Florida’s budget crisis is reaching a breaking point.
And now party leaders are desperately scrambling to avoid disaster.
But Ron DeSantis humiliated the Republican Party Chair with this brutal shutdown.
DeSantis rejects Florida GOP’s attempt to play peacemaker
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is known for his no-nonsense approach to politics.
So when Florida Republican Party chair Evan Power proposed a “summit” to resolve the ongoing budget impasse between DeSantis and legislative leaders, the Governor didn’t mince words.
“That’s not the role of the Republican Party of Florida,” DeSantis fired back. “We’re not going to do a dog and pony show. That’s not the way it works. The way it works is: People should do their jobs.”
The unprecedented offer from the state GOP to broker peace through “thoughtful discussion and aligned decision-making” came after House Speaker Daniel Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton ended last week with major budget issues still unresolved.
DeSantis made it clear he saw the whole summit idea as completely unnecessary political theater.
“You don’t need a summit to just keep doing what we’ve been doing,” DeSantis added, dismissing the suggestion outright.
The rejection is particularly stinging for Power, who has been a loyal DeSantis supporter.
Power’s wife even worked for DeSantis’ presidential campaign, and DeSantis personally endorsed Power to run the state Republican Party.
Florida facing potential government shutdown
The stakes couldn’t be higher as Florida could face its first government shutdown in recent history if lawmakers fail to strike a budget deal before July 1, when the new fiscal year begins.
Perez dramatically announced in a memo Friday that a previous budget framework “has blown up.”
He added that the House would “pass a concurrent resolution extending the timeline through the end of June.”
The core dispute centers around a proposed sales tax cut, with DeSantis threatening to veto the House’s preferred approach.
In his own memo, Albritton noted that the House “proposal for an across-the-board sales tax cut would unduly benefit tourists and foreigners and is ‘dead on arrival'” should it be in the final budget.
“An across-the-board sales tax cut of one quarter of one penny is not meaningful, felt, or seen by families and seniors when compared with other available options,” Albritton wrote.
DeSantis blasts House leadership as a “little junta”
DeSantis took the opportunity to deliver a scathing assessment of House leadership, referring to them as a “little junta” with personal agendas.
“Some of these folks in the House leadership, they have a personal agenda. They have vendettas, petty. It’s not being driven by strong policy and they’re trying to really deviate in a variety of ways,” DeSantis stated.
The Governor didn’t stop there.
He added that “the House leadership has kind of careened off course the whole Session” and criticized their stance during the illegal immigration Special Session earlier this year.
“I don’t know what got into the water. I think it’s just the leadership is driving these guys in a poor direction. It’s not the direction that their voters wanted. It’s not what they campaigned on,” DeSantis continued.
Despite the rejection, Power remained diplomatic in his response to the Governor’s comments.
“Floridians want historic tax reform and the Republican Party is always ready to help in any way possible to advance the goals of our Republican team,” he said Monday.
But the damage was done.
The Governor had publicly rejected the party chairman’s proposal in the bluntest terms possible.
The House is scheduled to reconvene Tuesday with plans to extend the session into June.
However, the Senate has not yet agreed to this extension, creating yet another point of contention in the increasingly bitter budget battle.
With hurricane season approaching and potential furloughs of state employees looming, the consequences of this political standoff grow more serious by the day.
