“I think the most ironic piece about his budget is that the governor wants to take $1.2 billion in American Rescue Plan money and use that for the gas tax break,” state Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando) told reporters after the budget announcement. “As the governor continually attacks President Biden, the reality is we could not balance this budget, or give out tax breaks without President Joe Biden.”

DeSantis defended using Biden’s funds by claiming Florida was stiffed in the America Rescue Plan because more money went to states with higher unemployment. That generally meant that states that enforced economic shutdowns during the height of the pandemic received more funds, unlike Florida which locked down only briefly.

“We got the short end of the stick compared to these other states, that’s just the reality,” DeSantis said during a press conference announcing his budget. “They treated Florida worse … as a result of the fact that we had kids in schools and people employed … And, so, you had much better results in terms of money you were getting if you pursued those other policies.”

Other budget requests

Beyond the fuel tax holiday, DeSantis also wants to use federal cash to fund $500 million to spend on Resilient Florida, an environmental grant fund lawmakers created last year. DeSantis is also seeking nearly $440 million to pay for $1,000 retention bonuses for teachers, first responders and law enforcement and $100 million for the Job Growth Grant Fund, a pot of economic development funding the governor has control over. DeSantis highlighted most of these proposals at press conferences in recent weeks.

The governor is also seeking $8.8 million in federal funds to create a program in his administration that would “assist the state’s efforts to protect against the harms resulting from illegal immigration.” DeSantis has consistently criticized the Biden administration over its immigration policies.

The budget must get approval from the GOP-dominated Florida Legislature.

DeSantis also highlighted that he wants to sock away a record $15 billion in various state reserve funds, including $10 billion in general revenue, which is the most flexible pot of funding. DeSantis said the massive reserve fund and the fuel tax cuts are tied to Biden’s “inflationary policies,” a frequent subject of DeSantis’ ire.

“If your income goes up 4 percent and the cost of everything goes up 5 percent, then you’ve actually lost ground,” DeSantis said. “So we are responding to that with what we are going to do with this gas tax holiday.”

Democrats say the massive reserves would be better used to boost affordable housing, expand Medicaid, or to help fill widespread teacher shortages.

“Leaving that in reserves during a time Floridians are struggling … is not a responsible budget,” said state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-Orlando). “I don’t think we have ever had $15 billion in state reserves, which is larger than many other state budgets.”

Law enforcement cash

DeSantis also wants $100 million to create the Florida State Guard, a 200-troop state-level volunteer force under his direct control. DeSantis has said the force would be used to help in emergency situations like hurricanes but faced strong push back from Democrats concerned the governor could misuse the proposed guards.

“This is horrifying,” Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a Democrat running against DeSantis in 2022, said on MSNBC after the proposal was announced earlier this month. “He’s not only forming his own army, but it’s an army that’s not accountable to anybody. Not to the people of our state. Not to the Constitution.”

DeSantis is also seeking to boost pay for new cops by 20 percent and pay for veteran police by 25 percent, while also giving $5,000 signing bonuses to every police recruit in Florida that is new to law enforcement. Lawmakers haven’t approved the plan but DeSantis has already taken credit for convincing dozens of police officers to move to Florida from New York — a Democratically-run state that Florida Republicans frequently criticize. Some of the officers who DeSantis touted during a September press conference came to Florida with significant prior disciplinary records, reported Fresh Take Florida.

DeSantis has signaled that a focus on supporting law enforcement will be a key part of his proposed budget as well as a political cudgel to whack Democrats as the midterms get going. During his budget press conference on Thursday, he brought up legislation he pushed for last year that, among many other things, made it more difficult for local governments to cut police budgets — a direct shot at the so-called defund the police movement touted by some progressive Democrats.

“We are not defunding police, I think all of them [Democrats] voted against our anti-riot bill that had a provision that said we are not going to allow local governments to defund law enforcement,” DeSantis said Thursday. “That was a very critical test of where you stand on that, and they stood on the side of defunding.”

