January 11, 2011, 11:40 AM EST 
Bloomberg/Businessweek 
By Simone Baribeau 
Jan. 11 (Bloomberg)

Florida Governor Rick Scott, who has promised to create 700,000 jobs in seven years, said spending cuts will be sufficient to close a $3.5 billion projected budget deficit.
Scott, a Republican former health-care executive inaugurated last week, said the gap is “nothing” compared with that of other large states. He said he will ask every state agency to go through budgets to justify each expense.
“We have enough money in the state budget,” he told the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce today. “What we have to do is make sure we don’t waste a dollar.”
Florida’s deficit in fiscal 2012 would be about 14 percent of the general-fund budget. The state’s economists reduced their estimate for revenue collections last month for the fiscal year that begins July 1 by 2.5 percent from a projection made in August.
The state’s November unemployment rate was 12 percent, 2.2 percentage points higher than the national average. Scott, 58, said today he would promote international trade to countries including Japan, the European Union, Latin America, India and China to create work in Florida.
“It’s my job to get people from overseas to be buying things from here,” he said.
Scott promised in his campaign to create jobs by lowering business taxes, reducing regulations and curbing lawsuits. Since taking office, he has stopped the imposition of new rules and created the Office of Fiscal Accountability and Regulation Reform to determine the impact of government on job creation.
“‘Every law that we pass in the state, there ought to be a measurement for it,” he said. “If it doesn’t work, let’s quit doing it.”