KING: We’re back with the candidates for Florida governor: Republican Rick Scott, Democrat Alex Sink.
I want to remind the candidates and myself, because I’m the one who’s been letting it go. We generally agreed to try to keep the answers to a minute, then rebuttal to 30 seconds. I’ve been letting go because I want to you two to have a good conversation. Let’s try to get a little closer to that so we can cover more topics tonight.
Let’s start with the state’s economy — 11.9 percent. It was around 8 percent when President Obama took office. When you travel to other states and you talk to candidates for governor, most of them would say, “There’s only so much I can do,” especially the incumbents, because they talk about the national tide, this national recession. You both have said jobs is your number one priority. You both have said you would do things as governor to improve the climate here.
So, it begs the question — and to you, Mr. Scott, first — if a governor can do things to improve the jobs market, even in a tough national economy, what did Governor Crist fail to do?
SCOTT: OK. First, Alex, you say you always follow the rules, the rule was no one supposed to give us messages during the break, and your campaign did with an iPad, all right, iPod.
So, on the economy, what Crist didn’t do well? What he didn’t do well is he didn’t build business. I mean, if you think about it, the state has to be — you have to create an environment for people who want to build businesses.
The last four years under both Crist and my opponent, here’s what we’ve done: regulations have grown. We’re 45th out of 50 states in regulation. All right? They’ve raised fees. All right?
And they’ve not put any effort into getting people to move to the state. So what they should have been doing in all this time is: you got to reduce regulation, you got to reduce the size of government, you got to focus on the size of government. You got to reduce taxes — my plan is to reduce property tax rates by 19 percent and we’re going to phase out the business tax.
Charlie Crist and my opponent did none of those things. All they did is grow the size of government and is killing jobs. It’s killing jobs. You go across the state, we got the highest — look at what’s happened the last four years. When Charlie Crist has been office and my opponent, we’ve have lost over 800,000 jobs in the last four years. We went from one of the lowest states in unemployment to one of the highest.
KING: Ms. Sink, is he right? Has Governor Crist done things wrong? Or could he have done things proactively to help the jobs climate? And then you can respond to Mr. Scott.
SINK: Let me clarify who has been charge in Tallahassee. It’s been one party, Rick Scott’s party. It’s been Tallahassee insiders who are now supporting his campaign for governor. So, it’s been the governor and a Republican-controlled legislator.
And what I’ve been doing as CFO, I’ve been the outsider in Tallahassee. They are the ones that passed those taxes and those fees, and they are the ones that created this environment that Rick Scott is so critical about. The members of your own party, and they are the people who are supporting you and the reason they are supporting Rick Scott is because they just want the status quo. And I’m tired of it.
SMITH: Let’s — let’s get specific on something —
SMITH: You’ll be facing a $2 billion to $3 billion budget shortfall next year. Your plan calls for giving state employees a raise for the first time in year.
SINK: Adam, that’s not accurate.
SMITH: Is it not on your Web site that you want to give state employees a raise for the first time in years?
SINK: Not in an environment where we have a $2 billion shortfall. It’s not going to be possible.
SMITH: You’re talking about investing in Pre-K, correct?
SINK: Yes.
SMITH: So, how are you going to do this? Given the budget problem we’re facing, how are you going to pay this?
SINK: Thank you forgiving me the opportunity. I have a plan. My plan calls for cutting business taxes for businesses who hire more Floridians so we can stimulate our economy and get people back to work.
I also have a reform plan, from what I’ve seen already — at least $700 million in cuts that I have specifically identified to run government more efficiently. We’ve got $3 billion in Medicaid fraud in the system. We’ve got to get to work on cutting that Medicaid fraud. And, yes, we’re going to have to make some very, very tough decisions once —
SMITH: Today, the federal government awarded —
SINK: Sorry, Adam. But to suggest that I have all of these increases and that taxes are going to be increased is just not in my plan.
SMITH: Today, the federal government awarded another $800 million for the high-speed rail between Tampa and Orlando, more than $1 billion in stimulus money. Would you ax that project?
SCOTT: So, my opponent has — she’s going to increase spending $12.5 billion and going to save $700 million. That’s Obama math. That’s exactly —
SMITH: Are you going to pull the plug on the high-speed rail?
SCOTT: High-speed rail, here’s we have to do: we have — every project we do, we have to get return for taxpayers. So, the way I look at it, on the high-speed rail, if the federal government is going to fund all of it, and there’s no — there’s nothing the state — going to cost the state any money, let’s look at it.
But let’s look at a final feasibility study. Let’s look at exactly what the state is responsible for. But if you’re going to build an office build, you wouldn’t and say, I’m going to go build half of it with the money and wait and see, hopefully, somebody is going to show up with the rest. We shouldn’t be doing that with any projects like rail. Let’s make sure we have all of the money. Let’s do a final feasibility study. Let’s actually look at what the real return is.
KING: So, put it on hold until you have that data?
SCOTT: Absolutely. I mean, you wouldn’t — you wouldn’t go build a building unless you had — you knew exactly, you know, what the plan was. If you had all of the money, why would you do it with high-speed rail?
Now, my opponent wants not only to do that, and but she wants to do it all the way to Miami and has no — she wants to do it. She’s committed to do it. But has no funding mechanism. There’s only one funding mechanism: increase taxes, and that’s what she’ll do.
KING: Let me ask each of you to close this segment out — to reflect on the BP oil spill. And did you learn a lesson from it? Any lesson you may have learned, whether it’s about industry regulation, whether it’s about how a governor shows executive leadership at the time his or her state is challenge. Is there a single lesson that you learned?
SCOTT: Sure. The lesson —
SINK: Are you asking —
KING: You both get — you both get about 30 or 40 seconds on this one. Ladies first.
SINK: Thank you. You seem to ask him all the first questions. But I’m happy to talk about the BP oil spill, because I was critical about the way the Obama administration handled — they just didn’t get on top of the oil spill.
Let me tell you what, the first and most important thing that we learned as Floridians is that to approve drilling in Florida waters which is within 3 to 10 miles of our coastline, would be a horrible idea. We learned that accidents can happen, and an accident like that close into our shores would totally destroy our tourist economy. That’s the biggest lesson I think that we as Floridians learned.
The other lesson is that we saw how much — how dependent we are on our tourist economy. And the first thing I did, when I got myself over to Pensacola, as the CFO, because I understood there are small business who are going to be hurting, and I was just back there the other day and saw a couple of those small businesses, the bait and tackle shop owner and the owner of the tourist shop on the beach who were thanking me and saying that I was the only elected official that really went over there, John, and helped them solve their problems and put money in their hands. Everybody else was just over there for a photo-op.
Leave a Reply