The Florida Senate

Florida’s historic $112.1 billion state budget for the upcoming fiscal year, House Bill 5001, the General Appropriations Act, was finalized this afternoon with a final vote. In addition, the Florida Senate today voted on House Bill 7071, a series of long- and short-term sales tax relief initiatives, which will deliver $658 million in broad-based tax savings to families across the state thanks in large part to the federal government providing additional funds that created this historically large budget.
 
Senator Taddeo had this to say: 
“Florida's budget is our state's value statement, and while this budget spends a record amount of money, Tallahassee Republicans failed to address the real struggles everyday Floridians are facing.
 
Florida has quickly become one the most unaffordable states to live in the country. We have an affordable housing crisis, skyrocketing property insurance rates, and a crumbling infrastructure. We had a chance to invest in critical infrastructure, widening and fixing our roads, expanding our ports, modernizing our schools - and to use the extra COVID money from President Biden to make healthcare finally affordable for millions of hardworking Floridians, and to provide meaningful and direct relief to Floridians.
 
Instead, Governor DeSantis and his minions in the legislature engaged in culture wars, focused not on making hard times better for Floridians, but instead on Republican primary voters who live in Iowa and New Hampshire - going so far as to make it illegal for undocumented refugees fleeing the terror of communism and socialism, or even the wars of Ukraine to come to Florida. And through it all, they did protect one winner: Vladimir Putin, by rejecting efforts to withdraw Florida's pension investments in Russian owned companies.
 
This session was a generational opportunity for real change in Florida, to focus not only on meeting the needs of today for families who are struggling, but to set up Florida to be a global economic leader for generations to come. Instead, this legislature fiddled at the knee of a Governor whose eyes are solely focused on winning Republican primary voters for the Presidency, all while making hard times harder for the families who need help the most.”