Rubio Campaign Press Release - WATCH: Marco Rubio Explains Why His Faith Makes Him Believe So Fervently in Free Enterprise

At a recent New Hampshire town-hall, Marco discussed how his faith guides his personal and political decisions.

My faith has a huge influence on me. I hope it does, because my faith teaches me to care for the less fortunate. And obviously, the first thing I learned from my faith is that the most important job I have is husband and father. The most influential job I will ever have is the 16, 15, 17 years I have to influence my children and who they become — and not just by what I say to them, but by what they see me do.

In public service, it influences me in a lot of different ways. First of all, our nation was founded on a spiritual principle, on the notion that we're all created equal because we're endowed by our creator with certain rights: life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that the only reason we have a government isn't to grant those rights, it's to protect those rights. I believe that every human being has God-given rights that it is the job of the government to protect. So that influences me deeply.

Beyond that, I would argue that it's one of the reasons why I've come to be a strong supporter of free enterprise — because it's the only economic model in the history of the world where people can achieve their potential even if they aren't born into great wealth or privilege.

If you travel around the world, here's what you're going to find: The more the government dominates the economy, the more that people who influence government win at the expense of everybody else. And so when you go around the world, here's what you're going to find: You're going to find societies where the same rich families and the same big companies have dominated those countries decade after decade. Only in free enterprise can an employee become an employer. Only in free enterprise can someone that's born into a family that isn't [rich] or connected, through hard work, discipline, self-control, and talent, achieve a better life for themselves — in fact, maybe even put their former boss out of business because you're better at it than they are.

That's why I love free enterprise, that's why I'm a strong supporter — because I think it's the best system to eradicate poverty. The only way to eradicate poverty is to allow people to find better-paying jobs, and free enterprise does that better than any other economic model in the world.

So my faith has influenced me to care about the less fortunate. I do support a safety net; I don't think free enterprise works without a safety net, to help catch people that are having a tough time. But I also know that the safety net cannot be a way of life, cannot become a lifestyle, and in fact it's become that for many people. And my faith also teaches me that that's not good for the soul, it's not good for people, it's not good for their aspirations for the future.

So, for all those reasons, I'm glad my faith influences my role in government as well as the way I try to govern myself and my life.