1 of 1- Common Sense
- Exchanger
Offline - Registered: 2/16/2015
- Posts: 3,258
Pa. budget consumes Gov. Tom Wolf's first year
Pa. budget consumes Gov. Tom Wolf's first year
Read the full story here:
Democrat Tom Wolf's first year as Pennsylvania governor was consumed by a knock-down, drag-out budget fight, and perhaps it had to be expected.
Pennsylvania governors historically have had difficult first years and Wolf, the Mount Wolf resident and scion of a business family, had run as a liberal, soundly defeating an unpopular Tom Corbett to win the right to share power with the largest and perhaps most conservative Republican legislative majorities in modern Pennsylvania history.Wolf pledged in his inaugural speech to be a different and unconventional governor who would use his business-world experience of focusing everyone on the same mission.
A year later, he has not secured any of his leading campaign promises or budget goals, key among them making the state's tax system fairer to the middle class, and fixing massive funding disparities between rich and poor school districts. State government set a record-long budget stalemate that has crowded out other major priorities and virtually overshadowed anything else he did accomplish.
Pennsylvania's last three elected governors — Tom Ridge, Ed Rendell and Tom Corbett — all had had difficult first years, said pollster and political science professor G. Terry Madonna of Franklin and Marshall.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” former vice president Biden said during a campaign event in Texas on Monday. "All men and women created by — you know, you know, the thing.”