>>Welcome back.
Legislators in Tallahassee wrapped up their regular session
on Friday.
It was a hard year for Democratic lawmakers
because of the super majorities held
by Republicans in both chambers.
I asked House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell
for her thoughts on how the session unfolded.
>>Well, you know, when I think about this session,
if I had to put it in a theme, like wrap it in a big bow,
I would say that it was the anti-free session,
because you had the culture war bills
that really dominated the headlines
and sucked up all the air out of the room.
I'm talking about the six-week abortion ban,
which is as close to an outright ban as possible
because most women don't even know
that they're pregnant at six weeks,
or the Permitless Carry Bill,
which 77% of Floridians, including Republicans
and Democrats said that they didn't want
and they thought it was a bad bill.
Right?
So, rather than focus on the affordability crisis
that Floridians are facing
with respect to property insurance rates,
auto insurance rates,
both of which are the highest in Florida,
highest in the country,
rather than focus on that, we focused on these culture wars,
which didn't do anything
to help Floridians lead a more healthy,
prosperous, or safe life.
>>Why is the legislature engaging
in these culture wars and passing these measures?
>>Well, I think one of the things that makes a difference
is that we have a governor who I anticipate any day now
will be making his announcement
that he intends to seek the Republican nomination
for President in 2024.
And so, all sense of separation of powers
has been wiped away, completely washed away.
I know that there were some of those bills,
where maybe House and Senate leadership
were in lockstep with the governor,
but I also know some of those bad bills they didn't want,
but they had to do it because Ron DeSantis intends
to seek the nomination for President.
And right, now his ambition is what everything centers on.
It's not actually about the people,
it's about what helps him get headlines,
whatever he thinks is going to help him in the polls.
But I gotta tell you, Jim, I don't know
that this is gonna play out how he hopes it will,
nationally.
We are already starting to see some
of his billionaire donors get cold feet
and say they wanna watch and just kind of wait
and see how this thing shakes out because they think
that his policies have been too extreme.
So while, you know, these extremist MAGA policies
might help him in a Republican primary,
they will not play well in the general
for a presidential election.
>>When you say that many of your colleagues
on the Republican side aren't even crazy about these bills,
don't want to go along with it,
are they doing it because they're afraid of the governor
and they're afraid of retribution
if they don't go along with it?
>>I do think that's part of it,
because the governor has demonstrated
that he goes after people or entities
that disagree with him.
And so nobody really wants to be the one to raise their head
because they're afraid that he will lop it off.
All you have to do is look at Disney, right?
Disney is one of Florida's largest employers.
They are a huge economic engine for our state, right?
Florida is a tourism-based economy,
and so we need attractions like Disney
to get people to want to come here
and bring their families and have a nice, safe vacation.
And what does Ron DeSantis do?
The minute that Disney decided to stand up
and say that they don't like the LGBTQ attacks
that he was making with the don't-say-gay bill last year,
he took away Reedy Creek's special district.
He took away their special district,
which had been so instrumental to their growth
and their ability to provide jobs
in the Central Florida area.
Disney then outmaneuvered Governor DeSantis,
and then what does he do?
He sues them, right?
Or he counter sues.
I mean, it's just a mess.
He is very vindictive.
So nobody, I would imagine,
on the Republican side, wants to be the one
to get caught up in his crosshairs.
I think they also have been looking at him
as a bit of a golden child, if you will,
with respect to the Presidential nomination,
at least until recently
when some of them started endorsing Donald Trump,
now that Trump is in the race.
But I think they look at him as their ticket
to getting closer to more power.
And so they want to not ruin that relationship
or go against the governor
because they don't want him coming after them.
>>I do wanna ask you about one bill
that I'm hopeful may have some positive impact.
I know that the Senate President Kathleen Passidomo made one
of her priorities passing a bill on affordable housing,
trying to make some improvements there
to develop more affordable housing.
I think I've asked you this before, but I'll ask again.
Are you optimistic?
Do you think that bill will help
and does more need to be done?
And, if so, what?
>>Well, you know, listen, my caucus and I believe
that every Floridian deserves the freedom
to be healthy, prosperous, and safe.
And it's very difficult to meet those standards
if you don't have housing that you can afford.
So I'm very glad that there was this bill that passed
that provides over $700 million in resources
for affordable housing.
But you probably have heard me be critical
of that bill before, and these are the reasons why.
The first is that it preempts local governments
from being able to do more
for their home communities to assist
with affordable housing.
And the second is that Republicans
have kicked this can down the road for so long,
they're the ones who created the affordability crisis
that we have in Florida right now,
because we have an affordable housing trust fund,
that for years they have used to give corporate giveaways
to big corporations who don't even need those resources.
They should have been investing
in affordable housing all along.
