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What a surprise .
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Brady Bunch wrote:
We've now hit the 3 1/2 month mark of this and it is now ridiculous. I like this article from today's Pennlive website:
As I noted back in September, both sides shared plenty of blame. However, since then I think the vast majority of this lies with the Governor. He appears completely unwilling to compromise on anything (as noted in the article) and is willing to drag this on forever until he gets exactly what he wants. His refusal to cooperate and compromise reminds me of the "Freedom Caucus" Republicans in Congress who pushed out Boehner.
I think Tom Wolf has already worked himself into being a one term governor, in less than a year. And to think we have to go through this 3 more times with him. He's simply not on the same page as the majority of Pennsylvanians, and does not appear to have any willingness to be. Certainly not the guy who campaigned and said all the right things, or, as it turns out, lied.
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Yes, Wolf has now surpassed the previous record days-without-a-budget set by Rendell, who, by the way, had a budget on time only in his final year in office. 7 of 8 preceding years had protracted fights.
How many people seriously yearn for higher taxes?
They're plrahhihg a remake of Fantasy Island.
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No one wants to see their taxes increase but this decadent state must do something to increase revenue. To start--begin taxing sales on everything but prescriptions and increase the sales tax to 7%, giving 1/2% to local school districts. Next, get rid of those damn state liquor stores selling wine and the beer distributors. This retail system is about as antiquated as prohibition. Pass legislation (if needed) to allow local counties to combine school districts into one county-wide system, allow counties to create one tax system for all their costs and merge all fire companies into a county-wide system. This state will never change until its legislation moves into the 21st century!
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PA has earned a reputation as a very poorly run state.
Most of the discussion of why seems to revolve around claiming which side deserves the majority of the blame. But, the fact is that many other states, whether run by republicans or democrats seem to manage their affairs better Flowergirl is right on track by focusing on the actual structural problems. You need to figure out how to deal with these and other issues rather than on the personalities in Harrisburg.
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The Man wrote:
Brady Bunch wrote:
We've now hit the 3 1/2 month mark of this and it is now ridiculous. I like this article from today's Pennlive website:
As I noted back in September, both sides shared plenty of blame. However, since then I think the vast majority of this lies with the Governor. He appears completely unwilling to compromise on anything (as noted in the article) and is willing to drag this on forever until he gets exactly what he wants. His refusal to cooperate and compromise reminds me of the "Freedom Caucus" Republicans in Congress who pushed out Boehner.
I think Tom Wolf has already worked himself into being a one term governor, in less than a year. And to think we have to go through this 3 more times with him. He's simply not on the same page as the majority of Pennsylvanians, and does not appear to have any willingness to be. Certainly not the guy who campaigned and said all the right things, or, as it turns out, lied.
It's a little early to say Wolf is going to be a one term governor, but I have been surprised at his perceived (and possibly real) lack of leadership. There is nooooooo way this budget impasse should be going on this long.
Getting a budget in place is, particularly at a state level, is priority 1 for any governor. If Wolf wants to take a Rendell approach and play hardball, then fine. But he needs to be prepared to steamroll the legislature using the bully pulpit, and by spending any political capital he may have. Unfortunately, by taking this "sit back and wait it out" attitude, he's lost almost all of the capital he had and even ardent Wolf supporters like myself find it very hard to defend the guy at this point.
Wolf needs to get his sh!t together.
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I agree with everything you said there Lager. It is too early to call him a one-term governor, but he is heading in that direction.
There is no way this should still be going on. He campaigned and won the election on two main issues, education spending and the extraction tax, and many PA residents agree with him on that. From all accounts I have seen, the legislature is willing to give him more education funding and would also give him an extraction tax for a compromise on pension reform and/or liquor privitization.
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From the organization Education Voters of PA:
As you have heard, last week the PA House voted down Governor Wolf’s proposed budget package by a vote of 127-73 (118 Rs and 9 Ds opposed, 73 Ds supported) See how your lawmaker voted here. This was an unusual vote because legislative leaders only permitted a vote on the revenue package and did not allow members to vote on a whole budget, which includes how the money would be spent.
