Marco Rubio Weighs in on Congressional Recess

In a video released on Wednesday, responding to constituent messages , U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., weighed in on the August congressional recess.

The theory behind August recess is that members of Congress have to go home to their home states and have to confront the people that elected them, Rubio said in the video. Its an opportune time to travel the state if youre a senator, or your district if youre a member of Congress, and hear from the people back home, whether its in one-on-one meetings, town halls, visits to places, engaging and interacting with your constituents. So you go home, you hear from them on a full-time basis over a three- or four-week period and then you come back to Washington and hopefully turn their opinions into reality. Thats the theory behind August recess. Thats what Ill be doing during that time. Ill be touring different parts of the state. Ill be going, for example, to a military installation in the Panhandle. Ill be visiting other communities around the state.

Rubio also weighed in on Congress leaving the Beltway without passing a budget.

What I say to people all the time is that the most important thing the government needs to be focused on, other than national security, is creating an environment where jobs can be created, Rubio said. How are jobs created? When you have a pro-growth environment. That means when America becomes an easier and better place to start a business or to grow an existing business. Thats how middle-class jobs are created. And so we should be looking for what can we do to make it easier for people to start businesses, grow existing businesses, and thereby create jobs for the middle class. And the debt is making it harder for people to do that. The reason why the debt makes it harder for people to do that is because it scares people from risking their money.

At the end of the day, in order to grow a business or start a new one, someone has to take money they have access to, whether theyre borrowing it or theyve saved it, and they have to risk it, Rubio continued. The reason why theyre willing to risk it is because they think they can make money in the future, that the business will succeed. The reason why theyre afraid to do that now is because theyre looking at this debt, and theyre looking at other countries that have debt crises, and theyre saying, 'Look what happens in those countries that have a debt crisis.' You have these disruptive changes in government spending, you have these dramatic increases in taxes, and that uncertainty, and the lack of a plan to fix it is scaring people from investing and risking money they have access to. And the result is we dont have enough businesses being started. We dont have enough people growing their businesses, and as a result, middle-class jobs arent being created, and the American people are hurting.

And thats the reason why a budget hasnt passed, because we refuse to vote for -- I will not vote for -- a budget plan that does not show how its eventually going to get to balance and get our country out of the debt problem that it faces, he said in conclusion. So Ill keep working on that, and Im sure Ill hear about that during my travels in August. But I want you to know that Im committed to that principle because the debt issue, its a moral hazard. It hurts future generations for sure, but its also an economic harm that its doing. Right now, there are jobs that are not going to be created this year because we have run up a close to $17 trillion debt and theres no plan in place to fix it, and thats what Ill be focused on during the month of August, and when we return here, in September.