Rick Scott: Florida would be better off if public employees could not form unions

Rick Scott is in Washington D.C. this weekend, where he'll join his gubernatorial colleagues for the National Governors' Association Winter meeting.  The 58-year-old newbie chief executive of Florida didn't make the cut for the Sunday morning programs (losing out to Chris Christie, Scott Walker, Mitch Daniels, and apparently other "hot" GOP governors), but he did do the next best thing, Bloomberg TV's "Political Capital with Al Hunt."

On the show, the guv predictably criticizes Barack Obama, but for the rather lame idea that he hasn't cut taxes (forgetting the fact that the president did sign an $858 billion bill in December that stopped an increase in taxes for everyone in the country which would have begun January 1).

With our $14 trillion level,  most economists believe only a combination of cuts in spending and tax increases will seriously address the debt, but of course, tax increases are the last thing that anybody is talking about. Especially Scott, who tells Hunt,  “We still have ridiculously high taxes. We’re walking into a $1.6 trillion deficit.”

Meanwhile, Scott sounds like he's envious of what Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker is doing in the Badger state: busting the public employee unions.  Bloomberg's Julie Hirschfield Davis reports:

He said Florida would be better off if public employees couldn’t form unions and that it’s unfair to taxpayers that state workers don’t contribute to their pensions.

While Florida’s constitution grants state workers the right to unionize and bargain for workplace rights, Scott said, “It’d be great to be able to change it.”

“Our state workers don’t pay for anything into their pension plan. And we can’t afford that — it’s not fair to taxpayers,” Scott said. “If you didn’t have collective bargaining, would it be better for the state? Absolutely.”

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Ohio Governor John Kasich, Republicans who have sought to limit state workers’ union organizing rights, are “absolutely doing the right thing,” Scott said.

This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 2, 2011.