At the end of last week, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) endorsed U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., for reelection.
“I want to remind everybody of what [Covid] was like… It wasn’t an economic downturn, it was, ‘You couldn’t work. You cannot work. You cannot service customers. You cannot make money,’” Rubio said.
“The program was designed to do exactly what it’s called, the Paycheck Protection Program. It didn’t help anybody make a profit. What it did is it provided money for businesses so they could use this to do two things: pay their employees and pay their utilities and rent so they could stay open,” Rubio added. “And as a result, we know for a fact, that six or seven million jobs in the state of Florida were preserved. That’s six or seven million people that would have had no income, no paycheck. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of small businesses that would have been gone, erased off the face of the Earth. And so today, we would still be in the midst of a catastrophe had that not existed.
“I thank you for the support, and I thank you for the opportunity to let us come in here today to see this place because it reminds us of what I call the ‘Invisible Economy.’ And that is the core of our community. They write the magazine articles and the big commercials are about the big businesses and they have their role to play in our economy. But what powers our economy, most Americans work in a place that you’re never going to hear about unless you happen to go in,” Rubio concluded.
“When COVID first broke out, while other politicians in Washington right down to local governments were busy drafting executive orders, closing down small businesses, there was one politician who took a different track and he said, ‘We’re going to save those small businesses.’ And that was Marco Rubio,” Bill Herrle, the NFIB’s executive director in Florida.
“Although we’ve worked with Senator Rubio since he was a young legislator in Tallahassee, this certainly was his pinnacle achievement over his legislative career. So we think it’s a great time to send him back to Washington for six more years and see what other great things he can accomplish. NFIB is pleased to endorse you,” Herrle continued.
Rubio faces U.S. Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., in November.
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