The Best
Legi$lature
Money Can Buy
We have the receipts. We demand a refund.
The Best Legislature Money Can Buy
The DeSantis Legislature’s wasteful spending on corporate tax giveaways and profits cost us our prosperity. Our state dollars should be invested in housing, mass transit, and healthcare. Not corporate donors and personal political ambitions.
We have the money to invest in our communities. Since taking office, Governor Ron DeSantis and his legislative allies have spent more than $5.7 billion in corporate tax giveaways. That’s more than six times what the DeSantis Legislature has invested in affordable housing trust funds. And that’s just from tax policy; this total does not count the incalculable total corporate profits made from dozens of policy bills passed, at the expense of Floridians’ prosperity.
An analysis of political contributions from the recently concluded 2022 legislative session suggests Florida’s Ron DeSantis-dominated Legislature is the best state legislature that money can buy. Though they attempted to distract voters by passing extreme abortion bans, erasing honest history, and attacking gay and transgender Floridians, the DeSantis Legislature spent most of the two-month session supporting tax breaks and other policies that help corporations further pad their profits at the expense of everyday Floridians.
Corporate tax giveaways shift the overall budget burden to working people, while these same corporate donors lobby to cut our wages and benefits, pollute our air and water, and raise our housing costs.
We Have The Receipts
Corporate donors like Big Sugar producers Florida Crystals and U.S. Sugar; electric utility Florida Power & Light; for-profit hospital chain HCA Healthcare; theme-park owner Walt Disney World; health insurer Florida Blue, private-prison operate Geo Group, big-box retailers and low-wage employer Wal-Mart, and big developers like The Vestcor Companies all benefit, while Florida consumers lose.
What have Governor Ron DeSantis and his legislative allies done for you and working families in Florida? All we know is that rents are way too high, property insurance rates have gone up, and we can’t afford to buy a house or even put gas in our car. Instead of prioritizing these issues, what did DeSantis do? He handed out billions of our dollars to his corporate donors, played partisan politics, raised the utility rates for all of us, and refused to act on the housing crisis.
Working people, no matter our race or where we come from, want the same thing. We want a robust public and social infrastructure, good jobs, quality public schools, affordable housing, access to health care, and the social safety net that our families need to be safe, be healthy, and thrive. Working Floridians demand the DeSantis Legislature do their job and demand greedy corporations pay what they owe.
Hard Fought Victories
Yet even the DeSantis Legislature, so beholden to corporate cash, can be held accountable when everyday Floridians expose corporate greed and push back. We can defeat the corporate lobby.
Working together, coalitions of workers, renters, students and advocates were able to stop an attempt by the biggest corporations in the world to permanently cut the state’s corporate income tax – a potentially disastrous policy that would have handed out billions of dollars for the top 1 percent of Florida businesses at the expense of funding for everything from preschool to public transit.
Despite the Governor’s own opposition to the minimum wage increase amendment, the state budget raised the minimum wage for all state employees to $15 an hour, a massive victory workers have been organizing towards for years.
Everyday Floridians stopped the DeSantis Legislature from passing corporate-backed laws that would have slashed wages for government contractors, allowed predatory phony insurance companies and landlords to exploit renters who can’t afford security deposits, and permit apartment developers to convert tens of thousands of affordable housing units into high-priced luxury condominiums.
These are hard-fought victories. But as this session demonstrated, there is still far more work ahead to ensure state leaders serve everyday people, not corporate donors. A Florida where all Floridians can truly be healthy, prosperous and safe.