Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) promotes Florida’s record at the National Rental Home Council event.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Even though it's Wednesday morning, Wednesday afternoon, I'm still on a little bit of a sugar high from the Gators National Championship on Monday night.
00:08I was there at the Alamo Dome.
00:12So the University of Florida is the only university in America that can claim three basketball national championships and three football national championships.
00:24And so that's a pretty impressive thing to be able to do to be good in both of those over the years.
00:29And we're actually optimistic about the football outlook for the Gators next year.
00:34They're in a tough schedule, tough league.
00:37Now, with this game, so, you know, we live in Tallahassee, which is where the governor's residence is.
00:42And so my kids, I've got a second grader, first grader and a preschooler.
00:46And so this is what they know.
00:48And they're all big time Florida State fans.
00:52And it's gotten to the point and like I'm not pushing them anywhere like because, you know, they can make their own decisions.
00:58But they've really gravitated towards Florida State to the point where they not only root for Florida State, they actively root against the Gators.
01:08And so I told them, you know, we were thinking when Florida made it to Final Four that they were going to play Duke in the championship game.
01:14And I told these kids, I said, guys, you know, with me being governor, you cannot be rooting for Duke against the University of Florida.
01:22And so they all agreed that they would root for the Gators against an out-of-state team.
01:29And so even my kids were on board for that one.
01:31So it was really good that we were able to do that.
01:33For those of you who are from Florida, great to see you.
01:37For those of you who are visiting, one of the things, like I'll go through some of the stuff Florida's done and kind of where we rank now.
01:45And we're proud of those achievements.
01:46But people will ask me, you know, how did you do this?
01:49How did you guys do this?
01:50How come Florida's doing well here?
01:52And part of what I do is I can look at some of these other states, Illinois, New York, some of the others, look what they're doing, and then just do the opposite.
02:02It's a great cheat code to have to make sure that we're doing good policy.
02:06So we in Florida, I mean, part of the thing, so if you look at, like, the rankings, which, you know, they are what they are.
02:13But most of these people that are doing this do not want to rank Florida high if they could do.
02:18Like, their political orientation is a little different.
02:20But we're ranked number one economy two years in a row by CNBC.
02:24Number one education two years in a row by U.S. News.
02:29And then higher education, we've been number one for eight straight years.
02:35We have the lowest tuition, in-state tuition, in the entire country.
02:40And we've not raised it one cent since I've been governor.
02:44We're also number one for new business formations.
02:47We have more new businesses formed in Florida than either California or Texas.
02:53And they have many more people than we do in Florida.
02:56We're 23 million, 23 and a half, California's 38, Texas probably 29.
03:01And yet we've consistently led the country in new business formations.
03:05We're also number one for entrepreneurship, number one for talent development.
03:10We have the lowest crime rate we've had in 50 years.
03:14And our taxes, we have no income tax.
03:18And we have either the lowest or second lowest per capita state tax burden anywhere in the country.
03:24And one of the things we've decided to do is to pay down our state's debt.
03:30So if you go, Florida's been a state for 180 years.
03:33If you take all the debt that's been accumulated, just since I've been governor, we've paid off 41% of that.
03:38And we're looking to do more over these next two years.
03:41So we now have the lowest per capita debt of any state in the entire United States.
03:47So what we're doing is actually getting the job done.
03:52I was telling some of the folks earlier, people vote with their feet.
03:56We're a mobile society now.
03:58You know, 100 years ago, it wasn't as easy to just say, I'm going to pick up and move from Michigan to Florida as it is now.
04:04So we've had, particularly since COVID, we've had really sharp contrast between what Florida has done and some of these other states that are our competitors, California, some of the Rust Belt states, New York, New Jersey, and whatnot.
04:20And people were able to see that sharp contrast.
04:23And they've responded by voting with their feet.
04:25And that's really the most powerful indicator that you can have.
04:29So we've led the country in net in migration since I've been governor.
04:33I am not out recruiting people to move to Florida, by the way, because we've got a lot of people.
