When Gov. Rick Scott addressed the legislature in his State of the State address, he said that his plan to get Florida working again is working.
But PolitiFact Florida says the governor got it wrong when he said:
"A legacy of taxing and borrowing … crippled the economy we inherited two years ago."
Angie Holan of PolitiFact Florida said, "That statement really caught our attention. We said, what? So we asked the Governor's office for their evidence and they pointed us to increasing debt levels that started years before and went up through the recession. But then we ran the claim by a bunch of economists... and they said not at all. It didn't have anything to do with government taxing and borrowing. The crippled economy was caused by the housing collapse in Florida and the national financial picture. So we rated this false."
In commenting on the governor's State of the State speech, Florida Democrats got an even strong reaction from Politifact's "Truth-O-Meter."
Florida Democrats released a lengthy memo detailing setbacks for job creation under his reign.
In a memo released before the governor's speech, Scott Arceneaux, the part's executive director, said, "After cutting more jobs than he created in Florida in 2012, failing to keep his promise to create 700,000 new jobs and a disastrous election year where the Florida GOP ‘got their teeth kicked in,’ governor Rick Scott is running away from everything he campaigned on to get re-elected."
That part about "cutting more jobs than he created in Florida in 2012" got the Democrats a "Pants On Fire" rating for PolitiFact.
"Did he cut more government jobs than were created in the private sector? The answer is no," said Holan. "The Democrats took numbers from a report in August so they weren't looking at the entire year so this got a "Pants On Fire." It's wrong no matter which way you look at it."
