Opening legislative round: Dems bash GOP on taxes, spending
Mar 4, 2008
Miami Herald–Mar. 04, 2008
BY MARC CAPUTO
Before Day One of the 60-day state lawmaking session began under stormy skies, Democrats sought to make the times even darker for the Republicans who control the Legislature by bashing the conservative chiefs for mismanaging the economy, the state budget and, therefore, Florida’s future.
The Democrats went on the attack hours before the Senate president and House speaker officially rang in the session Tuesday, foreshadowing a tough election-year session in which the minority party is ready to define the Republicans as short-sighted and heartless for pressing ahead with budget cuts to schools and healthcare programs without looking at increasing taxes.
But don’t call that a ”tax-increase” plan, said the Democratic leaders, who characterized their push as a ”tax fairness” discussion about tax ”loopholes” for ”special interests” that the Republicans — especially in the House — don’t want, whether it’s about cigarettes, sales taxes or multistate corporations.
Instead, the Republican leadership is pushing ahead with more than $540 million in budget cuts for this budget year and will shave billions more from next year’s budget by session’s end. The Republicans also don’t want to use so-called ”rainy day” money from a savings fund to plug holes in the budget, saying it will exhaust savings and cause more budget troubles in the future.
The Democrats said they’ll likely vote against both budgets, a political luxury they have because they’re in the minority this election year. House Democratic Leader Dan Gelber of Miami Beach repeatedly said the Republican budget cuts were proof of the ”right-wing orthodoxy” that has blinded the conservatives and helped Democrats win nine seats in the Florida House over the past two years.
”A lot of my colleagues in the House have an automatic reflex as if the idea of tax fairness is something they don’t want to breach. And that’s just a blind obedience to a right-wing orthodoxy that hampers good policy,” he said. “And I think we need to look at good policy.”
Gelber’s proposal: Make multistate corporations pay corporate income taxes they can avoid through a complicated accounting system that allows them to hide Florida income in out-of-state corporations they own. Gelber said the state loses about $400 million yearly this way so that companies like Wal-Mart can escape corporate taxes, while regular Florida companies pay them.
But the idea is likely a nonstarter in the House because Republican legislators there say they’re concerned that any tax increase will hurt the economy even more by raising the cost of goods and services.
”In trying economic times, I don’t think the right thing to do is raise taxes,” said Miami Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera. “Anybody you raise taxes on will pass them on to their customers.”
But that’s a good thing in the case of raising cigarette taxes, said Sen. Nan Rich, who says a $1-a-pack increase will either raise upward of $1 billion for the state’s $69 billion budget or lead to less smoking and thus healthier people. That plan, also, is a likely nonstarter as is a years-old push to eliminate exemptions on sales and use taxes.
Before he was Senate president, Sen. Ken Pruitt presented such a plan, but it blew up in the House and he says he’s not trying it again. The Democrats avoided mention of the Senate and portrayed the upper chamber, Republican Gov. Charlie Crist and the people of Florida as victims of the financial policies and tax cuts pushed under former Gov. Jeb Bush.
Said Senate Democratic Leader Steve Geller of Cooper City: “They were saying under Gov. Bush that we had to cut taxes so that we had just enough to get by, which sounds great — except that if you cut taxes just enough to get by during the best economy in modern history and then you cannot raise any additional revenues from any source when the economy turns south, well, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that you’re setting yourself structurally not to have enough money to fund government.”