04:38We have traffic.
04:39There's different things.
04:40But it is a free country, and people can do it if they want to do it.
04:44And over this period of time, there's been more adjusted gross income move into the state of Florida than has ever moved into another state over a similar period of time in all of American history, even adjusted for inflation.
04:57So that's a powerful statement that people are gravitating to the state for quality of life, opportunity.
05:04They want to invest in the state of Florida because they see what we've been able to do.
05:08And if you think about it, I mean, like your industry, we saw this issue a year or two ago start popping up in places like New York and California on these squatters.
05:18You know, they just go in and take over a house, and then you go to try to reclaim your house, and the laws are saying you're the bad guy.
05:28What?
05:28How does that work?
05:29And so, you know, we didn't really have major problems with that in Florida, at least that I could tell.
05:34But I'm like, you know, we've got to put the kibosh on this.
05:37And so we worked with the legislature, got legislation, and we ended the squatter scam in the state of Florida once and for all with signing that legislation.
05:47And that's just what you do.
05:53And that's just some of the things that you have to do.
05:55So we're proud about being proactive and taking on big issues and leading on big issues.
06:02You know, of course, one of the reasons why people gravitated here, we, during COVID, really fought against the prevailing orthodoxy, especially after, you know, four or five weeks when it was clear that what they were saying was not consistent with the data.
06:17And so we said, kids need to be in school.
06:20You know, businesses have a right to operate.
06:22And that was like a big deal compared to where people like Fauci were saying all this stuff.
06:28I mean, you go to some of these resorts around here, a lot of these would have gone out of business had we not done, you know, what we did.
06:35You know, you have like Universal Studios and Disney in these.
06:38They were open in Florida and closed for like a year and a half in California over the similar period of time.
06:43There was no reason they couldn't be open.
06:46But we had to do a stake in the ground.
06:48What we were doing at the time, people look back now and say, oh, yeah, you know, I was with you.
06:53Trust me, most people were not with me then.
06:55It was it was it was controversial.
06:57It was unpopular to be leaning in and doing doing some of these things.
07:01I mean, I remember Fauci, you know, I was I made a big deal.
07:05Like I did an event.
07:06This is probably, you know, three months, four months into covid.
07:09I did an event at a restaurant and I brought all the employees up because he was saying you shouldn't have restaurants open.
07:15You have to eat outdoors, all this stuff.
07:17And I'm bringing the butcher up and the bartender and they're telling their stories about, you know, what the jobs mean to them and everything like that.
07:24And it was it was common sense.
07:27It was the right thing to do to stand by these people.
07:29But what they would do in some of these other areas like Chicago, Fauci's like, you have to eat outdoors.
07:35So what they would do is they would close the streets and they'd set up tables on the sidewalk and outside the restaurants and then serve it.
07:43Now, look, in August in Chicago, I'm sure that's pleasant.
07:45I'm sure it's fine.
07:46It doesn't work in December in Chicago to do that.
07:49So but rather than go indoors, which most rational people would do.
07:54No, no, no.
07:55That's indoor dining.
07:56Fauci said you couldn't do it.
07:57So what would they do?
07:58They would build enclosures around the outdoor tables.
08:02And I'm thinking, like, what difference does that make?
08:04And so you had this insanity reigning.
08:07I remember there'd be people from Chicago.
08:09They'd be doing business together.
08:10But instead of just meeting in Chicago, they'd all fly down to South Florida, go to a restaurant, be normal for a day, do the deal.
08:17Then they'd all fly back.
08:19And we were seeing that.
08:20So we really, I think, planted a flag in the ground to be to be rational, to be evidence based, to make sure that people were able to make the best decisions for themselves.
08:31And that had a huge impact on on Florida's trajectory and our growth and everything that's happened since then.
08:37And we've also been willing to take on big issues with respect to education.
08:43You know, we had a fight with a company that's pretty big in this area about, is it appropriate for these young kids in schools to be having things like gender ideology taught to them, where they're taught that they may have been born in the wrong body.
