Interview with Sen. Marco Rubio

Marco Rubio arrived in Congress less than a year ago, but the voice of Florida’s junior senator is already being heard loud and clear in the growing push for smaller government and the fight to defend American values.

Rubio jumped into the U.S. Senate race in May 2009 following the resignation of Republican Mel Martinez. Despite an early double-digit deficit in the race for the Republican nomination, he outlasted sitting Gov. Charlie Crist and won the Senate seat by 19 points, defeating both Democrat Kendrick Meek and Crist, who re-entered the race as an independent.

Sen. Rubio is best known for giving voice to the emerging Tea Party movement in Florida, but his impact is unmistakable on a national scale. Just two months after entering the Senate, he put down a marker on the national-debt discussion that would come to dominate our national attention four months later:

I will vote to defeat an increase in the debt limit unless it is the last one we ever authorize and is accompanied by a plan for fundamental tax reform, an overhaul of our regulatory structure, a cut to discretionary spending, a balanced-budget amendment, and reforms to save Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Rubio’s parents fled Cuba in 1959, a life-altering experience that taught them the value of American citizenship — a value that they deeply imprinted on their son. “It is hard to be apolitical when you are raised by exiles,” says the father of four.

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