Florida Sen. Marco Rubio joined the ranks of fellow Republican Senator Rick Scott, claiming the estimated 26 million unemployed people in the U.S impacted by the coronavirus pandemic don’t actually want to return to work because they make too much money.
On Wednesday, the Rubio spoke about the Paycheck Protection Program on Fox and Friends, and expressed his concerns about the program’s shortcomings, but also praised it as the “most successful part of the entire CARES Act.”
But among the senator’s concerns was the notion that unemployed people make too much money.
“A lot of people are having trouble re-hiring workers because the workers are saying to them ‘I’m making more on unemployment,’” Rubio said. “Not everybody, most people would prefer to have a job obviously, but that’s an issue we’re hearing reports about.”
Rubio’s comment came shortly after Sen. Rick Scott decried the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“If given the chance to make more on a government program than in a job, some will make the rational and reasonable decision to delay going back to work, hampering our economic recovery,” Scott tweeted in response to a Wall Street Journal article.
The former governor also wrote an op-ed for Fox News that criticized the CARES Act for not setting a limit on unemployment insurance benefits at the employee’s previous salary.
“Don’t incentivize workers to stay on government-run, taxpayer-funded programs when this crisis has ended and we need them to go back to work. That’s not complicated,” Scott wrote.
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This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2020.