Politics & Power Quote by Marco Rubio

Rubio is doing something conservatives love and governments hate: stripping ideology out of the budget debate and replacing it with a blunt law of gravity. The line is built to inoculate his argument against the predictable rebuttal that overspending is a Democratic vice. By saying "conservatives, Republicans, put whoever you want there", he levels the playing field, then uses "history will back up" as a preemptive citation. It's not just a claim; it's a wager that your memory of Washington will cooperate.

The intent is to shift the conversation from moralizing about bad actors to redesigning incentives. "If you give government the opportunity" is the key phrase: government is framed less as a villain than as a machine responding to an open valve. That subtext matters because it invites structural fixes (balanced-budget rules, spending caps, procedural hurdles) rather than personality-based reforms ("elect better people"). He's selling restraint as a system, not a virtue.

The repetition - "it will do it. It will do it every time" - is political drumbeat more than proof, turning a complex fiscal ecosystem into a simple, memorable certainty. In context, this fits Rubio's broader brand of disciplined conservatism: skeptical of state capacity, wary of bipartisan complacency, and eager to present a hardline position as realism rather than partisanship. The cynicism is strategic: if everyone is susceptible, then the only trustworthy answer is limiting the temptation.