What They're Saying About Rick Scott and GOP's Unfinished Business

Rick Scott and the Florida GOP have wasted the legislative session with taxpayer giveaways to the wealthiest special interests — and ignoring the business of expanding opportunity for Florida’s working families.

The Herald Tribune reports that “you can expect about 85 percent of the proposed laws this year to fail.” But why, exactly, did voting rights legislation have to fail? Expanding access to health care? Why did Republicans fail to even vote on raising the minimum wage and equal pay for women? Why is the GOP struggling to pass commonsense legislation allowing Dreamers to pay in-state tuition at Florida colleges?

Here are just some of the answers:   

“Florida legislators enter the final week of their 60-day session with lots of unfinished business”

— AP 

“Politics as usual”

— The Miami Herald 

“For the Florida Legislature, this is the spring of playing it safe….they will leave Tallahassee having ignored the biggest challenges.”

— Tampa Bay Times 

Just when it seemed state lawmakers in Florida were poised to pass a bill that would allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates at the state’s public colleges and universities, a state senator moved to block the bill.

— Huffington Post  

“That should boost [education] spending by about $175 per-student to around $6,935, still below the state’s pre-recession level of $7,126 reached in 2007-08. 

— Palm Beach Post 

“Lawmakers have refused to repeal the 2006 law that let Duke Energy charge taxpayers in advance for a Levy County nuclear project that will never produce electricity.”

— Tampa Bay Times 

“It’s like there is a disconnect,” said House Democratic Leader Perry Thurston, D-Plantation. “The leadership is squabbling over little issues when the big issues aren’t being addressed.”

— AP 

“The Legislature’s politically driven refusal to accept federal money to expand Medicaid leaves $50 billion on the table and puts thousands of lives at risk…It’s an abject failure of responsibility by Florida’s lawmakers for which there is no justification.”

— The Miami Herald 

“Floridians deserve leaders who look further ahead than the next election.”

— Tampa Bay Times