Republican rising star Rubio spreads blame for crisis

LOS ANGELES: Marco Rubio, the youthful Florida senator and the most talked name as a Republican vice-presidential candidate, blamed both political parties for the country's financial crisis in a late Tuesday speech in California.

Rubio, the son of exiles from Fidel Castro's Cuba, spoke at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley to a crowd of some 1,000 Republican faithful.

"I know that it's popular in my party to blame the current president," Rubio, 40, told the crowd. "But the truth is that the only thing this president has done is accelerate policies that were already in place and were doomed to fail."

Rubio is a favorite of the ultra-conservative 'tea party' faction of the Republican party, which favors a small federal government, a balanced budget, low taxes and a belief that the private sector can always offer a better solution than the government.

Spending more money that the government has "brought us to the problems we have today," Rubio said, referring to the recent battle in Congress over raising the US debt ceiling.

"What we have now is not sustainable," he said, advocating for lower taxes and less government regulations.

"The free enterprise system does not leave people behind. People are poor and people are left behind because they don't have access to the free enterprise system. ... The free enterprise system creates prosperity, not denies it."

"We have to change towards a nation where both prosperity and compassion exists side by side," he said, as the crowd cheered.

Poverty, according to Rubio, "does not create social problems. Our social problems creates our poverty."

"Increasing taxes kills jobs! Show me a tax increase that creates jobs outside the government."

Rubio downplayed the chatter of him being vice-presidential material.

"I have no interest in serving as a vice president for anyone who could possibly live all eight years of the presidency," he joked, insisting that he enjoyed his job as a US senator -- a job he began just eight months ago.

Rubio entered the hall and escorted former first lady Nancy Reagan, 90, by the arm to her seat. Reagan walked slowly but tripped -- the crowd gasped, but a spokesperson later said that she was fine.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011