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Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) issued the following statement regarding today’s release of President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget:

“President Obama’s budget shows an alarming disconnect with threats to the American Dream at home and threats to our national security abroad.

“As recent events in Ukraine show, the world is as dangerous as ever. Our enemies are emboldened every time we fail to uphold our commitments and every time we naively try to address our serious debt problem by weakening our military strength and readiness, as this budget does.

“This budget walks away from the reality that America and the world are safer when America is as strong as possible economically and militarily.

“Economically, this budget calls for more government spending, instead of free enterprise, to create jobs — as if the lessons of five years of this failed approach have been ignored. This budget is a disappointing admission that President Obama has no intention of seeking any reforms to save our safety net programs. We need to save Medicare and Social Security to not only ensure future seniors can retire with dignity and a safety net, but also to make sure that we don’t sacrifice our security in order to deal with our debt.

“While there are many other areas of this budget that we will continue discussing in the coming days and weeks, I am concerned by the President’s call to expand the status quo on the Earned Income Tax Credit. We should be reforming this flawed approach to helping low-income workers, not expanding it. As I suggested earlier this year, we should convert the EITC into a wage enhancement that is distributed to workers throughout the year, not in one big lump sum as it does now.”