08:58Their gender's a choice.
09:00Look, as a parent of young kids, I don't want that.
09:04I want the kids to have normal education.
09:05So we had to do battle with them.
09:07And most people, for Florida, no one ever did battle with them.
09:12I mean, they're the 800-pound gorilla.
09:14And I didn't know how it was going to work out.
09:15But quite frankly, I didn't care.
09:17I got to do what I think is right.
09:18So we'd have families moving here because they were concerned about what was going on in the schools and other parts of the country.
09:26I mean, you look at some of the things that drive up costs for people to do business, like excessive litigation.
09:31When I became governor, Florida was viewed as the number one judicial hellhole in the entire country.
09:39Part of it is we had a very activist liberal Supreme Court.
09:43Part of it is we had a lot of sue-first, ask-question-later policies that were involved in the state of Florida.
09:52Interestingly, we had four liberal justices, three nominally conservative justices when I became governor.
09:58But three of the four liberal justices reached mandatory retirement when I got sworn in.
10:04So they were off the court.
10:05So I replaced those three justices my first month in office and basically totally transformed the judiciary.
10:13Because for years, any time you would have something come down the pike, they would always rule on the side of more lawsuits.
10:20And they would always rule on the side of the personal injury lawyers.
10:25That changed.
10:26Now they actually would be willing to apply the law.
10:30And then once we got the courts in order, we had to do major legal and tort reform.
10:35And so that was a huge lift.
10:37It was very difficult to do.
10:38We got that done a couple years ago.
10:40And then what's happened since then?
10:42So 23 was the big tort overhaul legal reform in Florida.
10:46In 2023, auto insurance rates nationwide went up 20%.
10:51In Florida, it went up 20%.
10:53We don't have the best drivers here either.
10:55So it's just the first full year of the tort reform, 24, auto insurance rates nationally went up 20%.
11:03In Florida, it went up 5%.
11:05So we were way under the net.
11:07And part of it is, you know, there's inflation.
11:09It's more expensive due.
11:10So far this year, the rate filings from the major companies, 4.5% decrease on average.
11:17Some have more decrease.
11:19The only reason that's happened is because you did the litigation reform.
11:23Same with the property market.
11:25You know, we've had six major hurricanes in seven years and a period of record national inflation, certainly over the last 30 or 40 years.
11:33Over this period of time, not ideal circumstances, you know, for this market.
11:39But one of the things that was driving costs and instability in Florida was they had these lawsuit provisions to incentivize lawsuits and even get attorneys get money if they win.
11:51And then if they sue you, you don't get anything if you beat them.
11:56And so you had massive numbers of lawsuits to the point we had 78% of all litigation costs for homeowners insurance claims nationwide.
12:05And the majority of that was in Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, which incidentally have not been hit by hurricanes.
12:13Dade a little bit in Irma, but very little relative.
12:17And so that's all, that's a cottage industry, right?
12:19That's designed to benefit those.
12:21So the legislature passed.
12:23I signed reform of that.
12:25So 24, you know, we had the first year of stability in that market than we've had in a long time.
12:31Our premium increases were lower than all 49 other states individually.
12:37And so far this year, you're seeing more stability in all the rate filings that are coming down the pike.
12:42That's with having two major hurricanes in two weeks last year.
12:47You know, five years ago, people would say if this had happened in Florida, that the entire market would have just totally collapsed.
12:53And it's complicated.
12:54There's a lot of other things beyond the control of us.
12:57But the one thing that the policymakers in Florida could control is do we want to incentivize higher costs that get passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices, or do we want to put a stop to that?
13:09And by putting a stop to that, that more than anything else has allowed there to be stability that has finally arrived, you know, in this marketplace.
13:17So those are tough fights.
13:18As a matter of fact, it's interesting because people look to Florida.
13:23Hey, what did you do here?
13:24What did you do there?
13:25People come and they'll try to copy what we've done, even on legal reform, other things.
