I decided to run for the U.S. Senate in 2010 because President Obama was leading America in the wrong direction, and I wanted to stop his agenda and offer a clear conservative alternative in its place.
The first time it became definitively clear to me just how dangerous this direction was occurred while watching what transpired seven years ago this month when Florida’s liberal, then-Republican governor joined President Obama at a Ft. Myers rally to pass the $800 billion stimulus plan.
On that day, the national debt stood around $10.6 trillion. Since then, President Obama’s runaway spending, big government overreaches and leadership failure on dealing with the debt have only made things worse, as the debt recently surpassed $19 trillion.
The next president will inherit a national debt of $20 trillion that shows no signs of slowing down – unless we act decisively and courageously to both grow our economy and save the biggest drivers of our debt, Medicare and Social Security. Because in the end, we can’t simply cut spending to solve the debt problem; we also have to grow our way out of it.
Presidential leadership is needed to get our debt under control, and I am the only candidate in this race who can and will stop our runaway debt. There are others running who talk about our debt, but I am the only one who can actually beat Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders and get into the White House where I can do something about it.
I can’t wait to run against either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in the fall, because I will expose their ideas, their agenda and their candidacies for what they are: relics of the past. I will shine a light on the misery that even more big government from them will inflict on people’s lives and freedoms. And I will make them own the unacceptable fact that another eight big government years with them will leave us close to an unimaginable $30 trillion debt, a death spiral that America will never be able to escape.
The last seven years under President Obama have been a disaster for America and our national debt, and his 2009 stimulus plan became the first real test for Republican leaders about what we would do about his plans to transform America to his liking. Some embraced Obama’s agenda, and others stayed on the sidelines. Against all odds, I stepped up to oppose him as well as the Republican establishment that ended up supporting the same liberal Republican governor who embraced Obama and his stimulus plan.
I took them all on and won because hundreds of Floridians, then thousands and eventually millions more here and around the country revolted against the big government spending agenda that began to take full shape in February 2009. In this year’s presidential election, we face a referendum about what kind of country we want to be and who can lead us there.
I want this to be an even more secure and more prosperous country than the one my parents believed in when they first came here in 1956, and that I grew up in. And as president, I will achieve this New American Century.