Andrew Atterbury and Arek Sarkissian contributed to this report.

Schumer called the Thursday vote “a crucial” step to “avoiding the prospect of a catastrophic, calamitous default on our sovereign debt.”

“This is the responsible path forward — no brinksmanship, no default on the debt, no risk of another recession,” Schumer said on the floor before the procedural vote. “We still have a few more steps to take before we completely resolve this matter, but I’m optimistic that after today’s vote, we’ll be on a glide path to avoid a catastrophic default.”

While Democrats have yet to divulge a dollar amount for the new debt ceiling they plan to set, the cap is expected to exceed $30 trillion, to ensure Congress won’t need to act again until after the midterm elections next year.

“It will be a shock to the system for everybody — and anybody in the country who really can grasp a trillion dollars,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said about the final vote Democrats are prepared to shoulder alone.

After months of partisan gridlock over raising the nation’s cap on borrowed cash, the vote would finally put Congress on track to thwarting a default. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has maintained that such a catastrophe could hit as early as next Wednesday, when the Biden administration needs to send $118 billion to the nation’s highway fund as a condition of the bipartisan infrastructure package the president signed into law last month.

The U.S. government has never before defaulted, but economists warn that failure would stun the global economy and undermine the United States’ reputation as a reliable debtor.

McConnell’s agreement to facilitate the workaround to the filibuster is seen as a rare bipartisan assist, even though Senate Republicans don’t plan to offer any GOP votes of support on the follow-up bill that would hike the debt ceiling.

While many Republican lawmakers slammed McConnell this week for negotiating what they say is a bad deal, the truce accomplishes two of the main conditions the minority leader has demanded all year. The Kentucky Republican repeatedly insisted Democrats vote alone on that increase, albeit through the budget reconciliation process the majority party is using to advance Biden’s social spending package. McConnell also wanted Democrats to raise the limit to a specific dollar amount, rather than suspending the cap until a certain date.

McConnell is “getting exactly what he wanted,” Blunt said. “In fairness, probably not the way he would have wanted it. But if you achieve the objective, sometimes you aren’t able to do that exactly like you would have preferred to do it.”

On the Senate floor Thursday, Schumer thanked McConnell for working on the agreement. “Our multiple conversations were fruitful, candid, productive,” the majority leader said of his recent debt limit negotiations with his Republican counterpart.

Democrats could have raised the debt limit through the reconciliation process they are using to pass the president’s $1.7 trillion social spending plan without GOP votes. But they were staunchly against doing so, as it would have involved a laborious process that would include dreaded vote-a-ramas, where Republicans could propose unlimited amendments to the bill.

Schumer said Thursday that Democrats have for months been seeking “a simple majority vote to fix the debt ceiling without having to resort to a convoluted, lengthy, and ultimately risky process.”

Democratic leaders have also been loath to couple the president’s spending ambitions with a vote to allow the United States to exceed more than $30 trillion in debt.

McConnell seized on Democrats’ reluctance to conflate the two issues, refusing for months to put up any Republican votes to prevent a default, even though Congress has for decades handled the debt limit through bipartisan votes.

The initial Republican ultimatum “was really designed to drag things out and a prescription for not tackling the public’s business,” Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said this week. “Mitch McConnell is very skilled at advancing his agenda. His agenda from day one has been to prevent Joe Biden from having accomplishments.”

Since the nation’s borrowing limit kicked in more than four months ago, congressional intransigence on the debt ceiling has meant the United States has remained on the brink of default since early August, with a brief reprieve in October when Senate Republicans agreed to approve a few more weeks of leeway by supporting a debt limit increase of $480 billion.

The debt debate feeds into the GOP’s main campaign attack ahead of next year’s midterm elections, as Republican politicians tell voters that Democrats are racking up trillions of dollars in red ink, driving inflation and dampening the economy.

The country’s more than $29 trillion debt was spurred by decades of spending under both parties, however, including $5.5 trillion in debt during Donald Trump’s presidency alone.