13:30You know, the Florida House of Representatives right now, they didn't run on any of this.
13:35They're actually trying to undo the legal reforms that we have put in place in the state of Florida that many of them voted for.
13:43And they're now trying to undo it.
13:45Why would they be trying to undo it?
13:47Like, you know, we can point to tangible benefits, and it's because of the influence of the plaintiff's bar and how they push for this stuff.
13:57I think it's a huge mistake for them to flip-flop on legal reform.
14:02I think what they're trying to do will not benefit Floridians.
14:05I think it will raise costs on individuals, consumers, and it will raise costs on businesses, and it is not what they told the voters they would do.
14:15They're basically running for office on the Florida successes, the Florida model, and then they're getting in, and they're trying to undercut that,
14:23thinking that somehow their voters aren't going to know that that's what they're doing, that they're not doing what they were told to do,
14:29what they told voters that they would do.
14:31So it's really, really sad to see, you know, we're not going to let any of this stuff fly.
14:38But the reality is, is, you know, people that look to Florida and say, oh, you know, this is the model we want to do,
14:44just don't understand, this is not hardwired here.
14:48You know, we've had success.
14:50We have momentum.
14:50But there's a lot of people in this political system here who would absolutely want to fritter that away and who would want to return back, you know,
14:59to days when we weren't leading on all these different issues.
15:02And so, look, as long as I'm here, I'm going to be a force, you know, to continue the momentum and to continue to lead.
15:07But that's just what's kind of under the surface here.
15:10So I think that that's something that people should really, really be concerned about.
15:14Now, the outlook for us on education is strong.
15:19The outlook for us on economy is strong.
15:21Now, we're not going to be immune to what's going on with the national economy.
15:25You know, I told people that, you know, after the election, I was like, look, what Biden is handing over to Trump,
15:32you know, we might see a downturn just based on the business cycle, right?
15:35Now you have markets.
15:37There's different things going on with the markets.
15:39So I don't know how that all is going to shake out.
15:41I think, though, Florida's position to, if you go back to the 2008 recession, the Great Recession, we did worse than most other states on that.
15:51We got hit harder because so much of the economy was built up in real estate speculation.
15:57I think this time, because our economy is much more diversified, I don't think that we've had necessarily the same factors that happened leading into that,
16:07that if we do have a slowdown, I think we'll do better than other states around the country.
16:12We're not going to be immune to it, but I think we're positioned to do better.
16:16And from a budget perspective, you know, in the Great Recession, the Florida legislature raised taxes on people, and the governor at the time signed it.
16:24Well, we've quadrupled our state's rainy day fund since I've been governor.
16:28So if you do have a situation where the revenue is not coming in as well, need to plug a hole, you're not going to be doing any raising taxes.
16:34You take a little bit of money from the rainy day fund, plug it in, and you're good to go.
16:39So we're built for the long haul.
16:41We're built really strong.
16:42And I think we're going to be able to weather, if there are storms on the horizon, we'll be able to weather it.
16:47Now, hopefully there aren't any more literal storms on the horizon because we've had enough of that.
16:51And, you know, when you're going through these on, so first of all, this is something that's really important for the state,
17:00just because, you know, we're this peninsula in the middle of a tropical environment.
17:04And when you have these storms, if it gets into the Gulf, it's got to hit something.
17:09And we've got hundreds of miles of target on the west coast of Florida.
17:13Now, in the Atlantic, they tend to be more fish storms, but obviously we've got hundreds and hundreds of miles that it can do there.
17:19So this is a big deal for us.
17:21We understand that this is something that you need to take seriously.
17:24So when I became governor, I had my guys just look at, okay, you know, what's been done well, what's been done poorly, what can do better?
17:33And if you go back to Hurricane Andrew in 1992, this is a massive storm.
17:38It was like anarchy there.
17:40Like there was really no robust response.
17:44The state was not all in.
17:46The locals didn't do a very good job.
17:48And that, I think, the poor response was part of the reason it's taken Homestead a long time to be able to, I mean, they still probably aren't where they were.
