August 21, 2024

Roust Rick Scott - Vote for Debbie Murcasel-Powell


We must elect Debbie Murcasel-Powell, to the US Senate to replace Rick Scott.  Rick Scott is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad US Senator (with apologies to Judith Viorst). 

Scott rose to political power in 2010, when he was elected Florida Governor.  His election was something of a surprise, having been CEO of medical provider HCA/Columbia when the FBI started of an investigation into a massive fraud scheme.  That fraud is estimated to have cost US taxpayers $4 billion dollars, and HCA/Columbia, which later became WellCare, was fined $1.7 billon, at the time the largest such fine in US history.  Yet Scott left the company with a golden parachute, which he parlayed into a war chest to run for office. 

 

On his way out of the governor’s office, where he infamously banned references to “climate change” from the state vocabulary among many other horrible actions, he ran for US Senate in 2018.  He defeated incumbent Democratic Senator Bill Nelson by a scant 10,033 votes, amidst accusations of voting irregularities that eventually cost the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections her job.

With that very brief background, let’s highlight (or more accurately, lowlight) some of Rick Scott’s notable positions and accomplishments over the past six years as Florida’s junior US Senator.

  • Scott denies the existence of transgender people (NBC News report here)

  • Scott voted against the PACT Act to help US military veterans exposed to toxins in Iraq. This came on the same day that he hypocritically Tweeted, “I was honored to join [the United Service Organizations] today and make care packages for our brave military members in gratitude of their sacrifice and service to our nation,” (HuffPost report here)

  • Scott’s so called “Rescue America Plan” called for ending all federal programs after five years, unless reauthorized by Congress and signed by the President. There were no exceptions in the original version of the plan, so it would have included Social Security (retirement pensions, enacted in 1935), Medicare and Medicaid (health care for retirees and the poor, respectively, enacted in 1965), and the Affordable Care Act (enacted in 2010, and affectionately/derisively called “ObamaCare”).  Scott was forced to backtrack and remove Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid from “sunsetting”, but this has been a long-held Republican dream.  (CNN report on the original plan here).

  • Publicly stated that he would enact a 6-week (effectively a near-total) abortion ban in Florida if he could (report from The Hill here)

  • Scott says he would like to cut the US Federal budget by 50%, despite overseeing a 20% increase in the Florida state budget while he was governor (Florida Phoenix article here, and Tampa Bay Times article here).

This is a small sample of Scott’s awful work as a US Senator.  If we were to delve into his record as Florida’s Governor, the list of incomprehensibly bad deeds would be even longer.  A recent poll shows that Rick Scott has a 35% approval rating, in the same poll that rated Florida safe Republican stronghold (Florida Politics article here).  Predictably, Democrats disapprove of Scott and his record, but independent voters aren’t fans either, giving him an approval rating of just 28%.

Rick Scott has served one term in the US Senate, and that’s one term too long.  It’s time to roust Rick Scott!  Please make certain to vote for Debbie Murcasel-Powell in the 2024 General Election.