Voting for taxes is tough, and it is even tougher when you don’t get to show people what the money will buy (funds for schools, libraries, seniors etc) and you know you are being used in a political stunt. In spite of this, Democrats showed that they are willing to put up the votes needed to get this done so that only a small portion of Republicans will have to join them. So CHEERS to those willing to take a stand and vote for revenues (including the widely supported shale tax) so PA can fund schools and close the structural budget gap. CHEERS to the people who kept their campaign promises to support schools and tax the shale.
And JEERS to the people who stood up and said they couldn’t vote for the budget because they couldn’t see how it would be spent. Since the vote was ONLY for the revenue side of the budget, these elected officials showed us that they either didn’t understand what they were voting on or that they willfully misstated what was going on. We should be able expect better than that from PA’s elected officials.
Now what?
Apparently we can’t leave them alone for even a minute! It is clear that the only thing that will force lawmakers to move their positions is MORE public pressure and direct contact from voters at home. Governor Wolf has made significant concessions on key issues, but continues to stand firm that PA must close the $2 billion structural deficit in its budget and restore funding to education to pre-Corbett levels this year so we can move toward getting schools on track in the future.
Lawmakers must step up and support a budget that is restore $410 million in new state funding for schools and adopt the formula recommended by the Basic Education Funding Commission. They must also support a reasonable revenue package to ensure we have the funding to do it and we aren’t short changing kids because lawmakers are too afraid to cast tough votes.
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From all accounts I have seen, the legislature is willing to give him more education funding and would also give him an extraction tax for a compromise on pension reform and/or liquor privitization.
Personally, I'm against liquor privatization, but if that was the deal on the table, I'd jump at it if I was Wolf.
Maybe Wolf is gambling that with '16 coming up in a state that would likely vote for Hillary, that her coattails could turn the legislature back to the Dems, but I think that is highly unlikely.
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Rongone wrote:
From the organization Education Voters of PA:
As you have heard, last week the PA House voted down Governor Wolf’s proposed budget package by a vote of 127-73 (118 Rs and 9 Ds opposed, 73 Ds supported) See how your lawmaker voted here. This was an unusual vote because legislative leaders only permitted a vote on the revenue package and did not allow members to vote on a whole budget, which includes how the money would be spent.
Voting for taxes is tough, and it is even tougher when you don’t get to show people what the money will buy (funds for schools, libraries, seniors etc) and you know you are being used in a political stunt. In spite of this, Democrats showed that they are willing to put up the votes needed to get this done so that only a small portion of Republicans will have to join them. So CHEERS to those willing to take a stand and vote for revenues (including the widely supported shale tax) so PA can fund schools and close the structural budget gap. CHEERS to the people who kept their campaign promises to support schools and tax the shale.
And JEERS to the people who stood up and said they couldn’t vote for the budget because they couldn’t see how it would be spent. Since the vote was ONLY for the revenue side of the budget, these elected officials showed us that they either didn’t understand what they were voting on or that they willfully misstated what was going on. We should be able expect better than that from PA’s elected officials.
Now what?
Apparently we can’t leave them alone for even a minute! It is clear that the only thing that will force lawmakers to move their positions is MORE public pressure and direct contact from voters at home. Governor Wolf has made significant concessions on key issues, but continues to stand firm that PA must close the $2 billion structural deficit in its budget and restore funding to education to pre-Corbett levels this year so we can move toward getting schools on track in the future.
Lawmakers must step up and support a budget that is restore $410 million in new state funding for schools and adopt the formula recommended by the Basic Education Funding Commission. They must also support a reasonable revenue package to ensure we have the funding to do it and we aren’t short changing kids because lawmakers are too afraid to cast tough votes.
It was unusual for there to be a vote on just the revenue package, but that was at the request of Governor Wolf. He even held a press event and "pitched" why he needed these revenues and why he thought they were necessary.
The Governor believed he would be able to get the votes needed to pass this (he thought some Republicans from Southeast Pa might vote for it), and he came up short with several newly elected Dems in purple districts not willing to vote for a tax increase on personal income.
The vote in June by the legislature was a political stunt when they rejected the revenue package, but the vote this time was all at the request of the Governor.