So why $700 plus million might sound like a lot of money,
the reality is that it's a drop in the bucket
compared to how we should have been funding this
as a priority all along.
So yes, I'm glad that it's a step in the right direction,
but people are really feeling the pain.
And so to me, this entire legislative session
should have been focused on property insurance rates,
trying to bring those down, housing affordability,
and lowering healthcare costs,
because that is what people are really dealing with.
Those are the struggles that they face every day.
Nobody wanted these culture war issues.
>>With regard to healthcare, always an important subject,
there was an expansion of KidCare,
trying to bring more children within insurance,
which is a good step,
but still no real movement and no real desire,
it seems like, on the part of your Republican colleagues
to expand Medicaid, you know,
as I think 40 other states have done,
including many very deep red states
to be able to bring a lot of federal dollars back
into the state to cover, you know,
upwards of a million people I think,
who currently don't have insurance.
Still no movement on that, right?
Nobody even contemplates expanding Medicaid
among the Republican side, correct?
>>Yeah, Jim, that's right.
And you know, I really do have to give a shout out
to Robin Bartleman who's a representative
in the Democratic caucus,
who was able to attain that expansion of KidCare
and is going to help so many children across the state
of Florida have the access to healthcare that they need.
So we're very excited about that.
But you're right, Florida is one of only 10 states
that has not expanded Medicaid,
and it's just for political reasons
that they refuse to do it.
You know, PolitiFact recently checked me.
I said that one out of every $3 that Ron DeSantis spends
is from the government, the federal government,
and they fact checked me and said that it was true.
We get so much money from the federal government
to be a part of our budget,
we could actually save general revenue
if we expanded Medicaid because we're already paying
into that federal system
so we might as well draw those dollars down.
So the rationale that they try to give,
the Republicans try to give, to say, "Oh,
we don't want this federal money in our state,"
that's baloney.
We already have federal monies making up 1/3 of our budget.
We need to go ahead and expand Medicaid,
get people the healthcare coverage that they need.
And believe it or not,
it would actually help us save general revenue dollars
from the state tax revenues that we collect
and help our budget to be more balanced.
It's a smart, fiscally responsible move.
Part of the reason why I think they don't do it too
is because they try to keep poverty hidden in Florida.
They try to pretend that it doesn't exist,
but the reality is that people are dealing
with an affordability crisis.
They need access to healthcare
and the Republicans need to move on this issue.
It's past time.
>>Well it's the same thing with unemployment,
the way they work the numbers there.
If you're unemployed for a certain number of weeks,
eventually you just drop off the roles
as if you're no longer being counted as being unemployed,
when in fact, you are, but you've just sort of timed out
from their record keeping.
Am I correct in how I'm describing that?
>>That's right.
And those were some of the changes
that former governor Rick Scott made,
I believe, to have fuzzy math
with respect to unemployment numbers.
And he certainly damaged
our unemployment compensation system,
which was brought to bear in a disastrous way
during the pandemic, when there were so many Floridians
who could not get access
to the unemployment benefits that they had paid
into the system.
>>I know that it's often frustrating to be a Democrat
in either the Florida House or the Florida Senate
when you are dealing with Republican super majorities
and ideas that Democrats have put forth
in recent years often get shoved to the side.
And then suddenly, they find a Republican sponsor
and everyone agrees with it
because it's now a Republican proposing it.
I'm thinking specifically of the legalization
of fentanyl test strips,
which one of your colleagues last year
made a very impassioned, very deliberate case
for trying to make an amendment to a bill
that would legalize fentanyl test strip.
If they're very concerned with the Fentanyl crisis,
you know, you can use these strips to be able
to test something that you think is harmless,
to be able to see if fentanyl has been introduced in it,
which is way a lot of times this happens.
People are ingesting fentanyl
without intending to ingest fentanyl.
So being able to test for it is important.
A Democrat last year proposed it,
Republicans shouted it down.
This year it's passing.
Talk to me a little bit about that,
how they play games like that sometimes.
>>Yeah, strumming my pain with your fingers, Jim.
I'll tell you that that was former Representative,
Democratic Representative Andrew Learned,
from the Tampa Bay area,
who pushed last year to get that policy added on
as an amendment to the bill.
And then this year I'm sitting there
and I listened to the Republicans arguing it.
I was like, "What?
Is this bizzaro world?
What happened?"
Just last year, they were so adamant
that that would be a bad policy, you know?
And so Republicans do this all the time.
They steal our good ideas.
They try to wrap themselves around it.
At the end of the day, what matters most to me
is that the people get helped.
And, you know, we can sort all of that out in messaging
and try to make sure that we get the credit that we need.
But what I've found is that oftentimes,
we will have really good ideas
that they will just try to co-opt and take credit for.
So, that's one of them.
It's happened many times though.
Many, like too many times to count.
>>We'll be right back.