TALHASSEE — After the Florida House and Senate budget contracts exploded last week, House Speaker Daniel Perez said he was willing to consider other ideas beyond sales tax to reduce state spending.
Perez said he would negotiate, but he criticized the Senate Speaker for “breaking our words” and accused Gov. Ron DeSantis of being “feared” for having a tough conversation.
“The governor has no intention of having a conversation,” Perez said. “There’s no difference between him and the seventh grader in Miami-Dade County.”
Perez’s major sales tax cut plan was at the heart of the fight over Florida’s budget.
On Tuesday, he said the House would “accept all the ideas that will curb the state’s budget.” He said the only idea he ruled out was a proposal from DeSantis to send about $1,000 to Florida property owners for property tax relief.
The fight between lawmakers and other Republican leaders has increased as lawmakers try to hand over budgets to complete the required duties. On Tuesday, the House voted to extend the session until the end of June.
“If the Senate plan is to wait for us, they’ll realize that we won’t move,” Perez said. “We are not threatened and we are not bullied.”
The interim budget agreement brokered last week between Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton when Albritton told Perez he could no longer agree with him.
Earlier in May, Albritton said the Senate would move forward with a $2.8 billion tax relief plan as part of a deal with the Senate.
However, after Desantis said the tax cuts were “dead on arrival,” Albritton said in a memo that he wanted a more targeted cut. He also said the senator in his room had expressed concern about the previous plans.
“I have very strong feelings about the Senate president’s actions,” Perez said Tuesday. “As an elected officer, as an elected officer – our words are our bond.”
In January, Perez and Albritton partnered to push back the governor’s call for a special session of immigration, a rare move for Republican politicians under the DeSantis administration.
But in the next few weeks, DeSantis has focused his criticism primarily on the home, not on the Senate. At newspaper conferences around the state, DeSantis attacked House leaders in a failed attempt.
Perez said he and the governor weren’t spoken for “a rather long time.”
Senator R Palm Harbor, Sen. R Palm Harbor, the Senate Budget Chair, said he believes some of the House budget plans are unsustainable and that Albritton does not want to leave future leaders where taxes need to be raised.
“I don’t think I’m a speaker, whether he admits it or not.
And although the House voted to extend the session until the end of June, Hooper said it believes it can implement the budget by June 6th.
“It’s the game they’re playing,” he said. “They want to put the governor in a position where they have to reject the budget.”
