Florida Republican Legislature's Session of Shame

[seafan]

Session of shame

April 29, 2008

What's wrong with Tallahassee? Is there no adult supervision in the political romper room called the Florida Legislature? Are our elected lawmakers really prepared to end the session this week by passing out an almost criminally negligent state budget that will do incalculable harm to Florida's education, health care, social service and criminal justice institutions?
This is far and away the worst session we've ever witnessed. We cannot recall ever seeing lawmakers conduct themselves in such an irresponsible manner and with so little apparent regard for the future of Florida and the well-being of its residents. The consequences of lawmakers' failure to take their responsibilities seriously will be dire and far-reaching.

It is not possible to eliminate millions of dollars from the court system and eliminate hundreds of public defender, state attorney and probation officer positions without endangering the public safety.

It is not possible to reduce per-student funding by $140 from the previous year without throwing the public schools into turmoil.

It is not possible to reduce Medicaid reimbursement rates by hundreds of millions of dollars without crippling the ability of "safety-net" hospitals like Shands to provide life-saving indigent heath care for needy Floridians.

It is not possible to slash millions of dollars from foster care and other child welfare programs without putting already vulnerable children at greater risk.

It is not possible to reduce state spending by $4 billion in the space of a year without wreaking havoc on the lives of countless Floridians.

Lawmakers blandly say such ruthless cuts are dictated by Florida's poor economy. But this is a Legislature that has slashed taxes by billions of dollars over the past decade while economic times were good. Now, when Florida's young, elderly, sick and unemployed are most in need of public assistance, lawmakers callously dismiss their needs while endlessly chanting the mantra "no new taxes no matter what."

Meanwhile, this being an election year, they busy themselves grandstanding on a never-ending line-up of ideologically and politically motivated bills.
Want to take your gun to work? Fine. Want an official state license plate glorifying Christianity? No problem. Want to throw yet another roadblock up in front of women who choose abortions? Make them get ultrasounds first.
Why not outlaw truck ornaments that look like bull testicles? And let's ban baggy pants in the schools? And don't forget to protect teachers of conscience from being "forced" to teach evolution.

.....

This Legislature is a disgrace. In this final week of the session lawmakers are willfully putting at risk the health, safety and welfare of their constituents. Meanwhile, Gov. Charlie Crist remains largely silent and passive, as though he has little or no leadership role in the debacle that is unfolding in the House and Senate.

.....

Budget is just right for anti-government crowd

By S.V. Dαte
April 21, 2008

With just two weeks (NOW 2 DAYS) of the legislative session left, it seems almost certain that public schools and public health programs will get whacked by billions of dollars.
In other words, everything is going according to plan.
Not the plan of most Floridians, who will be shocked when the new budget year starts this summer and they find that services that they, their elderly relatives or their neighbors rely upon will be reduced or gone.

No, this is the plan of the anti-government wing of the Republican Party, which has held considerable sway in Tallahassee over the past decade.

These folks fundamentally do not believe that government should be in the business of running schools or paying for medical care for the poor or elderly. Never mind that public education has been a bedrock value of this country for a century and a half, or that society as a whole appeared to agree in the 1960s that the richest country on the planet ought to care for its old and sick.
Such charity, in their view, should be entirely voluntary, and not subsidized by public dollars. True, in times when the economy is rolling along and tax revenues are bountiful, these arguments seem petty and mean-spirited. This is why you didn't really hear them in the Capitol during the late 1990s and through the first half of this decade.

Instead, the proponents of this ideology cleverly took after the other half of the equation through tax cuts — the "starve the beast" approach.
Not starve it immediately, because that draws heaps of bad publicity.
Rather, they tinkered with Florida's already unsteady tax structure and further unbalanced it, so that when the recession came, the hit would be that much more extreme — and require cuts that were that much more severe.

The best example is former Gov. Jeb Bush's dogged elimination of the intangibles tax, which, with few exceptions, hit the wealthiest 4.5 percent of Floridians and was also the only progressive tax the state had. By getting rid of it, the state became that much more reliant on the sales tax, the fluctuations of which are readily evident in every economic downturn.
Consider where the state would be if it had the $1 billion that tax on stocks and bonds would have produced today. It would not have covered the whole shortfall, true, but because much of that bottom-line total is federal matching money that will not be received because the state is cutting back on its share, it would have covered considerably more than $1 billion.

Or imagine if the rich-people's break had been given year-to-year, depending on the state of the budget — like, for instance, the way the little people's "sales tax holidays" are granted or not granted. Then, Florida's richest would have to forgo their several-thousand-dollar tax breaks in tough years — just as ordinary Floridians have had to do without their six-cents-on-the-dollar break on back-to-school clothes some summers.

