Oct 4, 2007 8:26 am US/Eastern
Special Session: Legislators To Vote On Cuts
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TALLAHASSEE (CBS4) ―
House and Senate committees are expected to vote Thursday on cuts designed to rebalance the state budget due to a billion dollar shortfall in anticipated tax revenues.
"Our Senators are experts in their field," said Senate President Ken Pruitt, a Republican from Port St. Lucie. "So if its education or healthcare, they are taking a scalpel to it. This is not taking a cleaver to it with a slash and burn mentality."
Senate Democratic Leader Steve Geller says his caucus won't support cutting the budget unless majority Republicans agree to consider ending some tax exemptions.
"It is out view that spending cuts are necessary," said Geller, "but you have to examine everything, spending and income, not just the spending."
Republican legislative leaders say that's not going to happen.
When it comes to healthcare spending that could be cut, legislators are debating Medicaid funding that is made available to hospitals for the treatment of immigrants.
"If you have tuberculosis and you are contagious," said Frederica Wilson, a Democrat from Miami, "or you have hepatitis C and you're contagious, and you are an illegal undocumented immigrant, they don't consider that an emergency. Well I consider it an emergency, I consider it a public health threat to everyone in Miami Dade County. So these are the kinds of issues we are dealing with."
Lawmakers will also be taking up the issue of personal injury protection insurance, or PIP, a source of major fraud in South Florida.
"We don't need to extend PIP unless we are going to cut the fraud out," said Republican Senator Rudy Garcia.
Garcia says the insurance industry doesn't want PIP so they can increase their rates.
"That is the key here where South Floridians can be impacted negatively unless we stand up and fight," said Garcia, "we have a huge battle over eliminating the corruption."
Lawmakers do seem to agree on one thing: trying to restore a five percent tuition increase for community colleges and state universities. Governor Crist vetoed the increase, saying students and their families couldn't afford it.
(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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