Sen. Rubio would like Joe Biden to support passing more relief checks, which Biden has already publicly supported.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) wrote to President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday with a plan to "unify" the country in the aftermath of last week's Capitol insurrection. He wants Biden to again support upping COVID-19 relief checks by $1,400 — a plan his own party blocked.
In a letter, published Wednesday by Axios, Rubio called last Wednesday's violent pro-Donald Trump attacks "one of the darkest days in our history."
"All across our nation, people are looking for answers and demanding accountability, but they are also desperate for hope: hope that their political leaders in Washington can being taking steps to heal a divided nation," he wrote. "It would send a powerful message to the American people if, on the first day of your presidency, you called on the House and Senate to increase the direct economic payments to Americans struggling due to the pandemic from $600 to $2,000."
Biden has already endorsed this idea.
In fact, the Democratic House of Representatives passed such a bill in December, with a bipartisan 275 to 134 supermajority, but Rubio's own GOP leader Mitch McConnell blocked it in the Senate.
"The Senate is not going to be bullied into rushing out more borrowed money into the hands of Democrats' rich friends who don't need the help," McConnell (R-KY) said at the time.
Rubio has done little to actually address the causes of last week's violent attack on the Capitol and did little to prevent it.
While he acknowledged Biden as president-elect in November, he waited until the last minute to say whether he would join last week's effort to overturn the results by rejecting Biden's Electoral College win.
The Orlando Sentinel's editorial board wrote on Thursday that while the Florida Republican ultimately voted "to preserve democracy," he only did so after being a "Trump enabler up to now," making his hands "almost as dirty" as lawmakers who voted to throw out the 2020 election results.
On Sunday, Rubio told Fox News that while Trump "does bear some responsibility" for egging on the violent mob, he did not support efforts to hold him accountable.
"It's unfortunate that instead of unifying us right now, Biden and the Democrats have chosen to use this as an opportunity to talk about ridiculous things like 'let's impeach a president' who isn't even going to be in office in about nine days," he complained.
Rubio also opposed the first impeachment of Trump last year. At the time, he justified his vote to acquit Trump of charges of obstruction and abuse of power by arguing that removing him "would inflict extraordinary and potentially irreparable damage to our already divided nation."
After Trump and his congressional allies have spent months falsely claiming the election was stolen, a significant portion of the nation believes it. A Vox/Data for Progress poll, taken in the aftermath of the Capitol attacks, found 72% of likely Republican voters still doubt whether Biden really legitimately won.
It is unclear how a $1,400 check will change their minds. A Rubio spokesperson did not immediately respond to an inquiry for this story.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
