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Cities across the United States are experiencing rising crime rates, homelessness, and public disorder, alongside deteriorating infrastructure and a decline in the quality of public services like policing, sanitation, transportation management, and the resolution of abandoned properties. Major cities have been losing population for a decade or more, and now even the suburbs of those urban areas are losing people to more effectively managed cities in better governed states. Miami, Florida, has resisted the trend toward urban decline, enjoying rapid economic growth and record-low crime rates in the 2020s. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez joins Budget & Tax News to discuss the state of America’s cities and the solutions to the nation’s urban problems.
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Hello. Welcome to the Heartland Institute's budget and tax news podcast. I'm s t Karnick, a senior fellow and director of publications at the Heartland Institute. Cities across the country are suffering from rising crime rates, homelessness, and public disorder, accompanied by deteriorating infrastructure and reductions in the quality of public services, such as policing, sanitation, transportation management, and the resolution of abandoned properties. Major cities have been losing population for a decade or more, and now even the suburbs of those urban areas are losing people to more effectively manage cities in better governed states.
S.T. Karnick:Miami, Florida has resisted that trend. Francis Suarez became the 43rd mayor of Miami in 2017 after serving as a city commissioner for 8 years. In 2023, mayor Suarez said, quote, in Miami, we didn't wait for Washington. We chose to lead. While Washington flirts with fiscal disaster and dysfunction, we chose fiscal sanity, end quote.
S.T. Karnick:In his state of the city address earlier this year, Mayor Suarez touted Miami's, quote, historically low unemployment rate of 1.6%, unquote, which is very low. And he thanked the Miami Police Department. He announced the lowest levels of per capita homicides since the city started tracking homicides in 1947. 2023 was the safest year on record in Miami, with 31 homicides recorded in 2023, 1800 affordable housing units and 26,000 new construction permits valued at more than $4,000,000,000 were recorded, the mayor has stated. Mayor Suarez says the permitting process will be streamlined to make building residences even easier in 2024.
S.T. Karnick:Miami, Florida mayor Francis Suarez joins budget and tax news to discuss the state of America cities and solutions to the nation's thorny urban problems. Welcome, mister mayor.
Mayor Suarez:Thank you. It's wonderful to be with you on this podcast.
S.T. Karnick:I really appreciate having you as a guest. Mayor, what was the situation in Miami when you took over in 2017 as the mayor of the city? What did you see as the city's strengths and weaknesses, and how were government policies affecting them?
Mayor Suarez:I could actually like to go back to 2,009. 2009 was when I first became a city councilman. And, you know, you wouldn't know it today, but our city was basically broke. We were, we had what they call a do nothing deficit of a $115,000,000 on a $600,000,000 budget, meaning that if you did nothing, if you made no changes, if you did nothing to to influence, income or expenses, you would have a $115,000,000 deficit. So we did something very unusual.
Mayor Suarez:We actually cut cost. We we cut our expenses. And so I often joke and laugh when I hear about the federal deficit and how, you know, it's too big cut and it's impossible to get it under control. I I I know that's false because I did, and it wasn't fun and it wasn't easy, but it is doable. You can cut 20% of your, expenses in 1 year.
Mayor Suarez:That's what I had to do. That's precisely what has to be done at the federal level today. We did that. We balanced our budget. We had 15,000,000 in reserves at the time.
Mayor Suarez:Today, we were able to, you know, sort of fast forward 15 years into the future. We now have the highest reserves in history, the lowest tax rate in history, and the most growth that we've ever had in history. So, you know, it's it's it's a it's a very, very different place than it was in 2009 when I got there. It was a complete turnaround job, and we've had to do it in multiple different phases.
S.T. Karnick:What are, so the tax rates are lower. How are revenues?
Mayor Suarez:Our revenues have gone through the roof. So, you know, we grew last year 12%. We grew the year before that 14%. We grew the year before that 12%. In the pandemic, we grew 6 a half percent.
Mayor Suarez:And the 2 preceding years, it was 10 a half and 8 a half. So since I became mayor in 2017, which is the right year to to to focus on, our tax base, which is the value of all properties in the city, was $40,000,000,000. Today, it's close to a $100,000,000,000. So it's a 150% growth in 7 years.
