TALLAHASSEE
The Florida Constitution requires lawmakers do one thing each year: Pass a new state budget.
But heading into the final week of the 2015 session, no deal is in sight. A $4 billion gap separates the Senate and the House. The impasse is tied to whether to accept some form of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, which the Senate supports and the House and Gov. Rick Scott oppose.
Both sides are firm in their positions. There will not be a budget deal before Friday’s session deadline. And some question whether lawmakers can come to an agreement before the new budget year starts on July 1.
“We are prepared to stay here until June 30,” Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, told his members on Friday.
House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, was equally firm in saying that the House was prepared to negotiate a budget, but that the Senate must drop its plan to provide health insurance to 800,000 low-income Floridians through a Medicaid expansion.
“It’s important for us to separate the policy from the budget,” Crisafulli said. “The fact of the matter is we’re at a point right now where we just have to get past the starting line.”
It has been nearly a quarter-century — go back to 1992 — when a Democrat-led Legislature failed to pass a budget by July 1. And while that remains a real but remote possibility this year, the budget gridlock among the Republican legislative leaders carries significant policy and political implications.
Scott’s call for $673 million in tax cuts — which seemed like a slam dunk in a year with a $1 billion budget surplus — is in jeopardy. The Senate has refused to back any tax cuts until health care funding is resolved. The House has expressed a willingness to pare tax cuts in order to boost health care funding, as long as it doesn’t involve Medicaid expansion.
Scott has said if the lawmakers fail to deliver on tax cuts this year, he will push for a $1 billion cut next year.
If the impasse is pushed into June, lawmakers could face another complication, this from the U.S. Supreme Court. It is expected to decide the fate of federal health insurance exchanges that now provide coverage to 1.6 million Floridians under the Affordable Care Act.
Senate leaders argue that if those Floridians lose their insurance coverage in a federal court ruling, the state would be able to step in if lawmakers back the Senate’s Florida Health Insurance Exchange (FHIX) plan, which uses Medicaid funding to extend private health insurance to low-income residents.
On top of that Florida remains the largest swing state in presidential politics, where health insurance is likely to be a key issue between the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates next year.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Tom Lee, R-Brandon, who has actively tried to find common ground with Scott and House leaders on the health care issues, has warned that there could be implications for the GOP if lawmakers cannot successfully resolve the impasse.
“This damages our party,” he said. “This makes us look like we cannot govern. We cannot work out our differences. And the talk about a big tent is cheap.”
But Lee also said he believed lawmakers would reach a resolution.
“The question is whether or not we will solve it shortterm and kick the can down the road or will we provide a more comprehensive solution,” Lee said.
“I think that is really what is under debate right now.”
A budget deal is also complicated by the fact that a key decision affecting state funding is out of the Legislature’s hands. State officials are waiting for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to decide if a $2.2 billion hospital funding program, known as the low-income pool (LIP), will be renewed.
CMS officials have said Florida’s decision on Medicaid expansion and the future of the LIP program are linked, drawing a lawsuit threat from Scott, who alleges federal officials are trying to “coerce” Florida into a Medicaid expansion.
Senators and others have criticized Scott’s administration for not submitting a formal LIP extension plan, which happened to be the Senate’s proposal, until last week — meaning an official CMS decision is not likely before July 1.
“Our problem is a year ago we knew LIP funding was going to go away yet the governor’s policy was not to believe it and to think, I guess, if he checked the mail every day there would be a $2 billion check sooner or later,” said Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville.
Nonetheless lawmakers say they are hopeful they can at least get an informal indication from CMS before July 1 to let them try to shape a state budget.
But with the Friday session deadline passing without a budget, the pressure for lawmakers to quickly resolve their differences is not as intense.
“I would be impressed if we finish the budget before mid-June,” said Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth. “I really believe that deadlines are what cause people to be able to move. While the deadline for the end of the session is May 1, the real deadline is July 1.”
Despite the deep divide over health care funding, the House-Senate differences do not seem to have had a heavy impact on non-budget legislative issues.
As of Friday, lawmakers had passed 128 bills out of more than 1,500 filed this year, which would give them a shot of reaching the 256 bill mark of last year, with a flurry of activity in the final week.
Rep. Mark Pafford, D-West Palm Beach, leader of the House Democrats, said he believes the absence of a budget, with its local projects and other spending initiatives, will be felt in the final week of the session.
“It affects everything. If you don’t have a budget, everything becomes bait, leverage,” Pafford said. “Everything is becoming part of some larger bargain.”
But as a member of a legislative minority that almost always has its agenda thwarted by the GOP majority, Pafford said the gridlock could be seen a positive force in the last week’s activity.
“It depends on what side you’re on,” he said.
“It might be one of the better years depending on what gets caught up in the hopper and doesn’t come out.”
BUSTING THE BUDGET DEADLINE
• The 1992 Florida Legislature failed to pass a budget by the July 1 start of a new budget year, leaving the state without funding for more than 17 hours.
Gov. Lawton Chiles, who had vetoed two state budget bills advanced by the Legislature, signed the new budget shortly after 5 p.m. on July 1.
Some parks and state offices were closed that day and Chiles had to urge state workers to voluntarily come to work, with the promise of retroactive pay.
• The 2003 Legislature did not approve a budget bill until May 27. It was sent to Gov. Jeb Bush on June 17 and he signed it on June 23, a week before the start of the new budget year.
