Senate Minority Office — Speech
Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich on Florida's State of the State
March 8, 2011
Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich (D-Weston)
Democrats’ View of the State of the State
March 8, 2011
Good evening. My name is Nan Rich and I’m the leader of the Florida Senate Democratic Caucus
I’m here tonight to give our views of Florida’s current condition and our hopes for the future.
When Governor Rick Scott was campaigning around the state last summer and fall, his mantra was, “Let’s get to work.”
It was a catchy campaign slogan, that played on people’s desire to get out of the recession, and return to the economic growth we once enjoyed.
But after watching Governor Scott over his first few months in office, many of us can’t help but wonder just who Governor Scott is getting to work for?
With policies that look and sound a lot like the same trickle-down policies of the previous Republican administrations that squeezed budgets for education and health care, while handing out massive tax cuts for the wealthy and big business, it sure doesn’t seem like it’s average Floridians the Governor is working for.
And unfortunately, along with reckless deregulation of financial institutions, these are the same policies that set the stage for the severe economic crisis we now face. Governor Scott’s apparent commitment to follow the same course promises more of the same “voodoo economics” – as the first President Bush once denounced them – and puts all of us at great peril.
Let’s look a little closer.
The collapse of our housing market, Florida’s extraordinarily high unemployment rate and the tight job market dominated by minimum wages were not the result of high corporate income taxes, a lack of tax loopholes, or even public sector salaries or benefits.
The Great Recession was caused by greedy Wall Street insiders who had been largely deregulated and left to their own devices. That’s the same kind of hands-off policy Governor Scott is now seeking for corporations as a way to presumably bring jobs to our state.
He is also proposing requiring state and local government employees to return 5 percent of their salaries into the state pension fund, even though the Florida Retirement System is one of the top performing pension funds in the country.
This isn’t because we’re in danger of being unable to meet our pension obligations, but because Governor Scott wants to give large corporations and other wealthy CEOs more of our tax dollars and eliminate the small share of our tax burden these same corporations currently pay.
Keep in mind, this is after 12 years of Republican rule in Florida that gave these same special interests $19 billion in tax loopholes.
And that $19 billion in tax give-aways has run up our state’s debt to almost $29 billion that Florida taxpayers now owe. That means every single Floridian, even those still in Pampers, are saddled with an annual bill of $1,500 for years to come.
Large corporations do not need more of our tax dollars, as Governor Scott would have us believe. They are already sitting on billions and billions of dollars they are reluctant to put to good use by investing in job creation.
With one of the best business tax climates in the country, we should have one of the lowest unemployment rates and job creation should be booming.
But it’s not. More than 1 million out-of-work Floridians and hundreds of thousands of under-employed Floridians can attest to that.
And while Republican politicians vilify teachers, nurses, firefighters, police officers and other public servants for their hard-earned pensions, they turn a blind eye to the erosion of the middle class and the ever widening gap between average workers and CEO’s who make more in one bonus than their average employee will make in a lifetime.
Floridians, like the rest of America, should be working their way into the middle class, not falling out of it. But that’s what’s going on.
In less than 3 months, Republican Governor Rick Scott singlehandedly jeopardized up to 70,000 jobs by slamming the breaks on moving Florida into a competitive edge by developing high speed rail, and proposing the firing of almost 13,000 front line public servants desperately needed in times like these.
This is not Democrats’ idea of “let’s get to work.” If that’s what Governor Scott means, I say, “Let’s get real.”
Let’s get real by developing a fair tax structure that does not penalize small businesses, but opens more pathways to creating them.
Let’s get real by harnessing the power of government to create or back low interest loans especially geared for small businesses to expand and grow.
Let’s get real by committing tax dollars to community colleges and state universities so that Floridians can learn new skills and future scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs can flourish.
Let’s get real by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, so that goods and people can move quickly and efficiently, and we can put thousands of Floridians back to work in the process.
Let’s get real by keeping well-trained employees who forego high wages to serve the public, many of them in dangerous conditions.
And let’s get real by fulfilling our obligation to preserve the Everglades and all of Florida’s natural treasures that both enrich our quality of life, and make our tourism industry thrive.
Florida has been dealt a crushing blow during this Great Recession. And in difficult times, people suffer, reluctantly relying on government to help where the private sector cannot or will not.
With so many Floridians out of work or in minimum wage jobs, the demands for Medicaid, unemployment assistance and other government services have reached all-time highs.
But rather than make meaningful investments to turn around our economy and reduce our budget gap by getting people back to work, the Republican solutions pit health care against education: our seniors in nursing homes against elementary school students, our desperately ill against teachers, our transplant patients against school books and classrooms.
These are not moral choices. They are a moral disaster.
And that is the state of our state today.
We are at a critical crossroad right now.
Do we continue to follow the same worn out road the Republicans have badly navigated for the past 13 years or do we strike out on a new path that we can all follow to prosperity?
Do we disregard our own needs, our own children’s education, our own public safety, and our own government services so that corporate CEO’s can pass out even bigger bonuses?
Do we accept that the tax burden is ours alone and that large corporations should get a free ride when they use our schools, our highways, our police, our firefighters and our courts?
Or do we demand that hard earned money from hard working Floridians be invested to better our lives and those of our children through something other than minimum wage jobs?
Do we buy into the tea party propaganda and an agenda financed by shadowy right wing billionaires, that public employee unions sap our tax dollars and should be eliminated?
Or do we recognize that unions matter, and that without them, private sector workers will suffer as their CEO’s continue to cash in.
And lastly, as one corrections officer boldly asked the governor, do we finally demand of the wealthy the same sacrifices we have demanded of ourselves?
The 2010 election wasn’t a mandate for right wing values.
It was a mandate for moral values:
- committing our tax dollars to building Florida’s future instead of creating yet more loopholes for big corporations;
- educating our workforce so that businesses that value hard work and good training come to our state;
- reforming regulations that stifle small businesses without sacrificing safety, clean air and clean water;
- and making sure quality care – not HMO profits – is our primary goal when it comes to health care for our children, our seniors, our disabled and our gravely ill
Floridians are known for their determination, and their boundless hope in the face of adversity. If we can build a state from swamps and sand, surely we can rebuild Florida by recognizing our common responsibilities to one another, and the principles of equality, fairness and hard work so that every Floridian has an opportunity to succeed.
These are the values that Democrats have always stood for, and which will continue to guide us as we get to work for all Floridians. Because these are the values that matter.
Thank you and good night.
