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Politics

Weekly Roundup: Tough Week in a Tough Year

April 2, 2011 - 6:00pm

Every year as the Senate and House finish up work on their respective budgets someone utters the clich now the real work begins as the two sides of the Capitol prepare for the horse trading of conference.

But if whats to come is the hard work, dont tell that to the people who spent the last week or, for that matter, much of the last month sweating over the individual Senate and House budgets.

Its already been one of the toughest weeks of one of the toughest years in the last decade for lawmakers, who have had to face crowds of people who will be affected by painful budget cuts, state workers who will lose their jobs, and fellow lawmakers who have pleaded there must be another way.

"I wish the decisions were simpler and easier," a tired Senate Budget Chairman J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, lamented this week.

"It's a tough year," said House Appropriations Chairwoman Denise Grimsley, R-Sebring. "We've been forced to make some very tough decisions."

Its already been serious work, so to think that its going to get even more difficult is a bit hard to imagine.

But at the end of this week, as the Senate passed its budget out of its final committee and sent it to the floor with significant differences from the smaller House budget, Grimsley acknowledged that the conference indeed may even be harder.

"It's just going to be tough to try to reconcile our differences, said Grimsley. The chambers are nearly $3 billion apart just in their bottom line, not to mention vast differences in approaches to spending.

The Houses $66.5 billion budget passed its Appropriations Committee on Wednesday and the Senates $70 billion plan was made ready on Thursday for the full chamber. Both chambers plan to bring their respective plans to a vote this week on the floor. One of the main differences in the bottom line amount is what is included. The Senate puts more on the books, folding in, for example, water management district spending, while the House keeps that money separate.

There are big differences such as the Senate relying heavily on significant prison privatization, putting almost one in four prisoners in a private prison, while the House has a more limited privatization plan. In some areas, theyre already in synch: both cut about 5,000 state jobs.

MEDICAID

Five years after it started with a pilot in two counties, the Florida House on Thursday voted to take the states Medicaid privatization experiment statewide, moving a step closer to a dramatically different way of providing health care to the poor by shifting Medicaid patients into managed-care plans.

The Republican-dominated House voted 80-38 along almost straight party lines to approve a bill that sets out a five-year process for overhauling the Medicaid program. Lawmakers for years have desperately tried to find ways to save in the now $20 billion program. Backers said not only would this plan do that, it would be better for patients.

"This bill is about taking a look at where we are today and asking a very simple question: Are you satisfied with the status quo?'' said Health Appropriations Chairman Matt Hudson, R-Naples.

PENSION REFORM

Another sacred cow was tipped this week as the Senate Budget Committee voted in favor of a sweeping pension bill that would ask current employees to pay more and lock future employees out of the defined-benefit plan. Backers of the plan the outline of which was initially pushed by a Democrat lost two Republicans in the final vote. All session, police, teachers and firefighters have been at the Capitol to lament that they are scapegoats for the states fiscal woes and wont happily bear its burden.

DESTINATION UNKNOWN

Meanwhile, the Senate threw in its cards in an effort to provide a new way for gambling interests to get peoples money and send some of it on to the state when backers of destination resort casinos ended their effort to pass a bill to allow five big new attractions based on betting.

STORY OF THE WEEK: The House and Senate budget committees this week bled, sweated and cried out budget plans that now head to the floor. Both have drastic cuts aimed at closing a $3.75 billion shortfall.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"This was one of those decisions that had to be made." -- Rep. Matt Hudson, R-Naples, echoing himself and several others in shrugging off various deep cuts in a year when the budget is out of balance.

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