April 7 marks the halfway point of Florida’s 2025 Legislative Session and the state House and Senate are poised, this week, to take up their budget proposals, which are currently several billion dollars apart. The Senate’s budget proposal comes to more than $117 billion, while the House has proposed a nearly $113 billion spending plan.
President Donald Trump’s tariff announcement last week and the subsequent plummeting markets may have state lawmakers rethinking their spending plans.
Meanwhile, Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez has been championing a proposal to cut the state’s sales tax rate from 6% to 5.25%, but Governor Ron DeSantis is touting a different idea to cut or even eliminate property taxes.
Other legislative proposals concerning public education spending, gambling regulations, LGBTQ issues, child labor laws, voting, and much more are also advancing through the legislative process.
We’ll check in on the legislative session with context and analysis from our panel of political science experts Roger, Green Ph.D., and Sandra Pavelka, Ph.D. with Florida Gulf Coast University and Aubrey Jewett, Ph.D. with the University of Central Florida.
