State Sen. Don Gaetz (R-Niceville) mocked Governor Rick Scott’s efforts to force Florida hospitals to share their revenues with less profitable facilities.
On the radio show “Pensacola Speaks, he said, “When Governor Scott, who as you know made probably hundreds of millions of dollars buying and selling hospitals, said this, my first thought was, ‘What an extraordinary and generous impulse. Clearly, he’s going to make this retroactive’…but apparently not.”
Gaetz chastised the governor for trying to inject socialism into the Florida health care system.
“If you forcibly extract one businesses revenues to give to another business that’s not doing very well, that’s government price controls,” he said. “It’s the kind of stuff– to have that kind of government control over what people can earn and how they dispose of their income–that really brought the Soviet Union into a ‘Going Out of Business’ sale.”
The senator also didn’t agree with the governor telling his departments to expect a continuation budget until the next session.
“We don’t have that in Florida. In Florida, we have a balanced budget provision in our constitution. Continuation budgets; that’s Washington talk,” said Gaetz.
“That’s like saying, ‘We’re going to kick the can down the road because we’re not going to make the tough decision about what to fund, what not to fund, what taxes to cut.’ We’re not that kind of people in Florida,” said he. “Our constitution is clear and the people of Florida have spoken: The legislature has to pass a balanced budget; The governor has the opportunity to sign it or veto it; but we don’t kick the can down the road with a continuing resolution or a continuing budget like they do in Washington.”