S.T. Karnick:That's impressive. Now that's a really interesting point, though, that we talk about tax base, because and that's true, as you pointed out, on the federal level, on the state level, everywhere. If you have a bigger and growing economy, you get more tax revenue even if you cut taxes. And the way you get that revenue and the way you get the bigger economy is by cutting taxes. And you did that.
S.T. Karnick:So what kinds of things did you cut?
Mayor Suarez:Well, it's actually interesting. We cut the tax rate. But because we had so much growth, we actually grew our budget. Our budget grew. Right?
Mayor Suarez:So so it's it's there's what I call negative feedback loops and there are positive feedback loops. So, like, what you see in New York is what I call a negative feedback loop. Right? You raise taxes, people leave, and then you have a budget deficit. And so you have to raise taxes to meet that, to meet that threshold, right, to meet that your expenses.
Mayor Suarez:That is what I call a death spiral, a negative feedback loop. By by contrast, what we did was we lowered taxes, more people wanted to come, right? We grew and then we had more revenue to do the things that we wanted to do, like increase our, you know, police force. We've increased our budget for police more than we ever had. We have more officers than we've ever had.
Mayor Suarez:We never got into this deep fund police nonsense, which which was never partisan before. Before, when I was coming into politics, in the inner city neighborhoods would complain they didn't have enough police officers, that they didn't they didn't get with the with the with the wealthy areas. Now you have people, particularly on the left, saying, you know, we wanna defund our police. We wanna take away responsibilities from our police force. We wanna be anti police.
Mayor Suarez:And I think that is something that is not American, to be honest. And, you know, we did is we invested our marginal dollar in policing. We invested invested our marginal dollars in finding ways to be more productive on technology. And and and what we did was we saw a tremendous amount of increase in productivity and a reduction in crime. And so we also created a healthier ecosystem, and that's also a positive feedback.
Mayor Suarez:What do I mean by that? If you have the lowest unemployment in America, you cited the number 1.6. I think that number is actually a little dated. If we actually got to 1.4, believe it or not, which is, like, 1.6% below cyclical unemployment of 3%. Right?
Mayor Suarez:We we, I call it hyper full employment, by the way. We we got to a hyper full employment state, and we also ranked the happiest city of America and the healthy city of America. So what I often tell people is, look, this is not rocket science. If you're happy, you're healthy, and you're working, what aren't you doing? You're not committing violent crime.
Mayor Suarez:So, obviously, our violent crime numbers drastically reduced during that period of time, by a massive factor. In fact, our you cited our our 2023 homicide rate of 31. The high watermark in the city was 220 in 1980. So you're talking about an 85% reduction from the high watermark in 2 1980.
S.T. Karnick:That's an interesting point you make that if if people are are working and they're enjoying their lives and they've got something to do, Crime is less appealing as a sort of way of life. I wanna go back to one thing. You mentioned about the, your budget. Did you at the time, starting in 2017, were you constrained in having to say, well, we have a balanced budget and here's what it looks like? But were you able to say that we're going to, cut these, tax rates?
S.T. Karnick:But did you have to say, but we're going to get more revenue? And did anybody buy that argument? Because people look at things as not in a dynamic way, but in a static way.
Mayor Suarez:Sure. And I'll tell you what what we actually did. Firstly, we had to balance our budget. We had a $150,000,000 deficit. So the first thing we had to do was cut cost.
Mayor Suarez:And what we did there was 2 things that most cities, most governments never do. We actually reduced, wages, and we reduced pensions. Okay? So we we did 2 things. Most governments don't do it.
Mayor Suarez:It was ugly because our obviously, our employees didn't like it. So we did tier we did tiered salary we didn't lay out anybody, by the way. So when you talk about reduction in services, there wasn't any reduction in services. All we did was we said, if you make over, I believe, a $120,000 was the threshold, you get a 12% pay cut. And then we did a tier 975 all the way.
Mayor Suarez:If you made less than $50,000, you got a 0% pay cut. Right? If you're if you're someone that was making less than $50,000, you didn't get a pay cut. But we did tier reductions, and then we did something also an an unheard of, which is we put, limits on our pension system. Right?
