In a Rare Work Appearance, Marco Rubio Says Government Employees Who Don't Do Their Jobs Should Be Fired

Marco Rubio, who has one of the worst attendance records in the US Senate, chastised government employees on the Senate floor for not doing their job.

In a speech pushing for a vote on a Veterans Administration reform bill on Tuesday, Rubio said, "All we're saying in this bill here is that if you work at the VA, and you aren't doing your job, they get to fire to you."

He added, "there is really no other job in the country where if you don't do your job you don't get fired."

Apparently there is. Rubio has missed 88 senate votes, or more than 30 percent, so far this year, according to the website GovTrack. Since he came to the senate in 2011, Rubio has missed 11.6 percent of all roll call votes, a stark comparison to the 1.6 percent average of his colleagues. Yesterday was the first vote Rubio took this month, after skipping the seven others.

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His explanation has been that he's busy running for president. In an interview with CNBC, Rubio defended his low attendance record by saying "Being a senator is more than just casting a vote."

"I am going to miss votes. I am running for president," Rubio added.

But there are four other candidates who are also senators — Rand Paul, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham — who all have better voting records than Rubio since declaring their candidacy, according to an analysis by Politifact.

Sure, running for president can be a full-time job, and senators missing votes while campaigning is common. Barack Obama actually had one of the worst voting records in senate history when he was running for president in 2007 and 2008.

There is no rule against lawmakers missing votes and many often skip non-essential ones when the vote is not close.

Alex Conant, a spokesperson for Rubio's campaign, said that he had not missed any votes for reasons unrelated to campaigning since he declared his candidacy in April. But according to the  Post, many of the days he was absent from the Senate during a vote, he was not at a public event.

Even when Rubio did show up for work, he did not exactly make up for lost time by governing. According to GovTrack, only one Rubio-sponsored bill was enacted into law during the 2014 session, which is the fourth lowest amongst his fellow sophomore senators.

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Rubio's less than perfect voting record has come under attack during his campaign. Donald Trump tweeted that Rubio is a "lightweight senator with the worst voting record in Senate. Lazy!"

In a slightly less explicit jab at Rubio, Jeb Bush criticized candidates' absenteeism in an op-ed in the Des Moines Register. Bush argued that elected officials who skip votes or miss hearings "should have their paychecks docked — that's what happens in the private sector."

Rubio's speech yesterday shows that he apparently might agree.

"This should actually be the rule in the entire government," he said. "If you're not doing your job you should be fired."

Follow Olivia Becker on Twitter: @obecker928

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