U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, the tea party superstar who took heat from the movement last week for supporting Speaker John Boehner‘s debt-ceiling bill in the House, appears to be leaning toward supporting the accord reached tonight by Boehner, President Obama and Senate leaders.

“I just got off a GOP conference call with House Speaker John Boehner,” West said in a statement released by his office. “During the call, I reviewed a power point presentation highlighting the current debt agreement. This agreement reflects basic framework of the Budget Control Act. I will wait and get clarification from the CBO score, however at this time I believe this is a good plan for the American people. There aren’t any tax hikes and there isn’t a clean raising of the debt limit. It is focused on real spending cuts of the federal government with draconian stop-gap measures to ensure we enact those spending cuts. A balanced budget amendment to the states is also a part of the agreement, which is a huge victory for Americans.”

West used Twitter.com tonight to address likely conservative and tea party resistance to the bipartisan plan. He tweeted: “Before conservatives go criticising this agreement consider what would have happened if Pelosi, Reid and Obama were still in control.”

U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, says he wants more information about potential cuts to defense and security spending before he decides whether to support a bipartisan debt-ceiling compromise.

Rooney said he hopes to talk Monday with House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, R-Calif., and Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., about the impact of potential cuts.

“If they can both live with it, then it would be much easier for me to support it,” said Rooney, who is a member of both committees.

“The very fact that we’re getting cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling is a positive,” Rooney said.

Sen. Marco Rubio on the Senate floor Saturday. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., makes an appearance around the 7:40 mark.

Both of Florida’s U.S. Senators were talking about extremism Saturday as the debt-ceiling drama played out.

Said Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson on MSNBC: “This is the extreme right wing, which had very successful numbers be elected to Congress last year, and that’s been the problem you’ve seen play out over the last four days. Poor old John Boehner, the speaker of the House, he couldn’t round up enough Republican votes to pass his own measure. And so it’s this kind of ideological politics that the people of this country are getting fed up with. But, you know, elections have consequences. And that’s what we’re seeing now. And I think you’ll see the pendulum’s coming back to the center and you’ll see an opposite reaction next election.”

Said Republican Sen. Marco Rubio on the Senate floor a few hours later: “I have heard all these attacks and name-calling. If we had $1 billion for every time I heard the words ‘tea party extremist,’ we could solve this debt problem…Let me read some quotes about this debt limit and I found some pretty extremist quotes.

“Here’s one.

“It says, ‘The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I, therefore, intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt.’ A quote from a tea party extremist, right? No. This is a quote from March 16 of 2006 from Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.”

Gov. Rick Scott won’t be in Houston next week for Texas Gov. Rick Perry‘s prayer event but Florida’s executive-in-chief will make an appearance – on tape.

Scott told reporters on Saturday that he’ll virtually show up for his top rival Perry, who’s considering a bid for president in an already-crowded GOP field.

“I’m not going. I’m sending a short video, just a two or three minute video,” Scott said, adding that he met with Perry within the past two weeks. “I think he thinks it’s going to be a good event so good for him.”

On Thursday, a federal judge issued a ruling giving Perry the go-ahead to participate in The Response, a day of prayer and fasting at Houston’s Reliant Stadium on Saturday. A group of atheists had sued Perry, arguing that the event violated the separation of church and state, but the judge threw out the case, ruling that the group had no standing.

Perry invited other Republican governors, including Scott, to join him in the prayer day but thus far appears to be going solo.

Scott frequently looks to Lone Star state policies as a guide for what Florida should be doing to limit business regulation and encourage job growth. Recently, Scott put his rival on notice after Chief Executive magazine ranked Texas first and Florida third in the nation for doing business.

Scott stopped short of endorsing Perry for president but elaborated on who he thinks will win not only the GOP primary but the general election. His description outlines a candidate who sounds a lot Florida’s self-proclaimed jobs governor, who campaigned on a pledge of bringing 700,000 jobs to the Sunshine State and whose middle name could be construed “jobs, jobs, jobs.”
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With the nation on the brink of a financial crisis, Gov. Rick Scott is holding fast to his objection to raising the federal debt ceiling, maintaining that the federal government needs to tighten its belt.

“They’re not talking about the problem. The problem is we have to control our spending. You can’t be spending almost 50 percent more than we take in. you can’t do it in your household. We’re not doing it in the state. They shouldn’t be doing it in the federal government,” the first-term governor told reporters after a ceremonial bill signing at the mansion Saturday afternoon. “What they’re not thinking about is this is about spending. That’s our problem. We’ve got to get spending under control.”