Mayor Suarez:We actually had a defined benefit pension system where at the time, you could theoretically retire, this is crazy, with over a 100% of your salary as a benefit for the rest of your life. So you can retire, like, 55, okay, with a 105% a 110% of your salary for the rest of your life. So you could you know, if you live 8 to 85 or 90, right, people are living more and more, you're talking about a 45 year liability guaranteed by the city, right, with cost of living adjustments and all kinds of stuff. So we put we put curves on that. We put a a limit on what you could accumulate, never been done before.
Mayor Suarez:We reduced the multipliers, never been done before. Right? So we we got a savings, that that equaled our basically equaled our, our income. So we reduce costs. Once we put ourselves in a in a good fiscal place, what I call getting back to reality, like, fiscal reality, like, we're not living in fiction right now.
Mayor Suarez:The federal government is living in fiction. Right? We have these bloated budgets. And, you know, I I always love when people say, oh, if you're a republican, are you gonna cut entitlements? Are you gonna cut military spending?
Mayor Suarez:Are you gonna cut x y z? You you you just fill in the blank. Right? And my answer is simple. It's not about cutting those budgets.
Mayor Suarez:Those budgets are operating on fictitious dollars. They're not operating on a real dollar term. So do they have to be placed back on real dollar terms? Of course. Because otherwise, they're just spending money on their credit card every year.
Mayor Suarez:Right? So the first thing we did was cut cost, then once we did that without increasing taxes, I think we sent out a message to to the community that we wanted their investment. Right? We were not going to go to their pocketbook to sustain government. So that is what started the flood of investments, which allowed us to reduce taxes over time as our income grew.
Mayor Suarez:What's interesting is our budget went down from 600 to 500,000,000, right, we cut a $100,000,000. Today, my budget is a 1,200,000,000, 2. So my budget has grown by 700,000,000, right, by by 150%. And all because of growth, not because of and we've reduced taxes along the way.
S.T. Karnick:This is how it works for any government. If you if if you make it so that your your revenues are going to increase because people are doing more, They're creating more goods and services within your realm. You're going to get more tax money, and then you'll be able to do more things.
Mayor Suarez:Absolutely. When you think about, like, homelessness, for example, I was just talking to the mayor of San Diego, great guy, really smart guy. You know, a democrat run city that is a lot like Miami, but he's got 6,000 homeless. I have 630. Okay?
Mayor Suarez:And I wanna be the 1st major American city to have no homeless, 0 homeless. That's my goal. Right? So we don't have to be, capitalist and lacking compassion. On the contrary, and by the way, we don't also think that government is the arbiter of success.
Mayor Suarez:Right? We think that government should facilitate success, oftentimes should get out of the way, and sometimes be creative as a force multiplier, but we're no arbiter of success. The success or failure of our community is based on the ingenuity of our community, the ability to risk capital, and the ability to get things done on a timely basis, which we influence if we're not timely with our approvals.
S.T. Karnick:Well, your choice to start with with cuts to the p, that that, is government employees are receiving is obviously a bold one because they're not gonna be happy about that. However, it's an important one because government employees are paid a lot more than private sector employees. They're comparable employees. And as you mentioned, their their pensions are incredibly far beyond what, the people who are paying the taxes are getting if they're getting anything. So what you what you're doing is you're kind of reversing the priority of things, things, saying, what is it that the taxpayers need, and how do we get there?
S.T. Karnick:Can you talk a little about how you make that decision and then how you sell that to the public?
Mayor Suarez:I think it starts with you know, it was painful, as you said, but it was necessary. And I'll tell you this, the the there is an employee there's there were employees at the time that wouldn't shake my hand, And there isn't an employee today that won't give me a hug because what they what they have now seen is unprecedented growth, which has gone to their bottom line as well. Because 80% of our costs are employee driven costs. Right? Whether they're, insurance, whether they're pension, or whether they're wages, that's 80% of my budget regardless.
Mayor Suarez:So if my budget grows, guess which grows? Their wages, their pension, and their right? So so they have seen even though they took a hit that year, which was a significant hit, they have seen the other side of it. They they have to have faith in me, in my leadership, in my ecosystem building abilities, and realize that, hey, we took a hit because it was necessary. But we're gonna we're gonna ride the upside as well.
Mayor Suarez:It's like any business. You know what I mean? You you ride the upside, your employees ride the upside. Any business that's a sort service oriented business like ours, you wanna have more compensated employees that are motivated and that are and that are are excited to do their job. Having said that, they have to know that their leader is someone who's gonna tell them the truth.
Mayor Suarez:And, you know, when times are not good, you're not gonna you know, you can't benefit all the time. You know? So I think I think that's part of it. I think, you know, we were able to do these things without reducing services. So our our residents didn't feel it.
Mayor Suarez:And we also didn't increase taxes, so our residents didn't feel like we were passing the buck of making tough decisions on their back. Right. I think all too often what happens is these unions become very powerful, these labor unions, and they get people elected And the the the elected officials don't wanna stand up to them. And so the easier thing to do, ironically, is to pass the bill along to the ultimate customer because they say, oh, we'll just spread it out over a large pool of people, and it's it's it's more nominal that way. But they fail to see that people are getting crushed, right, in the taxes that they're paying.
Mayor Suarez:When you when you think about a city like New York, right, and you throw in there, income taxes, state income taxes, city income taxes, property taxes, sales tax. Right? When you throw in all those taxes, not to mention ancillary taxes on a variety of other things, you're talking about 6 60¢ on the dollar. Right? Like, you you I I always joke with my New Yorker friends and I tell them, you know, in your business, you have a, you have a a you're the minority partner in your own business.
Mayor Suarez:Right? And and you're the silent partner because your majority partner is spending all your money. You know what I mean? You have no voice over your how your money's being spent. So it's, like, it's disheartening.
Mayor Suarez:And at least you come to a place like Florida where if you're in the highest tax bracket, you pay no state income tax. So you so your government is your minority shareholder instead of a majority partner. Right? And, you know, we gotta find a way to do more with less and and to just stop taxing people. It just makes it so hard to succeed in this country.
S.T. Karnick:The thing that you mentioned that is really, kind of a third rail is the, government employees. They really, have a lot of influence in any big city and even on the state level, not so much on the national level, but certainly in the cities and the states. So when you took over as mayor, you're 2017. It's like, okay, we sit down and you sit down behind the desk. Are you thinking, I can do this and it'll work?
S.T. Karnick:And and because of how economic principle because of the economic principles that I understand and so forth, we're going to do well. And 4 years from now, people are going to be saying, you know, that really worked. Or did you sit down and think, if I'm not here 4 years from now, that that's okay.
Mayor Suarez:So I my I my thinking was more like, these are the principles that I believe in. Right? I don't believe in growing government. I believe in shrinking the size of government, which a lot of Republicans say but never do. Right?
Mayor Suarez:I actually have done it, and I actually believe in it. And then I'll be honest with you. I did not I underestimated how enormous the ecosystem impact would be, the macroeconomic impact would be. Part partly because there were other factors that were happening that supercharged it. What do I mean by that?
Mayor Suarez:The SALT deduction going away. Right? That was a massive, sort of
S.T. Karnick:explain what the SALT is.
Mayor Suarez:Sure. The state and local tax deduction. So in states like Illinois, Illinois, New York, and California, you used to be able to deduct your state and local taxes from your federal income tax. In effect, low tax states like Florida were subsidizing high tax states like New York, California, and Illinois because they were taking it right off the bottom line on their on their federal income tax. So we were all paying for it.
Mayor Suarez:Right? The, you know, Paul Ryan and and Donald Trump in the in the the the last, tax package in 2,000, I believe, in 17 or 18
S.T. Karnick:17. Tax Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Mayor Suarez:Right. In that Jobs Act, they took away that exemption. And so now everyone who was paying state and local taxes could not deduct that from their federal income tax. So essentially, your taxes went up by double digits, and so that was a huge macro factor. You know, remote work in COVID was another major disruptive force because because that that self deduction person can now say, hey.
