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With the 2008 legislative session now behind us, and as I reflect on the past several months, it is clear that the Florida Legislature responsibly stood up to our state’s most difficult economic challenges in decades.
Unlike the U.S. Congress, in Tallahassee we can’t spend money we don’t have. Our state constitution requires us to pass a balanced budget, so we can’t use a "magic credit card" to put paying off today’s expenses onto future generations of Floridians. Even if we weren’t prohibited from doing it, it would be the wrong thing to do.
Keeping one simple principle in mind – that the money government spends is your money, I believe that when the people of Florida have less to spend, government should spend less, too. So when tackling this year’s $66.2 billion budget, a significant reduction from last year, we had a clear choice: either reduce state spending and right-size government to a level Floridians can afford or raise taxes.
And to help share the burden, I even voted to cut my own legislative salary 5% - because we are all in this together.
While working past midnight many nights this session, we finally passed a fiscally responsible balanced budget that prioritizes spending on the core missions of government that Floridians depend on – education, healthcare and public safety. And we did not recklessly spend our reserves, instead utilizing only $350 million from the Lawton Chiles Endowment Fund to ensure that critical healthcare programs for the state’s most vulnerable population were funded.
But this session was not just about getting by. We are still planning ahead for Florida’s future.
We continued our efforts to make Florida affordable again by passing more reforms to help fix our broken property tax system and provide consumers with more protections from skyrocketing property insurance premiums.
We passed comprehensive education reforms to build on our successes for improving student achievement, affordable health insurance plans to provide access to healthcare to address our uninsured crisis, and renewable energy initiatives to promote solar power, ocean-to-energy technology, and non-food based biofuels produced right here in Florida.
As I look outside my window back here at home, the sun has just emerged from behind the clouds and I am optimistic that we can make Florida's future bright again.
Thanks again for taking the time to visit. My door is always open to you and I look forward to your input, ideas and support as we work together to keep Florida on the move!
All my best,
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