CNN "American Morning" - Transcript

Interview

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HOLMES: Fifteen minutes past the hour now on this AMERICAN MORNING. As we have been reporting, states around this country are flat-out broke. Florida is doing worse than many, $3.6 billion short. The new governor is in place now and he has promised to make government leaner. And he has done that by introducing his plan, his budget, that would cut corporate and property taxes -- also cut spending.

The governor of Florida joins us now, Governor Rick Scott from Tallahassee.

Sir, thank you so much for being here. You got a lot of Tea Party support during the campaign. And you presented this budget proposal in front of a group of Tea Party supporters.

Is it fair of me to call this a Tea Party budget?

GOV. RICK SCOTT (R), FLORIDA: Well, first off, it is cold in the rest of the country. I hope everybody comes and visits Florida. So, we get a lot of new tourists.

No, we -- one thing I'm doing is traveling the state, making sure everybody knows what I'm doing. Not just sitting in the state capitol. So, yesterday, I announced my budget plan, is going to get -- it's a jobs budget. We're going to get our state back to work. That was my whole campaign, seven steps to 700,000 jobs over seven years.

And so, I gave -- I gave my talk to a group, my budget announcement to a group of Tea Party activists, over 1,000 of them in Eustis, Florida, and it was a great event. And I came back and I did the same in the capitol.

But this is -- this is a budget that we're going to watch how we spend money. I'm reducing the size of the state budget by $5 billion. I'm cutting taxes by $2 billion.

HOLMES: Well, Governor --

SCOTT: We're going to get our state back to work.

HOLMES: -- you called this a jobs budget. It's a jobs budget --

SCOTT: Right.

HOLMES: -- that cuts about 8,700 jobs out of the state government. Why was that a necessary step? That's the part that's got a lot of people's attention. You were getting rid of a lot of state workers, a lot of employees, quite frankly, in a state that already has 12 percent unemployment.

SCOTT: Sure. Sure. As you know, a lot of those were vacant positions. But what we've got to do is get the money back into the private sector, give it to you, the taxpayer, you as a businessperson, because you'll go and build private sector jobs.

My focus is on building private sector jobs. We're going to make sure our taxes are low enough that, you know, everybody wants to be in business says we've got do business in Florida, because this is a state that they treat businesspeople better -- lower taxes, less regulation. We need regulation, but only for things we have to have.

So, my focus is jobs, jobs, jobs. I want to be the jobs governor. And that's what I did yesterday, put a jobs budget out.

HOLMES: And, Governor, you said you want to compete with other states. And you want to make your state very attractive to business. Your state already has some of the lower corporate tax rates in the country. Some would argue you're not going to make your state that much more attractive.

So, at a time when you're already at 12 percent unemployment, at a time when you're about $4 billion in the hole, why cut that revenue out at a time you clearly need it?

SCOTT: Well, because -- business people go where they can get the best return. Florida is going to be the place where you get the best return. We're going to have the lowest taxes. We're going to have a governor that understands that businesspeople don't need a bunch of regulation that's killing jobs.

You know, the federal government needs to do the exact same thing. As a country, we've got to reduce our taxes. I'm starting in the state of Florida. But, hopefully, the same thing will happen across the country.

HOLMES: And, Governor, on that point of cutting -- at least the corporate taxes in the state, you're hoping you can get businesses to create jobs. But there are plenty out there, including the CBO, that would say that's not necessarily what's going to get businesses to hire. Even if they -- we're talking about the president yesterday with the -- talking to the Chamber, they're sitting on money. A lot of businesses are. But they're not ready to hire because there's just not the demand for their products.

And in a state at 12 percent unemployment, your people are hurting. They're not necessarily going to run out and start spending their money to spur businesses so they can, therefore, hire. So, is that really going to work?

SCOTT: It's clearly going to work. You know, businesspeople, they want to -- they want to build businesses. They want to add more services, add more jobs. They've got to get a return on their money.

So, if -- we've got -- one of the things we're dealing with in our state is, you know, Obamacare is killing jobs. It's killing jobs all across the state. People are worried about. Fortunately, it was declared unconstitutional. I hope the federal government stops all those taxes.

But, no, reducing taxes puts money back into the private sector, in your pocket. You'll spend the money in a business person's pocket. They'll go take that money and add jobs. That's what my focus is.

This is a jobs budget. We are going to get jobs going in our great state.

HOLMES: Well, sir, I have to ask you as well, let you address, because one part that got people's attention as you were cutting 8,700 jobs, also asking state employees to contribute to their pensions, 5 percent. That's first time that's happened in that state -- one of the few states that hasn't done that actually.

Why is your office, the budget for your office doubling, your governor's office and your increasing staff? Why was that necessary?

SCOTT: Sure. Well, so what we -- first off on the pension plan, I want to make sure we have a viable pension plan. I want to make sure that our state workers know that their pension plan's viable. So, I've asked them to contribute their money to it like they do in most states.

Now, the budget in the governor's office was increased because I moved the Department of Emergency Management to our budget. That's the only reason.

HOLMES: All right. Well, Governor, we appreciate you being here. Many governors having to get creative; some tough decisions are having to be made. But again, your budget's going to have to be approved, though. It doesn't mean all this is going to --

SCOTT: That's right.

HOLMES: -- all your requests are going to get OK'd. But, Governor, thank you so much. Hope to see you down the road.

SCOTT: Sure. I'll come down, nice and sunny down here.

HOLMES: All right. A good spokesman for your state, as well. That's parts of doing business, as well. Thanks so much, Governor.

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