18 Pennsylvania House Republicans propose short term budget fix
News on 9 Sep 2017
News on 9 Sep 2017
A group of 18 Pennsylvania House Republicans has proposed a short term fix for the state’s ongoing impasse on funding the budget (see previous reports), suggesting that some of the state’s 218 special and reserve funds be raided to mitigate the budget deficit.
It is worth noting that their proposal does not make any recommendations for expanded gambling as a means to generate more tax revenues, unlike earlier proposals by the state Senate that included online gambling and DFS legalisation and regulation.
The new development is the first movement in a month or more on the apparent House vs. Senate budget funding deadlock, and it is not known how much support the 18 Republicans may have in the House for their proposal.
Presenting their solution to the House Republican Caucus as “The Taxpayer’s Budget” the 18 sponsors said in a statement that their submission is the result of a comprehensive examination of the state budget, during which “….we discovered taxpayer dollars stowed away and sitting idle in special government accounts with high, unused balances. Some of the 218 accounts we inspected are dormant and have not been drawn down in recent years.
“The outcome of our work is a plan that would fund the budget while protecting taxpayers. This plan does not include borrowing money, nor would it raise taxes on natural gas, electric and telephone bills, which would hurt every taxpayer in the state.”
The publication Penn Live reported that the group has targeted 41 of the special accounts, from which it proposes to draw over $1.2 billion. Then it plans to raise a further $1.1 billion from sources that include court settlements, unspent funds from prior year budgets, legislative surpluses and nearly $200 million in funding freezes in the current budget.
Other local media reports indicate that the proposal is unlikely to garner support from the governor or the Senate, and that there is little common ground between its proposals and those of the Senate, which has suggested that expanded gambling – including online gambling and DFS – will raise $200 million in additional tax revenues..
The reports note that in a press conference called by the 18 Republicans to announce their proposal there was little evidence of senior Republican political support; members of House leadership, including Speaker Mike Turzai did not attend.
The level of House support will perhaps be clarified when the House returns to work next week, one newspaper speculated..
Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf is also known to be against short term solutions to the state’s ongoing budget deficit and funding, and is unlikely to approve a proposal that at best addresses only the deficit from the last fiscal year, and merely part of the coming year’s budget shortfalls.
The governor has made no secret of the fact that he wants to see a sustainable and recurring source of revenue, which the 18 Republicans have not achieved.