Pointing to the state’s projected $1 billion in savings, Scott appeared unconcerned about what might happen in Florida if federal lawmakers fail to reach a deal before Aug. 2, when the government runs out of borrowing authority and may be unable to pay some of its bills. A default may impact spending on Social Security, military salaries and college and university loans and could ultimately have a negative effect on municipal bond ratings.

“They haven’t said exactly if they don’t raise the debt ceiling what things they’re not going to pay. You would think they would continue to pay the things that people are relying on, Social Security, make sure our military’s being paid, things like that,” Scott said. “But the nice thing is our state, we have a balanced budget. We are going to have over $1 billion surplus this year, we’re on track to have over a $1 billion surplus and the fact that we’re not borrowing more money.”

The former health-care executive and investor, whose holdings are now in a blind trust, said he was less concerned with what might happen to the value of the U.S. dollar than the long-term threat of continued borrowing.

“I’m worried about spending. If you look at the long-term, if we don’t control our spending, we are going to have an increase in interest rates. That’s what happens to companies. That’s what happens to you. In your own personal life, if you just keep borrowing money eventually no one wants to lend you money unless they want to lend you money at a higher and higher rate,” Scott said.

Some analysts have predicted that the Congressional gridlock over the debt ceiling could cause rating agencies to downgrade the U.S. and municipal markets even if an agreement is reached before Tuesday.

“No one knows because we’ve never done this before, right? We don’t know exactly what raising or not raising the debt ceiling (will do)…But we do know, we do know that if you keep spending more than you take in, it will, long-term, have an impact on interest rates,” Scott said.

Expectant grandfather Gov. Rick Scott, Florida’s self-proclaimed jobs governor, shored up his conservative base Saturday with a ceremonial bill signing of four anti-abortion measures that are already law and went into effect nearly a month ago.

Scott, whose daughter Allison Guimard is five months pregnant with what will be his first grandchild, highlighted a controversial law requiring women to have ultrasounds and opt out of hearing the procedure’s details before getting an abortion. Scott’s predecessor Charlie Crist vetoed a similar bill last year.

“These bills are historic,” Scott told a crowd that included leaders from the Florida Baptist Convention, the Florida Catholic Conference and the Florida Family Policy Council. “It’s the right thing to be doing.”

On the campaign trail and since taking office, Scott has focused his attention on bringing jobs to the state where unemployment remains in the double digits and above the national average. Florida’s unemployment rate has dropped 1.4 percent since the former health care executive took office in January.

But on Saturday at the governor’s mansion, Scott flourished his social conservative side, making it clear that the intent of the measures is to discourage women from having abortions.

“I hope this helps make sure this doesn’t happen in the future,” he said.
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Gov. Rick Scott plans to showcase new restrictions on abortion approved this spring by the Legislature, huddling Saturday at the Governor’s Mansion with representatives of the Florida Catholic Conference, Florida Baptist Convention and Florida Family Policy Council.

Scott’s already signed the measures into law. But Saturday’s event is aimed at touting what those opposed to abortion rights say was a milestone year.

“I think it’s a great idea,” said John Stemberger, president of the Family Policy Council, who plans to attend Saturday’s ceremonial bill signings. “Over the past 15 years, we’ve taken small steps, passing different pieces of legislation. But to have five major reforms pass as we did this year, I’d say that’s pretty big.”

The legislation divided lawmakers, with most Democrats opposing the measures. Among the most disputed was, legislation requiring a woman seeking an abortion to undergo ultrasound and be given a chance to view the results.

The sweep of abortion legislation prompted Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando, to quip at one point during session that since ruling Republicans were so opposed to government regulation for business, his wife should “incorporate her uterus” to be left alone.

Randolph was admonished by House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, for the remark, that later drew nationwide attention. 

 During the session, parental notice requirements were toughened for minors seeking abortions, while another measure barred insurance companies from covering abortions under the new federal health care overhaul. Changes also were approved that allow dollars from Choose Life license tags to be distributed statewide to Choose Life, Inc., which counsels against abortion.

A proposed constitutional amendment for the 2012 ballot bans public tax dollars from going to abortions — mirroring an already existing federal ban. But the measure also would exempt abortion from Florida’s strong constitutional privacy provision — a standard that has scuttled previous legislative attempts at abortion restrictions.

