State: GOP legislative leaders are bitterly divided on cuts

TALLAHASSEE -- A special session of the Legislature, convened to fix the biggest budget deficit in a decade, resumes today in a storm of anger and uncertainty as top Republicans criticize each other from opposite ends of the Capitol.

Some senators anticipate a political meltdown today in a final blast of name-calling.

That would approach a scenario Gov. Jeb Bush dreaded two weeks ago when he warned of a "train wreck that would make us all look bad."

What Bush sought to convene in a family atmosphere of "shared sacrifice" looks more like a bitter family feud and could put increased pressure on Bush to play the role of mediator -- or to make deeper cuts than legislators wanted.

Nearly two dozen senators caucused at dinner Monday at the Silver Slipper, a capital city institution locally famous for its curtained booths and juicy steaks.

But the main course was House Speaker Tom Feeney and his followers, who were filleted for their surprise decision five days ago to accept a Senate budget with nearly $800-million in cuts while refusing to go along with the Senate's repeal of the latest cut in a tax on investments.

Leading GOP Sens. Lisa Carlton, Jim King, Jack Latvala and Senate President John McKay took turns criticizing the House for flouting a tradition of taking unresolved differences to a joint House-Senate conference committee -- the ultimate in legislative horse-trading where the two sides usually meet in the middle.

Because of term limits, McKay argued, "there tends to be a lack of appreciation for the methodical manner" of sanding off the hard edges at a negotiating table. In retrospect, he conceded, what the House pulled off "was a pretty darn smart thing."

Senators said that by accepting Senate budget cuts without also doing away with a tax cut, the House recklessly forces the state to use a rainy day fund to balance its books.

"You're using the cash reserves of the state to pay for a tax break," said Carlton, R-Sarasota, as fellow senators nodded approvingly. "You don't want to be spending your rainy day money."

Feeney, in effect, called McKay's bluff.

After days of hearing senators verbally draw a line in the sand, and with House Republicans feeling increasingly isolated on the front lines of editorial page criticism, Feeney apparently decided his only solution was to take the Senate at its word.

What the Senate sees as a cynical breach of good faith, Feeney loyalists see as a master stroke.

"My members are tired of playing fire hydrant to the Senate playing dog all the time," Feeney said.

"All we kept hearing was, "You're not going to get us to cut one more dime,"' Feeney's spokeswoman, Kim Stone, recalled Monday night, closely paraphrasing a remark made more than once by Sen. Ron Silver, a leading Senate budget writer. "And that was the message we kept hearing."

With 25 Republicans and 15 Democrats, the Senate is more moderate than the House, as evidenced by the decision among many Senate Republicans to immediately reject any further talk of tax cuts.But the budget clash is philosophical, too.

The House is convinced that the economy will get worse before it gets better, and that it is wiser to make a deeper round of cuts now, a year from the next election. The Senate is more optimistic that a stronger economy is right around the corner, and that unnecessarily harsh cuts would be cruel.

The Senate is scheduled to go into session at 10 a.m. today and the House will convene at 1 p.m. Stone said that as she left work Monday, the House's plan was to pass the Senate budget and to adjourn sine die, Latin for "without day," signaling the end of the session.

With Bush out of town Monday, Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan took on a higher profile, at one point claiming that Bush might have to use his veto power to make deeper cuts than lawmakers wanted.

Brogan also said some senators conceded they did not slash the budget deeply enough. The assertion brought heated denials Monday from Sen. Don Sullivan, R-Seminole, who chairs a Senate budget subcommittee for education. "The implication was that we have too much money for education," Sullivan said. "If a vote had been taken in my committee, I think we would have been happy or wanted more money for education."

-- Knight-Ridder newspapers contributed to this report.

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk