Staring down the barrel of what's sure to be a brutal campaign to stay in the governor's mansion beyond 2014, Rick Scott is pushing out a variety of campaigns that seem aimed at scoring points with weary voters.
On Wednesday Scott announced he's planning to give every public school teacher in Florida - good, bad or indifferent, a $2,500 raise.
The announcement runs contrary to his longtime positions of bringing business savvy to education. In 2011 Scott fulfilled a campaign promise and pushed a bill through Tallahassee tying teacher compensation to students' performance.
"We need to support our hard-working, dedicated teachers who understand the importance of getting good results," Scott said on his campaign website, according to Politifact. "A 'merit pay' plan would reward high-performing teachers and hold school administrators accountable, while under-performing teachers would be challenged to improve."
We've compiled a short list of Gov. Scott's most memorable missteps so you won't forget what he's done once he hits the campaign trail.
5. Claiming implementing Obamacare would cost taxpayers $26 billion Scott held fast to the idea that Florida wouldn't implement President Obama's healthcare overhaul even after the Supreme Court upheld the law. While the federal government will implement online healthcare exchanges in states that refuse to do so, Scott argued that implementing parts of the bill, mainly a Medicaid expansion, would cost taxpayer's an eye-popping $26 billion. That figure, it turned out, was a massive overstatement provided by the state-run Agency for Health Care Administration and failed to account for the fact that the feds would cover most of the cost, according to Politifact. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated the cost at $1 billion between 2013 and 2022.
