Florida lawmakers are used to facing crushing deadlines when the two-month legislative session lurches toward the finish line.
But prospects of meeting this year’s scheduled May 2 finale may already be dead in the water.
Blistering personal attacks between House Speaker Daniel Perez and Gov. Ron DeSantis, both Republicans, are enflaming an already massive money divide between the House and Senate. But Perez said he is committed to working on finalizing a state budget and tax-cut plan in the session’s closing two weeks.
“I think we have the same mission. We just have different ways of getting there,” Perez told reporters. “But we will find a way to get there. And even if we’re not there today, I have all the faith in the world that we will get there eventually.
Perez kept the door open on overtime or even a special session before next year’s budget takes effect July 1.
Dollar differences are mountainous
The House spending plan is $4.4 billion smaller than the Senate’s $117.4 billion budget and the Senate just rolled out a $2.1 billion tax cut package that is eclipsed by the $5.4 billion reduction promoted by Perez and the House.
The tax-cut bottom lines are different, but so too is the approach.
While the House would cut the state’s 6% sales tax to 5.25%, the Senate relies more on sales tax exemptions and a handful of sales-tax holidays.
Neither plan matches what DeSantis outlined in his February budget recommendation, when he called for $2.2 billion in cuts, including eliminating the business rent tax, which neither the House or Senate does.
He has since also floated the idea of a $5 billion tax cut through sending $1,000-checks to homesteaded property owners. Neither the House nor Senate has embraced that.
But dollars are only one of the divides.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (left), House Speaker Daniel Perez.
Dollar divide enflamed by Hope Florida probe
Perez’s House is investigating Hope Florida, the social services assistance organization close to First Lady Casey DeSantis. Hope Florida funneled $10 million last fall from an unreported settlement to political committees helping the governor fight a marijuana ballot measure, which House leaders say may have been illegal.
That’s antagonized DeSantis, fueling a clash with the House that began in a combative trio of special sessions on immigration before the regular session began in March.
DeSantis has since attacked the House’s tax-cut plan and accused Perez of siding with Democratic-leaning trial lawyers on a host of insurance issues.
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DeSantis now is also ridiculing the House budget proposal’s limits on law enforcement spending, saying Perez and others are out to defund the police. “It’s all a charade. It’s really a pathetic agenda,” DeSantis said.
Perez responded by saying the governor was choosing to “either spew lies” or “not to read the bills or look at (the House) budget.”
DeSantis ‘choosing to be an enemy,’ Perez says
“He is choosing to be an enemy,” Perez said. “I do not want to be his enemy.”
For his part, Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, is casting himself in a different role as the session winds down.
“The idea of brokering peace and building win-wins, those are my expectations of the Senate,” said Albritton, who opened recent remarks to reporters with a biblical citation: “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
Even if lawmakers are somehow able to settle their vast differences by May 2, DeSantis looms. The governor could veto much of their work and call them back into a special session to come up with something closer to what he’s been demanding.
But whether an on-time adjournment is met or not, it looms as a milepost in the continually changing relationship between DeSantis and Republican lawmakers.
Perez, now in the opening months of his two years as speaker, says he’s only beginning to examine the DeSantis administration’s performance and its compliance with state laws, agency oversight and campaign spending.
“The House is definitely trying to restructure and rewrite the way that Tallahassee functions today,” Perez said. “Anything and everything is on the table on what can come before the House in the next year-and-a-half.”
John Kennedy is a reporter in the USA TODAY Network’s Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jkennedy2@gannett.com, or on X at @JKennedyReport.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Clock ticks: Will DeSantis, House brawl derail legislative deadline?
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