Educators, seniors and state workers are offering a warning tonight. They say budget cuts proposed by the legislature and the governor would leave the state?s most vulnerable with no where to turn. Lawmakers are looking at cutting nearly four billion dollars from the state budget, but as Whitney Ray tells us opponents of the spending plans says lawmakers can balance the budget without cutting a thing. <\/p>\n

Students, seniors, and service men and women will likely absorb the blunt of the blow from the state budget axe. Florida has 3.75 billion fewer dollars this year than it did last. Lawmakers want to cut spending to fill the gap. <\/p>\n

A group of students, seniors and state workers say there?s a better way. They?ve found five billion dollars in tax breaks given year after year to corporations, investors, and sports teams.<\/p>\n

?Do you see them here justifying why they need to continue to have those subsidies? No you do not. They are done in the name of economic development, let me suggest to you that when we spend money on our Medicaid program it’s the largest economic development program we have in our budget,” said Karen Woodall.<\/p>\n

State lawmakers are looking to cut a billion dollars out of the Medicaid program, a billion from the state pension plan, and more than a billion from education.<\/p>\n

?The proposed cuts in education come after three straight years of reductions. The last two years stimulus dollars protected the basic tools students needed to learn, but now schools say they can?t bend their budgets any more and if theses cuts go through they?ll break the bank.? <\/p>\n

In two separate rallies last week students and education advocates begged lawmakers to spare schools.<\/p>\n

?I understand the budget situation however it’s about priorities,” said Linda Kobert, with FundEducationNow.org. <\/p>\n

Social Service advocates say their plan simply closes tax loopholes that favor the rich. But Republicans say it?s a tax increase, which leaves little chance any of the ideas will be explored. There?s also talk about streamlining the state sales tax code so the state can start collecting sales tax on internet purchases. That plan could bring in as much as two billion dollars a year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Educators, seniors and state workers are offering a warning tonight. They say budget cuts proposed by the legislature and the governor would leave the state?s most vulnerable with no where to turn. Lawmakers are looking at cutting nearly four billion dollars from the state budget, but as Whitney Ray tells us opponents of the spending […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,19,7,13,4,22,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11953"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11953"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11954,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11953\/revisions\/11954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flanews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}