Florida Republican U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio appeared Monday on Fox News arguing that Congress should make the Bush tax cuts permanent before the congressional recess.

In a fervent defense of supply-side economics, Rubio said that the “upper 1 percent are job-creators.” He added, “Well, the bottom line is that we need folks to create jobs in America. And jobs in America are created by people that have money or access to money. … That’s how economics works.” Here’s the full clip, via ThinkProgress:

Keeping tax cuts permanent doesn’t square with Rubio’s stated plan to have a “balanced budget amendment.” He also says he is “gravely concerned by a federal government that continues spending money it doesn’t have.” Keeping tax cuts permanent would seriously interfere with that effort, if not make it completely unattainable. The nonpartisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities shows that making the tax cuts permanent would add $3.4 trillion in deficits from 2009 to 2019 according to CBO projections. Most of the tax cuts are scheduled to expire in December 2010.

(Chart courtesy CBPP)

President Obama and congressional Democrats have wanted to make the tax cuts benefiting the middle-class permanent, but not those for families who make $250,000 a year or more. However, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said last week, “We need to have a serious discussion about … whether we can afford to permanently extend [the Bush tax cuts] before we have a real plan for long-term deficit reduction.”