Raschein still hopeful about budget prospects as Dems sue to force House back to work
BY TERRY SCHMIDA
As chaos reigned in gridlocked Tallahassee, the Florida Keys’ State Representative Holly Raschein remained confident Monday that a solution could be found to the political stalemate that has stopped work on the state budget.
“For now everybody’s going to take a breather, and a rest period,” said Raschein, a Republican representing the 120th District. “We’ve hit the pause button on the budget, and hopefully after tempers have cooled down, we can restart negotiations. But Monroe County’s requests are still very much in play.”
The legislative session in the House hit the skids three days early last week over a disagreement with the Senate over Medicaid expansion to about 800,000 Floridians. A number of bills involving the state prison system, gambling, medicinal pot, and tax cuts became collateral damage after House Speaker Steve Crisafulli gaveled the session to an unexpected close.
House Democrats called Crisafulli’s gambit “unconscionable,” to which the 51st District Republican replied, “It was the right thing for us to do,” according to the Associated Press.
A state government shutdown could become a reality if the two GOP-controlled chambers can’t hammer out a budget in time for the start of the new fiscal year, on June 30.
Raschein blamed the impasse on the linking of Medicaid expansion to a $1 billion cache of federal cash known as the Low Income Pool, which helps hospitals pick up the tab for uninsured and/or Medicaid patients.
President Obama appears to be using the pool money to extract the Medicaid expansion concession from Gov. Rick Scott who, along with the House, vehemently opposes the idea, and has filed suit against the feds to stop it.
At press time, Raschein was betting that the feds will blink first.
“I think that the federal government is recognizing that Medicaid expansion and the Low Income Pool are two different issues,” she said. “I’m hoping that this can be clarified, and that it can help propel the House and Senate back into budget negotiations.”
At stake for the Keys are tens of millions of dollars in funding for wastewater projects, education, and land conservation, which local politicians and staffers are eager to put to work in the county.
On April 2, a group of disgruntled Dems filed suit to force the legislators back to work. At the same time, Senate President Andy Gardiner publicly considered the possibility of holding a special budget session in June.
“One way or another we have to do something by the end of June,” Raschein said. “It’s a constitutional requirement.
“In all honesty, I’ve been doing this for 15 years, and I’ve never actually seen this kind of thing happen before. I was pretty astonished by my chamber. Hopefully we’ll wise up a bit and move on.”
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