 Stemberger said he wasn’t sure if Scott would use Saturday’s event to call for more action by next year’s Legislature. Among the measures that failed to advance this year were those similar to a law approved by Nebraska in 2010 which restricted abortions after 20 weeks because opponents maintain a fetus can feel pain at that point.

U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, has doused suggestions from admirers that he run for president or vice president in 2012. But West struck a presidential tone this evening in explaining his support for Speaker John Boehner‘s debt-ceiling plan, which just passed on a 218-210 vote.

West, who drew fire from many of his tea party allies for coming out early and vociferously for the Boehner plan, wrote what his office called “a letter to the American people” and begins it with “My Fellow Americans.”

Click here to read the letter.

Spokeswoman Angela Sachitano explained that West “has got calls from all over the country the last two days and he felt the need to be a voice on this to everyone.”

Three years of speaking on behalf of the Florida Democratic Party, apparently is enough for Eric Jotkoff.

The state party spokesman said Friday that he plans to put aside his Blackberry for a while before moving onto the next opportunity. Jotkoff’s replacement is expected to be named Monday, said the departing spokesman, who plans to stay on another couple weeks.

Jotkoff served under two party chairs, Karen Thurman and her successor, Rod Smith. He also was a Smith spokesman when the former Alachua state senator ran for governor in 2006.

Quick with the quote, tweet or email, Jotkoff on Friday fondly recalled Democratic successes with the Obama campaign in Florida, and Republican missteps with disgraced former House Speaker Ray Sansom and criminally charged ex-GOP chairman Jim Greer.

“Over the next few weeks, I will be taking some time off to relax and recharge before announcing my future plans. I look forward to spending several weeks without having my Blackberry basically surgically attached to my hand because I won’t need to respond to the scandal de jour,” Jotkoff’s wrote in signing off.

 

Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater’s office has blocked a payment to cover the costs of the funeral of Eric Perez, the 18-year-old who died while in state custody in a Palm Beach County juvenile detention facility on July 10.

The Department of Juvenile Justice had promised to pay $5,000 towards the cost of Perez’ funeral, as it has done twice before in the past two years.

Atwater, in charge of the state’s check book, had gone so far as to print a $5,000 check for Tillman Funeral Home in West Palm Beach on July 13.

But before DJJ officials released it to the funeral home, Atwater’s office asked that the money be returned.

“Since the agency does not have statutory authority to make the payment, we are requesting a warrant cancellation for the following vendor payment,” Mark Merry, head of the Department of Financial Services auditing department, wrote to DJJ in an e-mail on Tuesday.

DJJ has had a policy of paying up to $5,000 towards funeral costs for children who die in their custody since 2008, department spokesman C.J. Drake said. Since then, the department has twice paid families the maximum amount – once in November 2008 and again in January 2009.

Discussions are now underway between the two agencies about how the payment can be made, Drake said.

“So far everyone’s been very cooperative and agreeable. We just have to resolve it. I’m confident that we’re going to make the payment,” he said.

Secretary of State Kurt Browning has asked a federal court to approve Florida’s new election law, sidestepping the U.S. Justice Department on the most controversial portions of the voting overhaul approved by the GOP-dominated legislature in May and signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott.

Critics of the new law say it is designed to make registering to vote and casting ballots more difficult for minorities and low-income voters, who typically vote Democratic. The ACLU and other groups are currently challenging the new law in federal court in Miami. Scott, who re-appointed Browning, last week asked the judge in that case to remove him from the lawsuit. Jesse Jackson held rallies in Florida this week protesting the new law.

On Friday, Browning withdrew four portions of the law – including those currently being challenged in federal court – from the preclearance application. Federal approval is required for five Florida counties under the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

In a press release, Browning hinted that the state wouldn’t get a fair evaluation from the Democratic president’s administration.

“The purpose of filing in the federal district court is to ensure that the changes to Florida’s election law are judged on their merits by eliminating the risk of a ruling impacted by outside influence,” Browning said in the release. “Since the passage of HB 1355, we have seen misinformation surrounding the bill increase. By asking a court to rule on certain aspects of the bill, we are assured of a neutral evaluation based on the facts.”

Browning had the option of submitting the new law to the Justice Department, the usual method of getting new election laws approved, or a three-judge panel. He originally asked for federal preclearance from Justice officials in June.
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Tea party celebrity and U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, is taking heat from the movement because of his early support for Speaker John Boehner‘s debt-ceiling plan. Tea party leaders targeted West and three other GOP freshmen on Thursday, calling them “defectors” from the fiscally conservative cause.