17:58Now, they have done some good things more recently.
18:00But you don't want one of these storms, obviously protect people's lives and property as best you can, rescue all that.
18:07And that's the most important thing.
18:09But you don't want one of these places to be knocked down for months and months with no real bounce back because that can end up years and years of suboptimal performance.
18:20So I said we've got to be ready.
18:21We've got to go.
18:22So what can we do differently?
18:23So one of the things that we do in Florida is we pre-stage a lot of our assets and resources.
18:30We work with utility companies to have all these linemen scheduled, stationed in different parts.
18:36And so literally you could have like a Hurricane Ian, Category 5, hit Fort Myers.
18:40And within six hours of the storm passing, you've got utility crews that are down there cleaning debris, reconnecting.
18:50And so we've had hurricanes.
18:51We just had Milton.
18:52We had, I think, 4.2 million that were restored in record time, the fastest restoration in history.
18:58Ian had been the fastest at the time.
19:01And then you keep doing it.
19:02But it's not just our big utilities now who do that.
19:04We have these electrical co-ops, these smaller outfits.
19:10You know, they actually got the power back on quicker than even the big, powerful investor-owned utilities.
19:16And so we've created a culture of rapid response, making sure if there's people that need to be stabilized or need to be rescued, you do that.
19:24But then restore services as quickly as possible.
19:27Because even in a really bad storm, you know, most people aren't knocked out of their home.
19:32Most people are not in danger of life and limb.
19:35And so if you can get all those people back on their feet as quick as possible, it makes it so much easier to deal with the rest of that.
19:41You know, that goes for things like gas.
19:44So we had Hurricane Ian, didn't really interrupt the supply of gas.
19:48I did have some gas that we would provide.
19:49But these gas stations were open like the next day.
19:52Well, Hurricane Milton, we had the ports were basically knocked off, Manatee and Tampa.
20:02And that's where we get most of the fuel for that part of Florida.
20:06So we had fuel ready.
20:07And we set up all these little gas stations around the Tampa Bay Area.
20:11People, we didn't even charge people.
20:13They could come in, fill up their car, and then go.
20:15And that got us through, you know, three or four days before the ports were back up and everything started going again.
20:23But getting back on your feet quickly.
20:25And now you go to some of these places that got hit by Helene and Milton.
20:29It didn't like there ain't damage.
20:30But, man, there's a lot of tourists.
20:31There's a lot of stuff.
20:34And it just makes a huge difference.
20:36And so that's just all about, you know, captain in the ship, making sure everyone's doing it.
20:40And we've got a great culture in Florida of emergency response from the ground level all the way up to the top of the state government.
20:47And I think if President Trump wants to just block grant money to us and get FEMA out of it entirely, we would do even better.
20:53Because a lot of what we do is in spite of the FEMA bureaucracy, not because of the FEMA bureaucracy.
20:58So sometimes people say, oh, I don't know if I want to move to Florida, you know, because of hurricanes.
21:01I can tell you, you would much rather be in Florida having to deal with a hurricane in our response than be subject and be basically victim to those fires in California where there wasn't a robust response.
21:16Some of the other things that can happen in other parts of the country.
21:19So we've really shown you can mitigate this.
21:21And then the new construction, I mean, you guys know, things that are built new.
21:25I mean, you could go to Category 5 Storm.
21:27There'll be a home that isn't even touched.
21:30And then the next one is obliterated.
21:32This one was built in 60.
21:34This one was built in, or actually 70s are probably the low point of strength.
21:38Then this one was built with the new building codes.
21:41And it gets through the storm, particularly on the wind.
21:44So we've really done a good job with that.
21:46And I think people can feel confident we'll continue to do it.
21:48Well, listen, I'm happy to do the fireside.
21:51And we'll take any questions that people have.
21:54But welcome to the free state of Florida.
21:56You guys picked a good spot.
21:57It's a great time of year.
21:59And looking forward to answering some questions.