TALHASSEE – Gov. Ron DeSantis generated headlines and praise over the weekend after he announced that Florida was supporting Elon Musk’s efforts by “returning” nearly $900 million to the federal government.
“I saved almost $10 in your taxpayer money,” Musk advertised.
The claim was misleading. Desantis said he was back. One of them was over one year old.
These details were removed from the governor’s Friday night announcement regarding the X. This has been seen 33 million times. In the post, DeSantis said Florida has been trying “for years” to return money to the federal government “for years,” but President Joe Biden’s administration “didn’t even understand how to accept it.”
“Today I met @Elonmusk and the Doge team. I accomplished this on the same day,” Desantis wrote, referring to President Donald Trump’s Office of Government Efficiency.
The Desantis included a screenshot of the top half of the governor’s office memo informing the U.S. Treasury that Florida has “officially returned $878,112,000.00 in taxpayer dollars.”
However, the rest of the notes contains details of what was returned – not released. His spokesperson did not respond to text messages or emails asking for the entire memo.
The Desantis announcement captured the imminent benefits of legislative leaders who are actively creating the proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Approximately $1 billion can become a critical hole, so you need to patch it.
A spokesman for Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, said in a statement Monday that the leaders sought details from DeSantis’ office on Friday.
“This morning we asked again and learned that $878 million is related to two programs, unused federal drawdown agencies for refugees resettlement and carbon reduction,” the spokesman wrote. She noted that Senate officials received information by phone rather than in writing.
A copy of the memo obtained by Times/Herald states that $320 million was “officially rejected” by the Florida Department of Transport in December 2023 as part of Biden’s carbon reduction program. The state has “not yet confirmed” that its funding is being held back, the memo says.
According to the memo, only $49 million was given to the state, which was returned to the federal government via wire transfers.
The funding was part of the Infrastructure Investment and Employment Action Programme that helped the state reduce vehicle emissions. The Florida Department of Children and Families had “returned” the authority to spend $557,725,139 in federal dollars on “financing refugee community service grants.” Federal refugee enrollment programs resettle US people who cannot return safely to their country.
DeSantis was asked for details on Monday during a campaign in Idaho to pass an amendment to the US Constitution that requires Congress to create a balanced budget.
He said “refugee money” was returned to the US Department of Health and Human Services. And about $350 million was to go to the US Department of Transport for a road project attached to DEI and awakened policies.
“We were leading the fight against that,” DeSantis said. “It’s more fashionable to oppose it now.”
DeSantis struggled to tie himself to the masked dog efforts as a team of high-tech billionaires began taking x into the federal spending program in the Trump administration. Desantis announced in February that he was forming his own Doge team to investigate the state government’s waste, but no further details have been made public.
State lawmakers have since delved into spending by his agency and grilled DeSantis officials about their findings.
“If the governor really wanted to be a doge, the budget he submitted to us a few months ago would have been a doge,” R-Miami Rep. Vicki Lopez told reporters last week. “What we’re finding is that Congress is actually making Doge’s efforts.”
DeSantis also refused to return billions of federal relief funding during the pandemic, despite Republicans, including Sen. Rick Scott, who are asking the state to do so.
