Editor's note: The following remarks are excerpted from Sen. Tom Lee's speech to the Florida Senate Tuesday.
By State Senator Tom Lee
Published May 29, 2003
I can't ignore some of the things that I am seeing as a continuing trend. Because, year after year, we're ignoring some of the realities of our future in favor of what I consider to be political expediency and we're passing along the problems to future leaders and future generations; declaring victory, pretending there isn't a problem, and moving on.
It's embarrassing to me because I'm a businessman and when I ran for the Legislature one of the things that I said is that we should try to apply our business principles to running government. I thought that was appropriate. The reality is that there isn't a human being in this Capitol, not one, who can show you a financial plan for how we're going to build our budget next year, much less two, three, four or five years from now. Not one person, and I've talked to them all.
Now there are people who are going to say, well, you're just looking for more revenue. Well, that's baloney. We continue to make cuts and I'm all about that. Let's find them, you show me where they are, let's build consensus around them, let's make them together. Let's do that. If we can make government smaller, by golly, let's go do it. We can continue to move things and shift them down to local government because we've done some of that; I'll explain to you in a second. And if there are appropriate places for those resources, those liabilities to be redirected, fine; we'll do it together. We can continue to add debt; that's always an option in business. We need to be careful, because we've been doing some of that too, and there's a point at which your debt doesn't become attractive any more to markets. Finally, we, of course, can add new revenue. I really, really believe that ought to be our last-ditch effort.
There are some realities to the things that we've been doing. I think that when we sit here year in and year out and deal with a budget, we forget the big picture of what we've been doing over the last few years.
. . . Remember, the markets were up. . . . things were going well, and we didn't have to make the contributions to our retirement plan that we used to have to make. We took that savings and we did some tax cuts and some other things with it.
We enjoyed a big slug of tobacco money that we spent. At least the recurring portion we spent, but the nonrecurring portion we put away, of course, and we still have that. We have taken $1.26-billion and have spent it on recurring projects. The problem is, when we show up here next year with a billion dollars of new revenue - because hopefully our economy grows as the state grows, and we get new revenue - the first thing that we have to do is buy that money out. It's a zero-sum game for us all over again.
But we're not talking about that. We're going to go home and we're going to say we did it - the fiscally responsible thing - and you know, no one back there really knows but you. We've taken money out of interest, we've taken nonrecurring money out of trust funds to the tune of $840-million and people do know that because they've been taxed for one reason and now we're taking it and spending it another and they are aware of that. We're hearing from them, loud and clear. We're not going to be able to do that forever.
As we have bonded for transportation, public education capital outlay, class size reduction and environmental programs - all good stuff - we have begun to approach our 7 percent statutory ceiling for bonding. We have begun to see some resistance in the markets to additional debt in the state of Florida.
Finally, we have reduced our working capital down to somewhere just above $100-million, that's half or a third of what it ought to be. We have shifted almost $100-million down to local governments. Hip hip hooray!
We have built a budget, but what we've done to build it, we've taken tools out of the tool kit that we have as business people, stewards of this state, trying to run this business, this $52-billion business, we've taken tools out of the tool kit and they're gone forever.
Future leaders, future Senates, future House and Executive branch members will not have the ability to continue playing this game. The day of reckoning is coming.
I want you to know that I truly, truly believe that we ought to be doing everything we can to do to try to limit the size of government. I'm all for that. I really am. I want everyone in earshot of my voice to hear that. I hope that we can find ways to do that again.
I'm going to vote for this budget, but I will say this, I have voted for my last budget. I have voted for my last budget in the state of Florida that's put together with Band-Aids and paper clips, where we put Band-Aids on cancers and ignore the reality of long-term problems. We have got to have a plan. Now there are bright people in this state and there are bright people in this town. We better find a way to get them together for them to build us a road map.
The best thing that you can do for this state, the best thing you can do for people who have programs in this state, is to give them consistency and continuity where they know where they're going to be, where they don't have to ramp up and ramp down. The best thing you can do for business is to establish a long-range financial plan, so that they know what to expect when they make decisions to come or not come to this state.
I don't want to just have a debate on the particulars of this budget . . . I want to fire a flare and ask everyone that has a dog in this fight to please, let's stop solving short-term problems and declare a victory. Let's start providing some long-term solutions for the people of this state. They deserve better . . . .
- Tom Lee, R-Brandon, is chairman of the Senate Rules Committee and the likely successor to the Senate presidency in November 2004. The Senate ordered his speech printed in its Journal for Tuesday, May 27.
