{"id":8603,"date":"2011-02-09T13:00:38","date_gmt":"2011-02-09T18:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=8603"},"modified":"2011-02-09T13:00:38","modified_gmt":"2011-02-09T18:00:38","slug":"florida-governor-cuts-budget-modernizes-pensions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/8603\/florida-governor-cuts-budget-modernizes-pensions\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Governor Cuts Budget, Modernizes Pensions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott unveiled his much-anticipated budget proposal on Monday in front of a crowd teeming with Tea Party activists.\u00a0 Slashing $4.6 billion from last year\u2019s budget, Scott takes aim at many sacred cows.\u00a0 <em>AOL News<\/em> lists the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aolnews.com\/2011\/02\/07\/florida-budget-cuts-gov-rick-scotts-most-dramatic-proposals\/\" target=\"_blank\">five most controversial<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>(1)\u00a0\u00a0 10% cut in education spending<\/p>\n<p>(2)\u00a0\u00a0 Eliminating 1,690 jobs from the Department of Corrections<\/p>\n<p>(3)\u00a0\u00a0 An 8,700 overall reduction in the state government workforce<\/p>\n<p>(4)\u00a0\u00a0 Tax cuts worth $4 billion<\/p>\n<p>(5)\u00a0\u00a0 A $4 billion Medicaid reform<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>None of these changes, however, may be as consequential as Scott\u2019s proposal to require state public employees to start contributing 5% of their paychecks to their pensions.\u00a0 If state retirement funds are ever to become solvent the employees who benefit from them will have to put some money in the kitty.\u00a0 Scott also wants to put new state hires into a 401(k)-type retirement system, a shift that would move the state toward a pension system of defined contributions instead of defined benefits.<\/p>\n<p>If Scott is successful in Florida other states might follow suit.\u00a0 For the sake of taxpayers in the Sunshine State and beyond, let\u2019s hope he prevails.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott unveiled his much-anticipated budget proposal on Monday in front of a crowd teeming with Tea Party activists.\u00a0 Slashing $4.6 billion from last year\u2019s budget, Scott takes aim at many sacred cows.\u00a0 AOL News lists the five most controversial: (1)\u00a0\u00a0 10% cut in education spending (2)\u00a0\u00a0 Eliminating 1,690 jobs from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[70,354,232,1588,2377,1236,2376,71],"class_list":["post-8603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-budget","tag-florida","tag-medicaid","tag-pension","tag-public-employee","tag-retirement","tag-rick-scott","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8603"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8607,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8603\/revisions\/8607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}