Marco Rubio did a great job keeping a straight face as he
refused to answer a question about his personal finances on the grounds that the true facts presented were "a litany of discredited attacks." But while denying reality might have gotten him through last week's debate, he can't evade scrutiny forever, and reporters in his home state of Florida are well aware of his poor financial track record—and of the questions he
still hasn't answered.
Rubio's campaign keeps telling the Tampa Bay Times that full records on Rubio's use of a Republican Party of Florida credit card will be released, but so far we only have part of the story. Here are the key points of what we know:
As speaker of the Florida House, Rubio was one of about a half-dozen lawmakers given Republican Party of Florida credit cards. During the Senate race, the Times/Herald obtained Rubio's statements from 2006 and 2007, showing he routinely charged personal expenses, from a $10.50 movie ticket to a four-day, $10,000 family reunion.
In those two years he charged about $110,000, and he said he sent about $16,000 to American Express to cover personal expenses, though the expenses were never detailed. In a 2012 memoir, he wrote, "From January of 2005 until October of 2008 I charged about $160,000 in party-authorized expenses." [...]
After reporting by the Times/Herald, Rubio did pay the Republican Party of Florida $2,400 for plane flights he double-billed to state taxpayers and the party.
And so on. Basically, Rubio's defense boils down to "I'm not corrupt, just sloppy." Sloppy like he couldn't keep track of which credit card he was pulling out of his wallet at any given time—his own or the state party one—and somehow it always seems to have been the state party one. Rubio's apparent financial incompetence almost makes you want to give him the benefit of the doubt and wonder if it's not so much that he's
lying about his tax plan as that he doesn't know what he's talking about when he talks about his own plan. (Does that really count as the benefit of the doubt, come to think of it?)
Either way, there are still two disturbing things here and you can take your pick which is more disturbing: Rubio's incompetence and/or corruption, and Rubio's lying about his financial record. The thing is, if he's going to be seen as the establishment Republican alternative to a flailing Jeb Bush, all of this is going to become public, and claiming that the facts are "discredited attacks" won't fly, despite Rubio's skill at looking like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.