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WILKES-BARRE — The state budget mess is getting messier and legislators are running out of patience, as the battle to get an agreement grows uglier by the day.
On Tuesday, Gov. Tom Wolf blamed House Republican leaders for Pennsylvania state government’s nearly record-long budget stalemate ahead of another battle over what kind of spending plan the GOP-controlled House of Representatives will support.
Wolf said Republicans “inexplicably blew up a bipartisan budget deal” that House GOP leaders had helped negotiate.
Wolf is threatening to veto an 11-month emergency spending package being advanced by House Republican leaders. They say it’s the responsible thing to do while negotiations continue.
Local legislators said they aren’t too happy about what they described Tuesday as political posturing at taxpayers’ expense.
“When will obstinate partisans in the legislature — Democrat and Republican — come to understand there are no political victories to gain in this perpetual budget impasse, only continued pain for every taxpayer whose tired of a state government that doesn’t work for them anymore?” asked state Sen. John Yudichak, D-Plymouth Township.
He went on to say that along with his Democrat and Republican colleagues in the Senate, he has supported a responsible state budget and voted to “reel in unsustainable state pension systems” that are driving up school property taxes and “eating away” at the state’s credit rating at an alarming rate.
“In the budget that passed the Senate, pain was shared and progress was shared on investments in our businesses, communities and schools,” Yudichak said. “Taxpayers demand, deserve and should be delivered a fiscally responsible, bipartisan state budget.”
House Republicans two weeks ago rejected a 6 percent spending increase as part of the bipartisan budget deal, but Wolf says he now has secured enough votes in the House to pass it.
According to an Associated Press story Tuesday afternoon, there were signs of a potential breakthrough in Pennsylvania’s budget stalemate just three days before Christmas.
According to the AP story:
• The House of Representatives defied Republican majority leaders Tuesday and narrowly sent a bipartisan spending bill over a key procedural hurdle.
• The bill has Gov. Wolf’s backing to end a nearly six-month stalemate. The spending bill’s already passed the Republican-controlled Senate and the House could send it to Wolf’s desk as early as Wednesday.
• The main appropriations bill in a $30.8 billion spending package survived a series of procedural votes. Moderate Republicans joined Democrats to form a 100-97 majority on the final vote.
• The parliamentary maneuvers also defeated GOP leadership’s short-term spending proposal that Wolf had threatened to veto.
• However, other major elements of the bipartisan budget deal remain in limbo, including legislation restructuring pension benefits and authorizing a $1 billion-plus tax increase.
Meanwhile, state Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski, D-Wilkes-Barre, expressed concern at the lack of an agreement.
“Countless days continue to slip off the calendar as we inch closer to 2016,” Pashinski said. “Pennsylvania remains without a budget. The House intended to spend the weekend in session to finally pass a budget that is nearly six months overdue. However, after the House rejected a poorly designed pension bill by a 149-52 margin, the House Republicans took their football and went home.”
Pashinski said that more than a month ago Wolf, along with the Senate Democrats and Republicans and House Democrats and Republicans, agreed to a budget framework that would provide an additional $350 million dollars in education, increase funding for human service providers, begin to eliminate the debt and move Pennsylvania in the right direction.
“But once again, House Republicans decided to back out of this agreement and come up with another plan that falsely claims to appropriately move Pennsylvania out of debt,” Pashinski said.
Pashinski took issue with the Republican “claim to fame” to pass state budgets on time without tax increases.
“The truth is their slick maneuvers have forced local communities to shoulder the financial burden of funding the needs of their schools and human services,” Pashinski said. “They passed the buck to our local communities to deal with their problems by providing inadequate state support.”
Pashinski said the GOP “manipulation of the system” has wasted time and taxpayer money and caused great harm to those in need.
“Their actions are reckless and irresponsible,” he said. “Enough. House Republicans need to join the other three caucuses and the governor to pass a real budget now.”
On Monday, Wolf announced he would veto the House Republican stopgap budget if it reached his desk. He urged everyone to get back to work to pass a full-year budget now that invests in education, is balanced and begins to fix the deficit.
Wolf listed some of the consequences of the House Republican stopgap budget:
• The furlough of 8,000 commonwealth employees with the biggest impact on corrections, probation and parole and the state police.
• $455 million cut to our schools, compared to the previous year.
• $47.5 million cut to county human service programs.
• $100 million cut to Home and Community Services, denying more than 2,150 individuals with disabilities and autism the opportunity to remain in their homes.
• $8 million cut to vocational rehabilitation, which will lead to the forfeiture of $30 million in federal funding.
“A stopgap budget does not change the status quo that Harrisburg has accepted for too long,” a Wolf news release stated. “It does not restore funding to our schools and it does not begin to fix our deficit.”
