Florida Sen. Rick Scott says it’s ‘unfair’ that poor people don’t pay income tax

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, U.S. Sen. Rick Scott denounced “Democratic talking points” from questioner John Roberts about the Senator’s controversial 11-point plan to “rescue America”

But whether he repudiated said talking points is an open question, as Scott did not say no to some of the plan’s more extreme proposals, including a call for everyone to pay federal income tax.

Roberts presented quotes from the plan itself saying that everyone should have some “skin in the game” and pay federal income taxes. Scott defended the idea that everyone needs to pay something, even if it’s only a “dollar.”

“Here’s what’s unfair: We have people that don’t, that couldn’t go to work and have figured out how to have government pay their way. That’s not right! They ought to have some skin in the game. I don’t care if it’s a dollar. We ought to all be in this together.”

The discussion of proposed sunsets of Social Security and Medicare was also spicy.

“Here’s this thing about reality,” Scott said as Roberts talked over him to lead off the line of questioning on the topic.

“Also in the plan it says we ought to every year talk about how we’re going to fix Medicare and Social Security. Here’s what’s happening: No one that I know of wants to sunset Medicare and Social Security. But what we’re doing is we don’t even talk about it. Medicare goes bankrupt in four years. Social Security goes bankrupt in 12 years. I think we ought to figure out how we preserve those programs,” Scott said.

Of course, it’s not just Democrats dissing the Scott plan: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell denounced it during a press conference at the Capitol where Scott was present, saying it would not be part of the Republican agenda.

Asked about that, Scott was coy, offering non-responsive critiques of the “woke left” and the need to “have a plan.”

This article first appeared at Florida Politics.