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Associated PressThe proposed budget would cut funding for health care programs while increasing spending on education.
TALLAHASSEE - A nearly $56.6-billion state budget proposal that boosts spending on schools and colleges and gives tax breaks to shoppers and businesses but makes cuts to health care programs for the poor moved through the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday.
A House committee planned to take up its $57.7-billion plan today. Both chambers expect to bring their measures to the floor next week, clearing the way for a joint Senate-House committee to negotiate a compromise plan next month.
Senate President Jim King, R-Jacksonville, defended the cuts to health and human services, saying they had to come from somewhere.
"If not HHS, I'd have to have done it out of education," he said. "With the situation we have moneywise, we've got to make some painful decisions."
Sen. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, said the state didn't have to give businesses a tax break.
"We should not be doing a corporate tax break yet again in a year when we are being asked to make severe budget cuts that will hurt people," she said.
She and other Democrats said they would continue to push for changes next week on the floor. Senators also clearly were looking ahead to the negotiations with the House.
"These discussions will be ongoing," said Sen. Durell Peaden, R-Crestview, as he spoke against an amendment to restore a proposed $31-million cut that would end Medicaid coverage for as many as 7,000 pregnant women.
All told, the Senate budget cuts more than $300-million from health care programs. The committee rejected several amendments Thursday that would have restored cuts to nursing homes, uninsured people with no health insurance and children's health care.
The Senate also is allowing for a $47-million sales tax holiday on clothing and school items and a $138-million tax break for businesses buying equipment.
In education, the Senate boosts per-student spending on public schools by 4.4 percent, increasing the average to $5,741.36. Spending is also increased for community colleges and state universities - but so is tuition. Tuition would climb 5 percent at community colleges, 7.5 percent for undergraduate students from Florida at state universities and 12.5 percent for all other university students.
The committee voted 13-5 against an amendment that would have preserved the current cost-of-living formula used to divide billions of dollars among the state's 67 districts. A change to the formula that is included in the budget will cost more than two dozen districts money, with Miami-Dade facing the biggest potential loss, $27-million.
A fight over a program aimed at deterring kids from smoking was close: An amendment to spend $39-million on the program, which is eliminated in the Senate plan, was defeated on a tie vote of 9-9.
The initiative got by on $1-million in state funding last year after receiving $70-million when first created in 1998 and between $37-million and $44-million annually since. Backers say more money is needed, and fast, for the program to continue making progress.
Sen. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, called it a "moral outrage" that the Senate can't find money for the antismoking program when the state got $414-million this year from tobacco companies to settle the class action lawsuit over the health care costs of ill smokers.
Peaden said the program would be redesigned for the future but that money couldn't be spent on an advertising program in a year when services to people were being cut.