For weeks now U.S. Sen. Rick Scott has bird-dogged the Biden administration for spending policies that are stoking inflation, much to the detriment of the working and middle classes.
The latest jobs report, which reported the creation of only a quarter of the jobs that were expected, offered the Florida Republican another nail to hammer.
Scott, appearing on Fox News on Monday, said Biden’s job number resulted from an agenda that pays people to not work, and meanwhile, the administration offers no assurances that employment law to get them off public benefits are being policed.
“If he (Biden) sits there and believes that people that get paid more money not to work are going to jump at a job, so many people aren’t,” Scott said.
“I’m hearing it all across the country,” he added. “People can’t open their restaurants, they can’t staff up because people are making more money and they don’t want to come back to work.”
“I’m glad the president is focused on the fact that it was a horrible jobs number and I think it’s a horrible jobs number because of what the Biden agenda is. The Biden agenda is higher taxes, more regulation, they’re going to make it very difficult for our businesses, and on top of that, everything is free. Why do you have to show up to do anything? I mean, free everything now.”
Scott also was miffed that Labor Secretary Marty Walsh had not responded to his letter asking whether people, as spelled out in federal law, are taking jobs when offered in order to get off government unemployment assistance.
When asked about people’s fear for their safety in going back to work, Scott acknowledged that was a “legitimate concern.”
But that’s not the case, he added.
“What I’m hearing from employers all over the country, especially in my home state of Florida, people are making more money not to work,” said Scott.
“Back when this first started, I, along with three other senators, said you can’t pay people more not to work than to work. That’s not going to work,” the senator said.
And Democrats, he added, blocked efforts to prevent that by saying people would willingly go back to work when they had the opportunity.
Yet, said Scott, “that’s not happened at all, anywhere around the country that I can tell, and the secretary of Labor won’t answer my letter to him asking, ‘Are you enforcing you own law?’”
“I want people that need help to get help,” Scott concluded, “but you can’t have a country where everything’s free. Nobody can pay for this.”
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