West, in a radio interview this morning with nationally syndicated conservative talker Laura Ingraham, reiterated his support for Boehner’s plan.

“If they want to bring forth a primary challenge, then so be it,” West said of miffed tea partyers.

“I’m going to stand with this Boehner plan and once again, if the folks who one minute they’re saying that I’m their ‘tea party hero’ and what, three or four days later ‘I’m a tea party defector.’ That kind of schizophrenia, I’m not going to get involved in it.”

Ingraham told West that “you’re being hit by the very people who should be at your side.”

U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, says he’ll support a revised debt-ceiling plan offered by Speaker John Boehner after Boehner today added a requirement that Congress pass a balanced budget constitutional amendment and send it to the states for ratification before the debt limit could be raised in the future.

Rooney had not announced a position on Boehner’s plan before today. A scheduled vote on Boehner’s original plan was put off Wednesday and again Thursday because of resistance from some House Republicans.

Says Rooney: “Attaching a balanced budget amendment sends a message to the American people that we’re listening to them, and we’re serious about tackling Washington’s debt problem. A balanced budget amendment is the type of meaningful reform we need to prevent another debt ceiling crisis like we face today…It’s time for the President and Senate Democrats to stop finger-pointing and act. The onus is on the President and Democrats in the Senate to explain why they oppose balancing the budget.”

A new detail on Gov. Rick Scott’s daily schedule this week raised eyebrows among Capitol watchers.

The first item on his agenda Thursday and Friday called for 6:30 a.m. media briefings. Thursday’s 6:30 a.m. item reads “Review Florida and national news” and Friday’s called for a “Daily media briefing.”

Huh? Since campaigning for governor and even after taking office in January, Scott has insisted he does not read newspapers.

That’s true, spokesman Brian Burgess said. But he does read the NEWS. He gets the news clips compiled by Burgess’ team each morning from FDLE aides, Burgess said.

Scott’s staff put the news run-downs on his schedule to debunk the myth that the first-term governor is unaware of what’s going on in the state and the nation.

“It’s a myth that he doesn’t read news. He just doesn’t pick up a paper and generally avoids ‘political horse race’ stories,” Burgess said. “He focuses on substantive issues and doesn’t care for stories pertaining to political intrigue.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee’s demand today that Democratic House hopeful Lois Frankel return “tainted dollars” from developer Dan Catalfumo produced some quick results — but not the ones the GOP wanted.

Frankel, who hopes to unseat U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, isn’t returning the $5,000 she got from Catalfumo.

But the campaign of U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, will give up $4,600 that Catalfumo contributed in 2008. The money will be given to a home for unwed mothers. Asked why Rooney is returning the Catalfumo cash, a spokesman referred a reporter to the NRCC.

After Frankel accused West of hating women, the NRCC blasted Frankel for accepting contributions from Catalfumo, who was charged with beating his ex-fiancee in a case that ended with a jury finding Catalfumo not guilty in 2005.

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A Central Florida Democrat wants House Speaker Dean Cannon to show how much the chamber is spending as an “intervenor” in the lawsuit filed by a pair of Florida members of Congress seeking to overturn the voter-approved Amendment 6.

Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando, wrote Cannon, R-Winter Park, on Thursday.

“It is apparent that the Florida House—and thereby, the Florida taxpayers—are the ones shouldering the cost of this litigation,” Randolph wrote.  “As a member of the Florida House and a caretaker of Florida’s tax dollars, I find it imperative to be able to tell my constituents how their tax dollars are being used in this litigation.”

The Legislature reported spending $712,287 through June on legal expenses related to redistricting. But the total doesn’t itemize what has been spent on the Amendment 6 challenge, brought by U.S. Reps. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, and Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, who are seeking to have the measure thrown out as unconstitutional by a federal court.

A hearing scheduled for Friday in the matter has been postponed until Sept. 9 before U.S. District  Judge Ursula Ungaro in Miami.

Amendments 5 and 6, which will guide the redrawing of district boundaries for House, Senate and congressional districts, were approved by 63 percent of Florida voters last fall, after a campaign led primarily by Democratic-allied organizations.

Randolph, and most legislative Democrats, have been angered by Cannon’s decision to seek intervention in the challenge to Amendment 6. But the speaker has insisted the move was merely “due diligence” by the chamber, which will be charged with drawing district lines beginning in January.