Mayor Suarez:What if I work in Miami, right, remotely? Right? And I don't have to pay these taxes. And then they start working in Miami and they realize, wait a second. Ken Griffin is here.
Mayor Suarez:Wait a second. Orlando Bravo is here. Wait a second. You know, Blackstone just opened an office. Wait a second.
Mayor Suarez:You know? Atlanta companies get better workers. Exactly. And and and there was a network, right, to continue to grow companies and scale companies that was not there before. And then I think the third thing was our attitude.
Mayor Suarez:You know, you have to understand, you have to go back in the moment. And this is pre AI and you know, which has helped a lot of San Francisco for reasons that we can talk about. But, the pre AI moment was New York saying no after winning the Amazon HQ 2 prize. Right? They win the prize, Virginia and New York, and it was a shock for many people.
Mayor Suarez:And they said no, on top of everything else. It's like, why do you apply? And then say no. And then that's a $1,000,000,000,000 company that wants to create 50,000 high paying jobs, and you're basically saying we don't want you. Right?
Mayor Suarez:And then at the same time in California, you had a elected official saying f Elon Musk, fill in the blank. Right? And then he wrote message received, and he left to Austin. Right? So you had two signals from 2 big markets, the financial heavyweight market of the world and the venture heavyweight market of the world saying, you brought you you create $1,000,000,000 companies.
Mayor Suarez:You're the richest guy in the world. We don't want you. Right? And so at the same time, there was a tweet that said, what if we move Silicon Valley to Miami? And I responded, how can I help?
Mayor Suarez:You know? So my entire idea of how can I help? How can I help build this ecosystem? How can we maximize this moment? How can we change the landscape on things?
Mayor Suarez:That, for me, was, the turning point, right, where we started to see exponential growth. So so to answer your question, yes, I thought lowering taxes, which was my philosophy, was going to spur growth, but what we saw was so so high in part for a variety of other reasons that influences demand.
S.T. Karnick:Yes. You have to start then with the premise that the government honestly is there to serve the people, but to protect their rights to life, liberty and property. And that's what it's for. And redistributing wealth and things like that are not appropriate, and they don't work.
Mayor Suarez:I agree. They don't work. They're not appropriate. You don't have to look much further than 90 miles below us, in Cuba where my parents were exiled, where a charismatic leader said, give us all your businesses, give us all your property, and we'll make everybody equal. And he did.
Mayor Suarez:He made everybody equally poor and equally miserable. Right. It it it was it was effective. Right? He he delivered on his promise of equality, equal misery, and equal poverty for everybody.
Mayor Suarez:Right? So, you know, I I I think when you when you want when you look at the United States as the most prosperous nation on earth on a almost on a per capita basis, we're massive. So some some some countries that are smaller than us maybe beat us out on a per capita basis, but in terms of a large country, we're by far one of the most prosperous per capita countries in the world, all because we give people the freedom to explore and to, innovate and to create. Right? And and and then get out of the way most of the time in terms of government.
Mayor Suarez:And like you said, government, it should be limited. It should be limited to its competencies, which are not many, and and and that's it. You know? Do what you're meant to do. Do what you were created to do.
Mayor Suarez:You were created, by the way, by us, for us. Right? And you you take on this sort of third party life where you think you're kind of you you're there to do other things, like, all these all these sociological things that that government was not meant to to be, created for, as you said. And and that's when you get into real trouble.
S.T. Karnick:One of the central things that government is supposed to do is to keep the peace, and and in particular that that in cities, that's obviously crime control. And interestingly enough, in 2020, you sort of had a downward spiral in many cities all across the country, and then it was really accelerating by then. So these these were national trends. And you saw in particular a large amount of media attention seeming to, how would you say, endorse those trends, endorse disorder, and, and and and endorse the reduction of policing and of prosecuting people for crimes. How did Miami respond to those trends?
S.T. Karnick:Because as you mentioned, in 2020, things really started to get even better for
Mayor Suarez:you. They did. And I think we were again, we're we're counter narrative. Right? We we believe in law and order.
