Absentee Senator Marco Rubio Can't Deliver For Florida On Zika Funding

“We’re not going to fix America with senators.” That’s Marco Rubio back in January, complaining that he can’t get anything done in the Senate — which he reportedly “hates.”

7 months later, Marco Rubio’s fulfilling his own self-perception as an incompetent, absentee senator who can’t deliver for Floridians.

Rubio’s for months gone through the motions of asking congressional Republicans to approve funding to address the Zika virus. So far, they haven’t listened to him.

Late last week, the number of Zika cases in Florida had swelled to 383. Now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared a “travel warning” for a Miami neighborhood where 14 cases of Zika “caused by local mosquitoes” have emerged to-date — ten new cases identified since last Friday.

It’s unconscionable to think that Marco Rubio is unable to deliver for the Florida voters who elected him — that pregnant women in Rubio’s home city have been determined unsafe in their own neighborhood.

Sadly, Rubio’s trend of inefficacy is nothing new. Over his six years in the Senate, he’s missed 68% of all committee hearings. And Rubio hasn’t gotten better over time: between October 2015 and March 2016, he managed to skip 87% of his Intelligence Committee meetings.

Florida voters — particularly mothers-to-be — deserve a senator who will show up for work and have the political capital to get things done on their behalf. Marco Rubio does not meet that criteria.

#ZikaVirus

Published: Aug 2, 2016