilities. I made sure to appoint both Democrats and Republicans who had expressed an interest in the issue. They produced sweeping legislation that could have helped thousands of families.

The senate passed an autism-only bill. We had had to settle for helping only some of them. It wasn't good enough, but it was something.

Source: An American Son, by Marco Rubio, p.158-159 , Jun 19, 2012

Hip-hop fan; "Ignore their politics & just enjoy the music"

Rubio liked to blast hip-hop on the stereo. "He can spit!" one young staffer marveled to a friend, invoking the slang term for singing rap lyrics. A love of rap wasn't exactly what they expected from the up-and-coming voice of righteous conservatism. You know, I get in trouble when I talk about that a little bit, because maybe I shouldn't listen to that anymore, but the music is good, Rubio would later say. "[You've] just got to sometimes ignore what their politics may be and just enjoy the music."
Source: The Rise of Marco Rubio, by Manuel Rogi-Franzia, p.151 , Jun 19, 2012

No gay couples as foster parents; no social experimentation

[Rubio launched a project to] collect ideas for improving state government. The "idea raisers" were the building blocks for a book that Rubio titled "100 Innovative Ideas for Florida's Future."

In general the book steered away from hot-button social issues, but when Rubio was asked about some of them, he didn't shy away from responding. In April 2006 the state was being criticized for its inability to place foster children with families, a problem that had become so acute that some foster kids were forced to sleep in a state conference room. Rubio dismissed expanding the program to include gay couples who wanted to take in children. "Some of these kids are the most disadvantaged in the state," Rubio said. "They shouldn't be forced to be part of a social experiment."

Source: The Rise of Marco Rubio, by Manuel Rogi-Franzia, p.124-125 , Jun 19, 2012

We need a long-term commitment to Afghanistan

Rubio said he believes foreign policy should be "non-partisan as much as possible." But for a war-weary country, further American involvement anywhere can be a contentious issue. The senator said part of the problem in Afghanistan is that the U.S. has not made a long-term commitment to the country, and some Afghans fear the prospects of cooperating with allied forces if Taliban were to rule again after the coalition leaves the country.
Source: MSNBC on Rubio's speech to Brookings Institution , Apr 25, 2012

Military action should be on the table in Iran & Syria

Rubio argued for an American foreign policy that remains engaged in foreign lands, saying the U.S. should become involved in Syria, and arguing that military action may need to be taken to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

And Rubio made clear that military action should be on the table in Iran. "We should also be preparing our allies, and the world, for the reality that unfortunately, if all else fails, preventing a nuclear Iran may, tragically, require a military solution," he said.

Source: MSNBC on Rubio's speech to Brookings Institution , Apr 25, 2012

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