House Speaker: ‘Fast is not on the menu this session’

by Christine Sexton, Florida Phoenix
March 4, 2026

With just nine days left in the regularly 2026 legislative session, it appears unlikely the Legislature will accomplish the one thing it’s mandated to do: Pass a budget.

In an availability with reporters Wednesday night, Miami Republican House Speaker Daniel Perez confirmed that the chambers have been at an impasse about how much money the state should spend and how large a tax package to provide.

Perez stopped shy of saying definitively affirming the spending plan for state fiscal year 2026-27 won’t be agreed to, printed, and placed on lawmakers’ desks 72 hours before final passage. The waiting period is a constitutional mandate.

However, the speaker acknowledged that he and Senate President Ben Albritton, a Republican from Bartow, have a “fundamental disagreement on what the budget should look like for the state of Florida.”

The House last month passed a $113.6 billion budget to guide state spending from July 1 through June 30, 2027. The Senate’s proposed budget was $115 billion.

While the budgets are only about $1.4 billion apart, Perez said, the differences have kept the chambers from reaching an agreement on overall spending.

Once the top spending number is agreed to, the chambers have follow-up conversations about how much money should be allocated in various spending areas — education, health care, transportation, running government, providing state employees with health insurance, and more.

“I am concerned with the future of the state of Florida. The three-year outlook is important to me,” Perez said, referencing the economic outlook compiled by top economists who work for the Legislature, the governor’s office, and the Office of Economic and Demographic Research. 

Three-year outlooks don’t predict the overall funding levels of future state budgets. They provide a baseline to help the Legislature properly plan for the state’s coming financial needs.

The most recent outlook, issued in September 2025, showed a projected $3.7 billion surplus for the current fiscal year but deficits for FY 2026-27 and 2027-28.

The projected deficit for FY 26-27, the budget lawmakers are working on now, is more than $1.5 billion and soars to nearly $6.6 billion in FY  27-28.

Perez said that he and Albritton are having discussions about the budget, “it is a very light and short conversation that I wish would move faster.”

The speaker said his conversations with Albritton have focused on spending and not tax reductions.

“We have not had a discussion on the tax cut yet, but that’s also, I’m sure, going to be a most likely — which shouldn’t be this way — most likely, a moment of contention as well,” he added. “We’re going to want a larger tax cut. We’re going to want to make sure that we keep money in people’s pockets. When people get to go work hard and earn some sort of money, that they’re able to keep most of that in their own pocket.”

Perez said the chambers haven’t decided whether to extend the session or to call a special session on the budget.

“We haven’t gotten to that to that point yet,” he said adding, ” Look, it’s, it’s frustrating, of course, you know. But maybe, maybe it’s just the way that I function. I’m just, I’m a pretty fast person. I move pretty quick. And fast is not, it’s not on the menu this session,” he said.

The speaker didn’t offer any insights as to whether the extended or special session would be limited to tax and spending or that legislators will also address substantive policies.

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