Budget battles, scandal and party shaking can paralyze the last week of Florida's legislation

After just a few days in the legislative period in 2025, the legislators in Florida stare a legislative traffic jam of the budget gridlock, the political scandal and the management, which make the planned end date look more like a proposal on May 2.

The Republican leaders in the House of Representatives and the Senate are still locked up in a high patient situation, with the expenditure and tax cuts at the center of disagreements. On Monday, the budget negotiations approached without a clear breakthrough in sight.

Chambers are fighting for the top figures that are billions of other-especially for the structure of the tax cuts. The Senate drives a more moderate approach, while the house continues to demand sales tax of 5 billion US dollars.

The spokesman for the House, Danny Perez (R-Mami), did not hide his frustration during the remarks on the ground last Thursday.

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“We attracted 1 billion US dollars to them and they refused to lay a cent on us. The expectation of the Senate seems to be that the house should take the house budget with little changes,” said the spokesman. “This position is not only unacceptable, but also patronizing.”

Senate guides say that progress has been made since then. The chairman of the Senate, Ed Hooper (R-Palm Harbor), confirmed that the upper chamber extended the seventh offer on Monday afternoon. Senate President Ben Albritton (R-Bartow) expressed himself optimistic that a deal could be achieved, but probably only with an extension in the next week.

“I think we'll get closer,” said Hooper. “I mean, you know what the spokesman's priority is and we try to meet him on an affordable number.”

All of this unfolds under the cloud of a continuous scandal over the Hope Florida program. A recent investigation by Rep. Alex Andrade raised serious questions about whether governor Ron Desantis' former chief of staff – now General Prosecutor James Uthmeier – has inappropriately transferred from the Welfare Aid initiative to a political committee.

“As a legislator, we were fully informed at this time what happened to make our own decisions as a legislator,” said Andrade and excluded the lectures. He suggested that wire fraud and money laundering took place.

Both Desantis and Uthmeier contested misconduct and deleted the allegations as politically motivated. Nevertheless, the scandal followed the governor to a public appearance in the conservative goal, where he hecked from critics.

“Hey man, hey man, we have a good thing that is a fraud,” called Desantis back. “You should be ashamed of yourself that you have divided these wrong stories.”

The Democrats quickly criticized the dysfunction.

“Floridians have not renamed the Gulf of Mexico or the laws that protect our children protect the jobs,” rep. Fentrice Driskell (D-TAMPA). “Instead, families in Florida fight with an affordability crisis, which is worse by Trump's economic chaos in Washington, DC …”

But the minority party is also composed of its own turbulence. Senator Jason Pizzo (NPA Hollywood) amazed colleagues by resigning as chairman of the Senate Minister and the Democratic Party became independent.

“Here is the problem, the Democratic Party in Florida is dead, but there are good people who can revive it, but they don't want it to be,” said Pizzo.

Senator Lori Berman (D-Boynton Beach) unexpectedly entered the leadership role and offered a more optimistic assessment.

“I had no idea that this would come. I didn't woke up yesterday morning and thought I would end the day to be the minority leader of the Senate Democrats as a minority leader as Friday.” I actually think that the Caucus is doing really well. We are 10 people. We are really uniform. We call ourselves the stubborn 10. And they know that we were all in a shock state, but we know that we have one more session and we have to join together and work together to end strongly. “

Even if the legislators will soon make a budget agreement, they face a different contestation: Floridas constitutionally prescribed 72-hour “cooling” before a final vote, which means that the deal should be ready by Tuesday in order to postpone on time. This looks practically impossible at this point.