Marco Rubio Continues to Question Effectiveness of Federal Programs

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., hit the national airwaves on Sunday, appearing on CBSs Face the Nation to continue insisting the federal War on Poverty launched by President Lyndon Johnson relied too much on big government. Rubio offered a major speech last week on the 50th anniversary of LBJ announcing the War on Poverty.

Ive been talking about this now for the better part of the decade -- going back to my service in the Florida Legislature, Rubio said. And the reason is: I, myself, am but a generation removed from poverty and despair. And the reason why I live a better life is because my parents had the opportunity to come to a place where people like them had the opportunity to improve their lives. I think that is still true for the majority of Americans, but I think it would be wrong not to recognize that there is a significant number of Americans that do not have an equality of opportunity. That is not a political issue. That is something that threatens what makes us exceptional and different from the rest of the world. We need to address that. We need to address the fact that we have 40-some-odd million people who feel trapped in poverty and do not feel like they have an equal opportunity to get ahead. And I dont view that as a partisan issue, or an electoral one. I think it goes to the heart of what it means to be American.

As far as the War on Poverty is concerned, these programs have utility, Rubio added. They do help alleviate the consequences of poverty, but they dont help people to emerge from that poverty. And thats why I feel like the War on Poverty has failed, because its incomplete. I think we have failed to take the next step, which is to help people trapped with inequality of opportunity to have the opportunities to build for themselves a better life. And thats what I hope well be able to accomplish.

Bob Schieffer asked Rubio if programs like Head Start were failures.

That is not what my speech said," Rubio countered. Actually, I think programs like Head Start are geared in the right direction in the sense that theyre trying to get children educational opportunities as young as possible. I think where those programs can be completed and improved is if we create flexibility in them at the local level. So Im not saying we should dismantle the efforts. Im saying that these efforts need to be reformed. And I believe the best way to reform them is to turn the money and the influence over to the state and local level, where I think youll find the kinds of innovations that allow us to confront an issue that is complex and, quite frankly, diverse. For example, rural poverty looks different than urban poverty. And there are different approaches to it.