Sen. Rick Scott doubles down on ‘Rescue America’ plan, telling defiant McConnell to ‘bring it on’

A conflict is emerging in Washington between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rick Scott, who has reaffirmed an aggressively conservative 11-point agenda for Republicans to run on in November.

The “civil war” played out in publicly at a party press conference on March 1, as McConnell rebuked Scott for a proposal he said would raise taxes on millions of Americans. Scott’s idea is to make all Americans pay at least a token amount of taxes, instead of many taxpayers actually getting money from the government, to make sure all Americans have “skin in the game.”

Scott actually walked away from microphones set up outside the Senate chamber for McConnell’s rebuttal of his ideas. McConnell talked like an establishment Democrat, scoffing at Scott’s plans.

Other planks in the former Florida governor’s plan include children saying the Pledge of Allegiance; elimination of questions about people’s race and demographics on government forms; no more government policies based on race; stripping universities of their tax exempt status and ending their eligibility for federal aid if their application processes depend on skin color; questions about gender identity or sexual orientation; a 25 percent cut of the federal workforce; a ban on raising the debt ceiling unless war is declared; and other vows.

“If we have no bigger plan than to be a speed bump on the road to socialism, we don’t deserve to govern,” Scott wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed only days later. “So, I went out and made a statement that got me in trouble. I said that all Americans need to have some skin in the game. Even if it is just a few bucks, everyone needs to know what it is like to pay some taxes. It hit a nerve.

“There will be many more attacks on me and this plan from careerists in Washington, who personally profit while ruining this country. Bring it on. The American people are fed up, and they will show that at the ballot box this November,” Scott went on in his defiant op-ed.

“I’ve been told there are unwritten rules in Washington about what you can and cannot say. You can’t tell the public that Social Security and Medicare are going bankrupt. You can’t talk about term limits, because, while voters want them, nobody in Washington does. You can’t talk about balancing the budget or shrinking the debt,” Scott wrote.