Mitch Perry Report for 6.2.15 — U.S. senators doing their jobs

Mitch Perry

Blame Rand Paul.

The U.S. Senate is in session again Tuesday, and will be voting on amendments to the USA Freedom Act, which represents the first significant rollback of NSA surveillance that has been approved. Or at least that’s what the House did. Now the Senate will be working on a bill, which means Marco Rubio will be in Washington and not Orlando for Rick Scott‘s Economic Summit taking place at Disney World.

Rubio will appear via video at 9:20 a.m. It’s worth noting, though, that other Senate votes this year didn’t stop him from appearing at events for his presidential candidacy. No one in the Senate has missed more votes this year or last than Rubio.

Ted Cruz has always missed a lot of votes. But according to Roll Call, Paul has missed only a couple of votes. Whether that says anything about how serious these men take their jobs is up for you to decide.

The fourth U.S. senator now in the race, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, has missed more votes than anyone in the Senate except Cruz and Rubio.

We’d love to write more, but we’ve got to get on I-4 to check out the event.

In other news …

Rubio has previously said he wouldn’t support any choice for a U.S. ambassador to Cuba. Now he says he could be persuaded, but only if four conditions are met. In other words, he’s going to oppose whomever the Obama administration nominates.

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Tuesday is the latest cattle call for GOP presidential candidates, and joining them in Orlando is what NextGen Climate is calling their “Koch Brothers Ark.” 

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At Monday’s HART meeting, board members mused about reasons why they’re not getting enough money to fund the transit agency better.

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And over the weekend we spent a couple of hours with Ben Carson supporters, some of whom say he’s the candidate they’ve been waiting for since Ronald Reagan left the political scene more than 25 years ago.

Mitch Perry

Mitch Perry has been a reporter with Extensive Enterprises since November of 2014. Previously, he served five years as political editor of the alternative newsweekly Creative Loafing. Mitch also was assistant news director with WMNF 88.5 FM in Tampa from 2000-2009, and currently hosts MidPoint, a weekly talk show, on WMNF on Thursday afternoons. He began his reporting career at KPFA radio in Berkeley and is a San Francisco native who has lived in Tampa since 2000. Mitch can be reached at [email protected].



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