Mayor Suarez:We we think, as a lot of us immigrants to this country or our parents are immigrants to this country, what we know about this country is the fact that it's a country of laws. Right? It's the fact that, you know, for there to be order, laws not to be enforced. And you're not doing a service to anyone by not applying the law. You're not doing a service to the people who benefit, who who who who require that law to be enforced to benefit from it, like people, for example, that wanna go shop out of Walmart or a, you know, CVS when they get closed because of, you know, petty theft is essentially legalized in certain areas.
Mayor Suarez:And you're not helping the person who's doing the wrong because you're not giving them the right, lesson. The lesson is not, you know, if you're in need, go and just take whatever you want. Right? The lesson should be if you're in need, let us find a way to help you. You can so you can earn a way, to to provide for yourself, which we do in in in abundance here in this country.
Mayor Suarez:Right? We're constantly I mean, today, I was with, I was in a hotel where we were, you know, we're trying to host, like I said, house all these, homeless people, right, in terms of getting the number down from 630. We did a fundraiser a couple of weeks ago I did, and we've housed a 150 of the 630 in 3 weeks. And I went to visit some of them in in a hotel. There's about 12 families in a hotel.
Mayor Suarez:You know, and we're helping them find jobs and be productive. And and, you know, not all of them have substance abuse issues. Some of them do. We wanna help them as well. So, you know, it it it's it's not about being lawless.
Mayor Suarez:Right? On the contrary, it's it's about being compassionate. I don't think you're being compassionate when you just let people violate the law. And that was happening. And I also think, frankly, you know, not to get on my high horse about socialism, but I think the the the the objective of our enemies is for us to destroy ourselves from within.
Mayor Suarez:It's us to destroy ourselves by fighting with each other. And when they they infiltrate us by by trying to influence certain whether it's academia or the press, to try to reshape what is good. And when things like, you know, law and order start to become politicized or political, Right? And you see, you know, defund police movements, no cast bail movements, you know, all these things that are antithetical to American values, you know that that's our enemies at work, right? And those who wanna see democracy destroyed because democracy is hard.
Mayor Suarez:Winston Churchill once said, democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. Right? It's hard. You have to work at it. You gotta fight for it.
Mayor Suarez:A lot of blood has been shed here and abroad, for our democracy.
S.T. Karnick:So much of this appears to be just governments taking on much more than is appropriate for governments to do. And there are things that they simply cannot do well. And this, as you as you point out, this is very rapidly increasing difference between what you call red and blue states and red and blue cities. Could you address that? How lawmakers can create a a better understanding of what is at stake when city people enter the voting booth, how they can know what their true interests are, and and maybe some ways that you've you've tried to change that, thinking?
Mayor Suarez:Yeah. I mean, I think it goes back to what I said earlier that, you know, government is created to address certain competencies, not all competencies. They're not competent to handle every issue. And I'll give you an example from the city. It's sort of a microscopic example.
Mayor Suarez:We have a piece of property that is, a defunct, marine stadium, and we wanna rebuild it. But we're not in the event business. Right? We don't we don't we're not in the event. We don't we don't have a tax.
Mayor Suarez:We don't you know, that's not what we do. We we clean the garbage. We have a building and zoning department. We police our streets, and we respond when there's a fire or when there is a medical emergency. Right?
Mayor Suarez:That's what we do. Right? We're not in the entertainment business. So we're gonna find a private sector company that is in the entertainment business to manage this asset. Right?
Mayor Suarez:And we'll have some sort of revenue share with them. They're gonna take a lot of the risk. So it also deprased risk from our perspective because we don't have to take on a lot of this risk. And so it's just being smart about what you're good at and understanding what you're not good at. And I think those kinds of organizations like, I told you, I I had no reserves in 2009, and now I have over $200,000,000 in debt.
Mayor Suarez:So imagine the government that's the exact opposite of the federal government. Instead of having $30,000,000,000,000 in debt, or, you know, and it runs at a deficit, we run-in an annual surplus, and we have $200,000,000 in cap. Right? So it's just it's crazy, the way that things are happening at the federal level.
S.T. Karnick:I think what you're you're saying about the federal government is obviously it's correct. And I think that it is a real lesson to the public. Is that something where people cities who may perceive themselves as benefiting from the federal government? And can, is there ways to, express and clarify exactly how much all this is costing? Even people who don't pay any honestly, don't pay any federal taxes at all?
