Good afternoon, my name is Barney Bishop and I’m the President and CEO of Associated Industries of Florida.  Today, I am very pleased to announce that our Board of Directors has voted to endorse our friend, Marco Rubio to be Florida’s next United States Senator. 

We have known Marco since he was first elected to the Florida House of Representatives from Miami.  And we got to know him even better when he became Speaker of the House.  During his eight years in office, AIF has been able to work with him to preserve and defend the private enterprise system that is the heart and soul of Florida and America’s economy.  We have also worked with him on a wide variety of policy issues that have confronted our state over the last decade, and our Board felt that he was the most qualified candidate for the office. 

For 35 years AIF has been publishing annually our Voting Records, which are the most comprehensive and exhaustive of any business association, because we count every vote that a legislator makes:  we count every vote equally, we never give any legislator a pass on a vote, and we do not give extra weight to any vote, even though some votes are obviously more important to the business community than others.  But, to keep the process consistent and justifiable, we do it the same way year after year.  During Marco’s tenure in the House, his historical voting record was 95%!  That is an extraordinary percentage, but he earned it because he was the one that had to push the green or red buttons to vote.  Consequently, we know that Marco is prepared to make the tough decisions that all policy makers have to make in order to keep our state and country moving in the right direction.

That means for example, that we know that Marco, when he gets to Washington, will caucus with the Republicans and he will be a dependable fiscally conservative vote.  Furthermore, we know that Marco will fight for Florida and Floridians to insure that Washington and its bureaucracy doesn’t harm our great state as is being done in the egregious and hurtful policy by the EPA that is litigation-driven but scientifically-unfounded on Numeric Nutrient Criteria.  And he gets it that this policy is going to be forced upon only Florida – and not any other state – and it will significantly hurt our economy, our citizens, and our ability to be competitive with the other states in the southeast that we compete with on a daily basis.  He also understands that it will raise the water rates for every family and business in Florida by over $600 a year for an average family and that this is not the correct time, in this poor economy, to do that.

We also know that Marco will, to his dying breath, fight to maintain Florida’s Constitutional provision that guarantees that this state remain a “right to work” state, a state where one does not have to belong to a union to get a job.  “Card Check,” as we refer to it, is an insidious attempt by organized labor to overturn our state’s right to decide under what conditions someone can be employed.  Since this proposed legislation will apply to any business with more than 10 employees and about 84% of Florida businesses are small businesses, this will have a devastating impact on our economy and runs counter to the belief of most Floridians.

We also know that Marco understands that President Obama’s budget for the Space Program will be unnecessarily hurtful to the first high technology industry Florida has ever had.  That about 22,000 direct and indirect jobs will be lost not only at Kennedy Space Center but all around the state as a consequence of his killing off the Shuttle and Orion programs.  The administration’s answer which is to provide millions of dollars for job retraining is a nice façade but when there are few jobs to be had, it will still leave these highly-paid and well-trained Floridians in a desperate lurch and will certainly exacerbate Florida’s very high unemployment rate.

For AIF and our 10,000 members, we want someone in Washington that will fight for Florida and not be a rubber stamp to this administration who’s every answer to a problem seems to be an assault on our national treasury.  We want someone in Washington, like U.S. Senator George LeMieux, who has proposed legislation that would actually begin to require America to learn to live within our financial means and not simply incur more debt for future generations. We also realize that Washington is a place where seniority counts and by sending this young man to DC, we have the chance for him to be a leader in the years ahead and bring the much-needed clout that Florida as the soon-to-be third largest state so richly deserves to be.

For these reasons and many more, I am proud to say that we strongly believe that Marco Rubio should be, and we will work to insure, that he is our next Unites States Senator from Florida.