Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) articulated his new strategy for fighting the war on poverty Thursday on Fox News.
President Obama, Rubio said, is solely focused on income inequality which paints a distorted picture of the problem.
"The issue is not whether the cashier at Burger King makes less than the CEO. The issue is whether that cashier gets stuck being a cashier for five, ten, 15, 20 years and can't move up. That's what we should be focused on," the Florida senator explained.
Moreover, Rubio argued the best way to address the real problem, opportunity inequality, is to turn over federal poverty programs to the states. "That's really where I think we'll get the innovation, like we did with welfare reform in the '90s," Rubio said.
Host Steve Doocy proceeded to ask Rubio if he thought Democrats were using their new poverty push as a way to divert attention from the disastrous implementation of Obamacare. The Florida senator agreed, but added if the president wants to wag the dog with poverty he is happy to have that conversation.
"Income inequality may give us an opportunity to talk about what the real problem is. But if the president's proposal for dealing with this problem is raising the minimum wage and taxing rich people, that's a solution to what he called the defining issue of our time? That's not a solution. That's the same tired, stale rhetoric and policies that have failed for 50 years."
Full segment: