WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Senator Rick Scott spoke on the Senate Floor for Washington Waste Wednesday, highlighting how the Democrats’ far left proposals would fail the American people and bankrupt our nation. Last week, Senator Scott released the first episode of his new series in partnership with the Heritage Foundation.

Watch Senator Scott’s speech and read his full remarks as prepared for delivery below.

Today is Washington Waste Wednesday.

It’s a new series I launched last week to highlight all the ways Washington wastes taxpayer dollars. And, unfortunately, there are a lot of ways.

My belief is that you, the American taxpayer, can spend your money better than Washington can. It’s a novel concept up here in DC.

The way Washington spends your money is often times an embarrassment.

As Governor of Florida, my focus on responsible spending meant more money in the pockets of Florida families, and more funding available to pay down state debt and invest in what mattered most to our families.

We paid down $10 billion in state debt over my eight years as Governor – nearly 1/3 of total state debt.

We cut taxes 100 times giving more than $10 billion back to Florida families and job creators.

And, we had record funding for education, for the environment and for transportation.

But right now - our national debt is impossible to fathom, much less sustain. $22 TRILLION. Just let that sink in for a minute.

We’re already $22 trillion in the hole – but that doesn’t stop the far-left Democrats from proposing more debt for this country.

Medicare-for-all, which I like to call “Medicare-for-none,” would not only throw 150 MILLION people off the private insurance they like, it is projected to cost as much as $32 trillion over a decade.

That’s $32 TRILLION – with a T.

The problem with our healthcare system is rising costs. It just costs too much. Prescription drugs cost too much. Hospital visits cost too much.

Obamacare drove up the costs of healthcare. That’s obvious. Then, the government tried to hide that cost by providing federal subsidies – to the tune of $737 billion in 2019 – and $1.3 trillion by 2029.

Instead of providing subsidies and proposing more wasteful ideas, we should be focused on bringing down the cost of healthcare, which solves two problems. First, it will result in more people having healthcare coverage. And second, it will ensure that health INSURANCE results in actual health CARE.

Reduce costs and you solve both of those problems. But solving problems is a novel concept in Washington. The Democrats in Washington just want to spend more money to solve every problem.

On top of Medicare for All, the Democrats want a Green New Deal. The Green New Deal – I call it the GREEN JOB KILLER – would cost as much as $93 trillion.

These two proposals alone would cost MORE THAN $100 TRILLION. To put that in perspective, that’s more than $300,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

You wouldn’t run a business this way, so why are Democrats proposing to run our country this way?

We are turning this nation around. Our economy is booming and wages are rising. We can’t go along with this dangerous socialist playbook.

HIGHER taxes. MORE debt. MORE regulation. It will reverse our success and bankrupt our country.

These ideas are the craziest example of Washington’s waste we’ve seen in a long time.

Thankfully, the American people won’t go along with socialism.

We can cut the waste and cut the spending – but we have to be thoughtful. We have to propose real solutions, just like we did in Florida, to make Washington work for all Americans.

###