Democratic congressional candidate Lois Frankel‘s exploitation of Republican U.S. Rep. Allen West‘s dust-up with Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is “quite disturbing,” a GOP spokeswoman says, because one of Frankel’s heavyweight donors was once accused — and found not guilty — of beating his ex-fiancee.

The National Republican Congressional Committee accused Frankel of accepting “tainted dollars” after political blogger Peter Schorsch of SaintPetersblog.com decried the “horrible irony” of Frankel suggesting West contribute to a battered women’s shelter when Frankel had accepted $5,000 in campaign cash from developer Dan Catalfumo.

Catalfumo was charged with aggravated battery after ex-fiancee Heather Hill said he pushed her through a picture frame in 2003, requiring her to get 53 stitches in her back and arm and five staples to close a gash in her head. Catalfumo said Hill fell through the frame.

A jury acquitted Catalfumo in a headline-grabbing 2005 trial.

Said Frankel: “This campaign is about me and Allen West and our country. I am very proud of my record standing up, in this case, for women on these issues….This is going to be Lois Frankel vs. Allen West and it’s not going to be about our contributors.”

Gov. Rick Scott rounded out his administration today, naming three long-time state government workers as agency heads.

The appointments include a holdover from his predecessor Charlie Crist, a long-time legislative staffer and a former aide of his gubernatorial opponent Alex Sink.

Scott made Cynthia Lorenzo’s job as interim director of the Agency for Workforce Innovation permanent. Crist put Lorenzo in charge of the agency that oversees unemployment compensation in 2009. She’s worked in state government for more than six years, serving at the Department of Juvenile Justice and the state transportation department.

Mike Hanson will head up the troubled Agency for Persons with Disabilities, which for years had been running a deficit and at one time had a wait list of more than 18,000 Floridians seeking services. Hanson has been a health care guru for the state for more than three decades, serving under Gov. Jeb Bush and as a policy analyst in both the House and Senate. Most recently, Hanson was the staff director of the Senate’s health and human services budget committee.

Doug Darling, currently the governor’s deputy chief of staff and director of Cabinet affairs, will take over Scott’s new Department of Economic Opportunity. Darling was forced out as a top aide to former Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink – who lost her bid for governor to Scott by a hair – over an audit that found his division lacking in internal controls. Darling also served at the departments of Environmental Protection and Education.

Remember that threatening e-mail and phone call last November that sent all 300 Broward County schools into lockdown and prompted conservative radio talker Joyce Kaufman to turn down the chief-of-staff job for U.S. Rep.-elect Allen West?

The person who sent the original e-mail to Kaufman, it quickly developed, wasn’t a gun-toting tea party member inspired by Kaufman’s remark that “if ballots don’t work, bullets will.” Instead, the e-mail was traced to a Green Party member from across the state in Pasco County named Ellisa Martinez.

Martinez pleaded guilty in May to transmitting a threat through interstate commerce and got a two-year sentence this month. Now she’s telling the Broward New Times her e-mail to Kaufman promising “something big” was meant as “obvious sarcasm based on the recipient’s hateful comments” and was “nothing more than a satire of Mrs. Kaufman’s loose-canon (sic) anti-government gun talk.”

In her two-page letter to the New Times from the Federal Detention Center in Miami, Martinez says she’s a practicing Buddhist and “I don’t support violence as a means of conflict resolution.”

Some big players in the tea party movement are miffed that U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, has come out in favor of a debt-ceiling plan by House Speaker John Boehner that’s too weak for many conservatives.

UPDATE: West defended the Boehner plan in a teleconference with constituents tonight, telling one tea party critic: “Let’s be realistic in our expectations. It takes 5 miles to turn an aircraft carrier around. I can tell you this: We have started that motion.”

Earlier tonight, some Florida tea party leaders got this email: “Guys, What can we do to pull Allen West off of this terrible Boehner debt plan? We only need to peel off 6 House Republicans to kill this Boehner deal. Can we get some tea party calls and office visits going. There is no reason for him to support this deal. Need your help!”

The email was sent by Brendan Steinhauser of FreedomWorks, the Washington-based conservative group that has provided key organizational and strategic help to the tea party movement.

The Boehner plan is expected to come up for a House vote Thursday and faces unclear prospects among Republicans. Steinhauser hopes debt-ceiling plans by Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid fail, which he says would force the Democratic-led Senate to take up the “Cut, Cap and Balance” bill passed by the GOP-led House earlier this month.