Gov. Charlie Crist, in Orlando to raise money for Amendment 1, lashed out at the assertion today that school children could be endangered by the tax cuts.

"The notion that somebody would try to scare people that children are going to get run over, that’s pathetic. It’s not honorable," Crist told the Buzz in a telephone interview. "Was it FDR who once said, 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself' ? Sounds like now is a good time to resurrect that quote."

Headed to a TV interview, he added: "Five or 5 or 6 years ago, before we had the run up in property values and therefore property taxes, guess what we still had all over Florida? Police officers and firefighters. Isn’t that amazing how that was able to be accomplished when we didn’t have all this extra money."

Crist said he's confident the tax cut plan will pass on Jan. 29.

"The people of Florida desperately want their property taxes cut. I know they do. I hear from them every day. The Legislature has done a great thing. They put the power in the hands of the people to vote themselves a property tax cut. I don't think many people are inclined to vote against cutting their property taxes."

He responded to a St. Petersburg Times Politifact story about the inaccurate use of the term "doubling the homestead exemption." (That's misleading because the higher exemption does not apply to school taxes, which account for 40 percent of the average property tax bill).

"It's a virtual doubling," Crist said. "I think that's a better way to characterize that. And I will state that. That's here we really held education harmless and that's important for readers to know."