Of course, that idea was never on the table. The intangibles tax was deemed "insidious" and had to be eliminated, entirely and forever, while the sales tax holidays — which typically cost about $40 million — were considered gifts to the people, but only when the state could afford them.

But it's no problem if you want to buy a yacht. Or a skybox at a sports stadium. Or even to build a sports stadium. Or give lots of taxpayer money to Jeb Bush's cronies at CSX, a private corporation.


And it's not a problem for this Republican Legislature to steer money to hometown projects, in the face of this headline in the Miami Herald today:

South Florida schools biggest losers in state budget

TALLAHASSEE --
Of the myriad losers in a state budget that cuts a record $4 billion in spending, public education will lose the most -- with Miami-Dade and Broward schools getting hit hardest of all.

The two biggest counties together will shoulder more than a third of the $332 million in cuts to K-12 classroom spending in the proposed budget lawmakers will approve when the legislative session ends Friday.

Those school cuts are a fraction of the total slashed from education: $2.3 billion -- 55 percent of the total cuts -- which will reduce spending on everything from construction to class programs in kindergarten through graduate school.

.....

Here are some of the Republicans' hometown projects that sailed through without a hitch:

Yet even in austere times, lawmakers still found ways to get some money steered to hometown projects, many of which were not recommended by Gov. Charlie Crist or state agencies. Some of these projects include:

• $1 million for a Doral park irrigation project requested by Rep. David Rivera and Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla, two Miami Republicans.

• $12 million for a connector road serving a new Panama City airport that has been pushed by Florida's largest private land owner, the St. Joe Company.

• $700,000 to study whether to build a rail line connecting western Miami-Dade County with the city of South Bay.

• $1.2 million to bury electric lines, bicycle paths and sidewalks alongside a state road in Orange County.

• $840,000 for Exponica International, the annual Latin America cultural festival held in Miami. Gov. Crist vetoed money for this event last year.

Senate Republican leader Dan Webster of Winter Garden said he expects Gov. Crist will spot them easily: ''I would suspect that the governor will get most of those'' with vetoes.

And where is Governor Charlie "Sunshine" Crist on all of this?

But Crist predicted no troubles for now. ''Our budgets are so huge, there are nickels that you don't even know are there. There's stuff buried deep, deep, deep,'' he said. ``We've squeezed out some money. I think there's more to be squeezed.''

Dαte continues:

Between the intangibles tax repeal and the various other permanent tax cuts — most of them targeted for specific groups and totaling less than $50 million a year — Bush and Republican lawmakers cut recurring revenues by some $1.8 billion a year. The predictable consequence is where Florida is today — on the verge of hacking away at what was already a flimsy safety net.

This outcome, while predictable, is not inevitable. Gov. Charlie Crist wants to spend some of the $7.8 billion in reserves Bush said he was leaving behind (the figure was illusory, and included such things as Florida's obligations in the Everglades restoration), while House Democrats want to close a $400 million loophole that allows giant, multistate corporations an enormous tax advantage against Florida-only businesses.

Neither of these ideas, though, is likely to happen, because both are based on the premise that such massive cuts to education and social services are bad things to be avoided. Unfortunately for parents of public school children, for the poor and for the abused, the architects of the tax policy that got us here do not accept that premise. In their view, they are on the brink of a long-sought victory. They are not likely to give it up easily.

And Jeb Bush is not through with Florida yet, either. He's blitzing the state newspapers with what he sees as his *justifications* for pushing more of his vicious right wing ideology into our state constitution and into our lives.


Here's his latest screed, condemning the effort by the Board of Governors to retain control over tuition rates at our state's colleges and universities. Jeb thinks that would rob the Governor and Legislature from controlling tuition rates outright. It's all about power of the executive. Jeb wants it. He never relinquished it, even when we pushed him out of office in January, 2007.


And that doesn't even mention the heads Jeb has recently beaten in, over at the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission, to force his religious school vouchers into our constitution in November...



Florida's quality of life is headed for a painful, convulsive death under years of this Republican abuse and starvation of the public coffers.


This poisonous Republican destruction of Florida will linger for many years to come.


Unless we remove every last one of them from office, starting in November. And to force these greed-driven bastards out of power for all time.

[LisaM]

1. Women need to get ultrasounds before getting abortions?

I guess I can look it up, but do you know what that's about?

[seafan]

2. Here

Florida House votes to require ultrasound before all abortions, April 3, 2008


'Welcome to Florida, home of sun, sand, a delusional governor and a heartless Legislature.', April 10, 2008

[LisaM]

4. Thank you.

It's shocking.

[glowing]

3. If they see the baby, guilt will make them change their minds..

most people I have known that have had an abortion had a timing issue, money issue or both..

[seafan]

5. A kick for exposure. n/t

[onethatcares]

6. but we're gonna give CSX whatever the

fuck they want no matter the cost, no matter the liability to the State. I've never, ever seen it this bad here.