Maybe Sen. Marco Rubio thinks the Senate could use more of Barry Black’s baritone.  

The Florida Republican, speaking on the presidential campaign trail at a forum at Bob Jones University in South Carolina, quipped that perhaps the prayers from the retired Navy rear admiral who is the longtime Senate chaplain should be hourly.  

“Maybe we should pray every hour, is what should happen, but we have … a great chaplain in the Senate,” Rubio said. “He does a great job every morning of invoking prayer.”  

During a discussion about the Supreme Court, Rubio was asked about the case of Town of Greece v. Galloway , in which the Court held in a 2014 opinion that opening town meetings with prayers did not run afoul of the Establishment Clause. Rubio noted that he led a group of 34 senators in filing an amicus brief supporting the town’s prayers in a bid to protect the Senate’s daily prayer.  

“I was there there that day sitting in the audience to hear it, because we wanted to protect the right of the Senate. We begin every morning in the Senate with prayer,” Rubio said of the 2013 oral arguments. “Now, you may argue it’s not working very well, but we’re going to keep doing it.”

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