House budget chief: Senate went back on its word

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A lot of things aren’t clear in overtime of the 2025 Legislative Session after budget negotiations broke down so severely that House Speaker Daniel Perez used explosive terminology — literally — to describe the impasse.

But at least one thing is clear: The House is not happy with the Senate.

Senate budget chief Ed Hooper told Florida Politics Friday — after dueling memos came out from Senate President Ben Albritton and Perez making clear that budget negotiations have broken down — that it’s “a big kerfuffle” and “it’ll get worked out.”

House budget chief Lawrence McClure, meanwhile, told Florida Politics “it’s not a kerfuffle, it’s a re-trade,” adding that the Senate went back on its word.

That’s in reference to Albritton’s promise to bring a House proposal to cut the state sales tax to the Senate floor. The Senate is no longer planning to do so.

McClure is also wondering if the House can trust the Senate at this point. Hooper told Florida Politics Friday that the Senate was working on an offer, and that it could include a business rent tax cut, which is a priority of Perez.

“We look forward to seeing it, but they weren’t able to keep their word on the last deal,” McClure responded. “They constantly changed their mind. So we in the House have to ask ourselves, how can we trust their word?”

The Senate President’s Office said there will not be another Senate offer Friday, but confirmed that “reduction or elimination of the business rent tax has been a component” of some of its offers.

The Senate offered reasoning for its backtrack on the sales tax cut — one many might believe to be a good one. Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this week “expressed concern regarding the tax relief framework,” Albritton wrote in a memo to members Friday, adding that DeSantis lamented that the “across-the-board sales tax cut” proposed by the House “would unduly benefit tourists and foreigners.”

The Governor also called the proposal “dead on arrival,” a suggestion that he would veto it if it hit his desk.

Nevertheless, McClure and the House are sticking to their guns. Asked why House leadership would still push for a tax cut they know will get vetoed, McClure was stern.

“The Speaker and I are men of our word and we will not go back on a deal we made,” he said, again hinting at the Senate President’s departure from previous negotiations.

And while McClure said he wasn’t calling the Governor’s bluff, he offered what sounded like skepticism that DeSantis would follow through.

“The Governor didn’t come out and say he was going to veto the largest tax cut in the history of Florida until after the deal was struck,” he said.

It’s also worth noting that DeSantis and Perez haven’t exactly been friends lately. As it became clear in the waning days of the 60-day Session that a budget deal would not be struck in time, DeSantis didn’t mince words about whose fault he thought it was.

“I think the House’s position has been, ‘Well, you know, the Governor has gotten everything he wants, so whatever he’s for, we’re against.’ And that’s why they’ve been running themselves ragged with this really dysfunctional and unsuccessful House of Representatives this Legislative Session,” DeSantis said at the time.

He echoed those sentiments Friday.

“You have the biggest majorities in the Florida House we’ve ever had for Republicans, and yet the agenda has really been, they’ve been more interested in throwing a lifeline to the Left and attacking me than they have been in doing the work that you sent them there to do,” DeSantis said after Perez’s “blow up” announcement.

So, what comes next?

In his memo, Perez said he would be bringing members back Tuesday to vote on further extending Session, from the current June 6 deadline to the end of the month.

The Senate, according to Hooper, is not doing the same. Without approval from both chambers, the deadline will remain June 6, giving lawmakers just four weeks to get a budget done amid what McClure described as a sense of shock in Tallahassee, and what veteran lawmakers say is historic animosity between the two chambers.

Hooper said he’s confident a deal will be struck in time, because it has to be.

“You stop sending paychecks to employees and they’ll revolt,” he said, referring to a scenario in which a budget isn’t finalized in time for the start of the new fiscal year July 1, which would trigger a government shutdown and leave the state without the ability to pay its bills.

McClure, meanwhile, said the next steps are to just “build a budget that spends Florida taxpayer money in a responsible manner.”

That’s something he’s worried the Senate isn’t taking seriously. He applauded Chairs of budget subcommittees who were tasked with and carried out deep dives into various budget silos to root out waste. He pointed to “hundreds of millions of dollars” in either wasteful spending or just outright loss, including 2,200 Department of Management Services vehicles that are unaccounted for.

“The House is extremely clear on what the problem is: It is generations of legislative leadership that has not cared about the future of Florida with its recurring spending patterns,” he said.

“I would sincerely ask the Florida Senate, do they not believe that approximately 2% of government spending is done inefficiently?”

For now though, time is ticking and a compromise still feels painfully far off.