Mayor Suarez:Part of the problem is that these things at the federal level, there's so much manipulation, right, through the Fed, monetary policy, and and even through fiscal policy, right, deficit spending, that that every regular, everyday person is not gonna feel it until there's a crisis. We we keep thinking that we're on the precipice of a crisis and it doesn't happen. I don't wanna I don't want it to happen, by the way. I don't want it to happen because I'm afraid of how cataclysmic it will get if the US has a financial crisis of of the They may. Of what of what could happen.
Mayor Suarez:Right? I mean, it would be a world crisis. So how do we get our act together? I think we can get our act together. I've done it.
Mayor Suarez:Right? I think it's just about living in the real world, and then I think we need to put in some controls that don't currently exist. You know, I think we should have a balanced budget amendment to the constitution, which requires us to balance just like we have to do with states and local governments. We're required constitutionally to balance our budget unless there's some sort of an emergency, a pandemic, a war, you know, some act of congress that allows us to stray from that for a temporary period of time to address a need, I think we should be required to balance our budget. We need to live in the real world.
Mayor Suarez:Every single family in America does it. Why shouldn't the federal government do it? Right? And I think that would go a long way. And then I think we need to understand what the size of the government should be.
Mayor Suarez:Right? I mean, you know, when you have people that are paying 50% plus in overall tax rates to governments, that is not American. Right? That that is bordering on socialism. Right?
Mayor Suarez:When you when you are in partnership with the government, and the government makes more money off your production than you do. It doesn't make any sense. That makes absolutely zero sense. You know, and I think that's something that we got to address over the long run too.
S.T. Karnick:That's, just very briefly, how has the state of Florida you're in a a fairly red state, although it wasn't quite as red in 2019, I don't think. But you're in a fairly red state. Does that help?
Mayor Suarez:Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, we're like you said, we're a net so so the state makes most of its money on state tax and not the consumer tax. Mhmm. Good. And and and when you're growing the way we're growing in terms of population, the migration from new states, you see an uptick on that even though we haven't changed that tax rate.
Mayor Suarez:So that that, you know, that's also created an increase in in revenue. So, you know, look, I I think, you know, if if the tax cuts are somehow extended and the self deduction continues to, to be the law of the land, I think we're gonna see, states have to make some major changes. Otherwise, there's going to be so much in population that they're they're going to collapse into themselves.
S.T. Karnick:That's absolutely true. Is there anything else you'd like to tell our listeners before we go?
Mayor Suarez:You know, I have I'm optimistic. You know, I think we're in a generational turning of the page. My dad, who's a great man, is 75 years old. He was the 1st Cuban mayor in Miami. He came to his country at 12.
Mayor Suarez:He was the 9th of 14 kids. Got a scholarship to high school, presidential scholarship to college, and 2 graduate degrees from an Ivy League school, you know, a quintessential American story. And we love this country. And I think, you know, I think that in this upcoming generation, we're gonna have to apple some big problems. I think they're they're they're defeatable.
Mayor Suarez:We gotta make tough choices just like it always is. It always comes down to tough choices and discipline. Some of those, you know, age old terms that people sometimes don't like to hear, but are required in order to have success. And and I think the next generation hopefully will do it for themselves and their children.
S.T. Karnick:Thank you, mayor, so much for talking with the budget and tax news today. How can people contact your office?
Mayor Suarez:You can email me at ssoares@miamigob.com. Ssoares@miamigob.com. You can also send me a message on my Instagram page or on Twitter. I check those regularly, and I also have a team of people that checks them and responds. Either one of those, ways you can get a hold of me.
S.T. Karnick:Our guest today was Miami, Florida mayor Francis Suarez. Thank you, mayor, and thank you listeners for joining the podcast. Thanks. You're very welcome, and I appreciate having you here. Please leave a 5 star review of whatever platform you're using to listen to this podcast.
S.T. Karnick:Follow me at atstkarnick on social media and visit heartlanddailynews.com for the nation's best news coverage and commentary on public policy issues. This is ST Karnick for the Heartland Institute's budget and tax news podcast.