The legislative session collapsed Tuesday amid an increasingly bitter budget fight over health-care funding, with the House abruptly adjourning and going home in a move that killed scores of bills and deepened the divide between the House and the Senate.
Meanwhile, Gov. Rick Scott filed suit against the federal government to try to stop the Obama administration from linking $2.2 billion in funding for health-care providers to a potential expansion of Medicaid.
The actions came with little more than two months to go before Scott has to sign a spending plan to keep state government functioning after the new budget year begins July 1.
The Senate has insisted that any budget agreement include a plan to use Medicaid funding to help lower-income Floridians purchase private insurance, but Scott and the House have repeatedly rejected that idea.
In remarks to the House shortly after 1 p.m., Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, said the House had achieved all it could during the regular session and there was no need to continue to work.
It was already clear that lawmakers would not finish their work on the budget, their one constitutionally required annual duty, before the session’s scheduled end Friday. With the House adjourning “sine die” — from the Latin phrase for “without day” — the Legislature will have to return in a special session, instead of simply extending the regular one into the coming weeks.
In remarks to the Senate after the House adjourned, Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, blasted the move.
The Senate continued to work and will come back Wednesday for at least one more day, Gardiner said to a standing ovation.
House Republicans pointed out that the House actually passed more bills this session than the Senate and had spent 24 more hours on the floor than had the Senate.
House Democrats, who have supported the Senate’s plan on health-coverage expansion, said Crisafulli was being immature.
The chambers have been snared for weeks in a complicated showdown over the state’s health-care budget. The state is still waiting to hear back from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on whether the agency will approve a plan to extend the $2.2 billion Low Income Pool, or LIP, program past June 30.
LIP is largely used to cover the expenses of uninsured, low-income Floridians who show up at hospitals needing treatment.
But federal officials and the Senate have said the fate of LIP and the Senate’s $2.8 billion Medicaid-funded expansion plan are linked, while Scott and the House have pushed for the two issues to be separated.
The early adjournment sparked a new round of recriminations about who was responsible for the breakdown. Crisafulli said Tuesday that Gardiner had not let on before the session that the coverage expansion would be a priority.