Leaders in House and Senate Agree to $69 Billion Budget

Leaders in the House and Senate agreed to a $69 billion following an 11pm conferencing meeting held on Monday night.

While the final budget was closer to the Senates initial proposal than the Houses first draft of $66 billion and relied on additional Medicaid funding that the House initially resisted, House Speaker Larry Cretul, R-Ocala, was pleased with the final result.

The Florida House pledged to conduct budget negotiations with four principles in mind: ensuring no new taxes; protecting the K-12 education budget from reductions; providing adequate reserves to preserve our AAA bond rating; and preventing the use of uncertain federal monies for operating and programmatic expenses, said Cretul. With the cooperation of our Senate partners, we met those four principles during this exceptionally challenging budget session.

One of the reasons the meeting was so late was Rep. David Rivera, R-Miami, the point man in the House on the budget, was attending a fundraiser for his congressional campaign--a fact that has already drawn fire from Democrats.