On Friday night, Chris Hudson, the director of the Florida chapter of Americans for Prosperity (AFP), offered his take on the completed special session in Tallahassee, including the $79 billion budget passed by the Legislature and ensuring Medicaid expansion did not go through. 

With the special legislative session ending, Gov. Rick Scott will be hitting cities across the Sunshine State to promote the more than $400 million in tax cuts passed this year. 
 
Scott’s office announced on Friday that the governor will dash across Florida on Monday with scheduled visits to Fort Myers, Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando, Pensacola, St. Petersburg and West Palm Beach to showcase the tax cuts. 
 

While Gov. Rick Scott announced the creation of 16,200 private-sector jobs in May, the state unemployment rate inched up to 5.7 percent. In April, the rate stood at 5.6 percent. 

This week, U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., who sits on the House Budget Committee tried to rally support for the Constitutional Balanced Budget Amendment that he is supporting -- and he pointed to Florida as an example of a government that manages with a balanced budget. 

From his perch as the chairman of the U.S. House National Security Subcommittee, U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., who is running for the U.S. Senate in 2016, announced he will be holding a hearing on how the federal Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) handles major leases. The hearing will be held on Thursday, June 25. 

U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham, D-Fla., broke with the White House and her party on Thursday when she voted to repeal the 2.3 percent tax on medical devices set up by President Barack Obama’s federal health-care law. The repeal passed 280-140 and Graham was a co-sponsor of the measure. 

With the special session of the Florida Legislature poised to end on Friday, Bob McClure, the president and CEO of the James Madison Institute (JMI), a group based in Tallahassee fighting for greater economic and educational opportunities, offered his take on it. 

US. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., introduced the “Free Market Health-care Restoration and Coverage Act of 2015” on Thursday which repeals President Barack Obama’s heath-care law while keeping subsidies until 2017. 

On Thursday, the U.S. House voted to repeal the 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices set up by President Barack Obama’s federal health-care law. The tax was repealed on a 280-140 vote and U.S. Rep. Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., co-sponsored the repeal. 

On Thursday, U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., brought out the “Protecting Taxpayers and Communities from Local Detention Quotas Act.” The bill stops the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from getting “ into contracts that provide specific detention centers with prepaid, guaranteed numbers of detainees each day.” Deutch pointed to reports that at least 15 for-profit detention centers with ICE contracts have quotas.