JC

Florida’s Voice News ran an upbeat story yesterday headlined, “DeSantis executes early payoff of $400 million in state debt.”

Imagine that. Government paying off its debt.

Yesterday, Florida announced it had just paid off another $400 million of Florida’s debt through the Debt Reduction Program, which was included in the governor’s “Framework for Freedom” budget. Florida’s state debt has now been paid down by over $5 billion since Governor DeSantis took office in 2018. Meanwhile, in Washington D.C. … well, you know.

Even better, despite paying down the debt by hundreds of millions of dollars, Florida’s 2023 budget, passed last month, provided $2.7 billion in tax relief for Floridians, and provided the most funding for education in the state’s history. Florida — one of the largest states in the country — now has the second-lowest debt per capita in America.

And Florida’s financial success was accomplished in spite of — or maybe because of — the pandemic. See, e.g., California.