In advance of President Obama’s visit to Florida, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) hammered at the president’s track record during an appearance in Orlando this morning on behalf of Mitt Romney.

In a 25-minute speech, Rubio said voters face a choice between Romney, a businessman who” believes in free enterprise,” and Obama who he said is “wedded to the ideas of the old world.”

Speaking to about 200 people gathered outside Harbco General Contractors in Orlando, Rubio zeroed in on Obama’s now infamous statement that “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

“That’s the kind of mindset that trapped people in poverty. That’s the mindset of countries where a handful of people control everything and everyone else works for them. We don’t want to go back to that. That was the world before America,” Rubio said.

Rubio declared that things will “never get better under Barack Obama, because he doesn’t understand the things that made us great.”

The tea party darling said Romney, on the other hand, understands what makes “America different and better.”

Obama is scheduled to make a campaign stop at Rollins College in Winter Park, near Orlando, on Thursday afternoon as part of a “Middle-Class Security” tour of swing states.

In an effort to counter Obama’s appearance, the Romney campaign has also rented 13 billboards in the Orlando area featuring small business owners declaring: “Mr. President, I Built This.”

The ads each feature one of three Florida entrepreneurs: Tanya Burns, who runs an insurance agency, Walter Garcia, who helms a trucking company, and Lou Ramos, who heads a computer training company.

Heavy Medal Drummer

Rubio introduced a bill Wednesday that would exempt U.S. Olympic medal winners from paying taxes on their medals, calling the penalty ridiculous.

Olympians receive honorariums in the form of cash payments of $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze, which the IRS currently taxes.

“We need a fundamental overhaul of our tax code, but we shouldn’t wait any time we have a chance to aggressively fix ridiculous tax laws like this tax on Olympians’ medals and prize money,” Rubio said in a statement indroducing the Olympic Tax Elimination Act.  “We can all agree that these Olympians who dedicate their lives to athletic excellence should not be punished when they achieve it.”

Tags | Barack Obama, Harbco General Contractors, marco rubio, Mitt Romney, Orlando, Rollins College